While other countries add services, Canada adds public servants

Great header. One important point missing to deliver digital successfully, existing policies and procedures will need significant change. Tech cannot solve all the problems if the policies are too complex to understand and manage:

To change course, we must commit to:

• Make digital skills a requirement for advancement in government. How will we progress if our leaders lack the skills, experience, and confidence necessary to own successful service delivery?
• Deliver useful, simple wins quickly. Large projects are far more likely to fail than small ones. Let’s prove we can deliver value fast to restore confidence. The rapid delivery of the Canada Emergency Response Benefit proved that we can achieve wins when we must. 
• Create a single government interface. Design services around citizen needs rather than around department responsibilities. Thirty-one countries have figured this out.
• Change both citizen and government behavior.  All Canadians will have to relearn how they interact with their government using the new tools we build. The rewards will be significant: In Estonia, one simple rule—the government may not ask for a piece of information twice—slashed bureaucracy throughout the public sector.
• Spending, schedules, and performance must be transparent. We’re clearly spending too much on transformation, and not getting enough in return. Yet nobody has a good handle on costs. From now on, every initiative must start with a clear definition of success, and then make simple metrics public throughout the delivery process. 
• Let leaders do the hard work. There should be no responsibility without authority. If we task someone with making hard—even unpopular, changes—we need to give them the power, resources, and flexibility necessary to deliver citizen-centric services. It’s the only way we’ll attract serious digital talent to public service.
• Create and re-use standard modules. Create software “building blocks” that make building services faster, easier, and more secure—and then insist that every department uses them. Freeze the budgets of departments who refuse.

In his 1993 resignation address, the then-prime minister Brian Mulroney said, “whether one agrees with our solutions or not, none will accuse us of having chosen to evade our responsibilities by side-stepping the most controversial issues of our time.” 

We have been side-stepping the biggest shift in government of our lifetimes. Digital power will define the best countries of the coming century. If we want to remain among them, we must become a digital-first nation.

Source: While other countries add services, Canada adds public servants