Ryan: 00:00

Hi, I'm Ryan Androsoff, and welcome to Let's Think Digital. I want to start off today's episode with a question. What does government procurement mean to you? For some people, they might think about political scandal when they think about government procurement. Certainly the last few months here in Canada, the federal government's come under a lot of fire for a number of procurement issues, starting with the ArriveCan app that was required to enter the country during the height of the pandemic. And the very large multimillion dollar price tag that came out afterwards in terms of how much it cost external consultants to build it. There's been recently in the last number of weeks and investigation looking into the role of management consultants in government, in particular, the amount of money being spent on McKinsey and Company, but also looking at the broader issues of how management consultancies are impacting government policy. And if we think back, there's any number of government scandals linked to procurement, perhaps most famously, in the last few decades, the sponsorship scandal back in the 1990s and early 2000s. And so for many people, they may associate procurement with this, this notion of political scandal that can go along with it. For other people, though, procurement might just be seen as that back office boring stuff that keeps the wheels of government moving, you know, the day to day grind of paperwork within government, and certainly something that's not as interesting as some of those pressing social and economic policy challenges that governments are facing every day. The reality is this, though, that procurement is actually at the heart of many of the digital transformation efforts that we talk about on this podcast, and really is at the heart of digital government.

Ryan: 01:00

It is frankly, in my view, impossible to have effective modern government in the digital era, if we don't have effective modern approaches to procurement. And so that's why on today's episode of Let's Think Digital, we're going to try convince you that if you care about digital transformation, you have to care about procurement, too. So I'm really happy to have Amanda Clark with us here today. Amanda is an associate professor at Carleton University, somebody who I've had the pleasure of collaborating with in a variety of different ways over the years. And Amanda, you know, is really, I think, one of the leading experts in the academic world here in Canada and globally around what we call digital government. And she has particularly been focusing for the last year or two on the issue that we're talking about today, which is really around the role that procurement plays in either enabling or hindering some of the progress we would like to see around creating a more digitally nimble and citizen focused government. So Amanda, great to have you with us. And I maybe want to just get you to start off a little bit to introduce yourself, the work you're doing. And in particular, you know, how you got into looking at procurement as this big topic? Because it's, you know, to be frank, not always the sexiest topic in the world when it comes to public administration.

Amanda Clark: 03:28

Yeah, thanks so much. It's super great to be here and be on the show. And also, I think, I'm happy to see that so much attention is being paid to procurement right now. It's one of those things that you say like, how did I get into focusing on, on that particular topic? And I think like, if I'm being honest, probably in a lot of my earlier work, I was like a bit negligent in ignoring the role that private firms inevitably play in helping governments develop, design, deliver digital services, or in their broader digital modernization plans. So it seems like the time was right to finally jump into it and look at this issue. Because, you know, I think most of the research and the policy work in this space has been really focused in the last sort of, like, since about 2010, when the UK's Government Digital Service hit the scene, was on kind of building in house capacity, and how do you kind of integrate in modern digital policy design and service delivery methods into government? And so, you know, like, the research was looking at things like government digital service teams, and how rules and policies in government need to change to enable digital innovation and all that stuff. But it's sort of like this elephant in the room is you're like, Yeah, but what about KPMG? Like, what about IBM? And how do you, like, you know that governments aren't going to build everything, that doesn't make sense. Clearly, they have to buy a lot of like infrastructure and actual hard technology, but software and services and so it- given that as a reality, like how do you structure that relationship in a way that it leads to good outcomes? And that I think is like, well, it's not just a million dollar question. It's like a billion dollar question. And that's why it's getting a lot of attention now at the political level as well, which is, which is interesting and welcome.

Ryan: 05:13

So let's, I almost want to kind of back up to kind of first principles on this for a second before we dive into this more, you know, because we've got people no doubt listening and watching this who who don't speak government, right. And they kind of hear procurement their, their eyes glaze over a little bit. And I'm wondering if you've got a good definition or way of explaining what procurement is, right? And how government procurement is different than how you know, a small business or an individual person might buy something? Because at its core, I mean procurement's about buying goods and services. But they're I mean, my sense is there, obviously, there are big differences in terms of how government has to do procurement versus, you know, an individual or small business or how people might approach this in their daily lives.

Amanda Clark: 05:55

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So I mean, procurement is really, as you say, just a government, a term for the the process by which any anybody but including, including governments, buy goods and services. And I think where that purchasing is different in government than, say, in private industry or amongst like individual citizens is, you know, one of the classic differences that always gets point to between public and private sector, which is that there's a public accountability piece. So when governments, you know, are using public funds, through taxes to pay for things you want to have, you know, there's a higher standard of kind of expectations around things like transparency, and, you know, avoiding conflict of interest and ensuring that public funds are being used appropriately. So that's where a lot of the process and the rules come in play. I think the other piece of it is that governments like is a big purchaser, right, so relative to other firms, you know, the Federal Government of Canada and other governments in Canada can can throw around a lot of money. And so government procurement also can be a driver of industry, it can have an effect on the market, it can, you know, fuel certain industries over others. So this is kind of where it becomes a bit of a policy tool in some cases as well. And I think the third reason why it's, like, unique to think about procurement in a government context is that there's a tension, a potential tension between building in house capacity within the public sector, hiring public servants updating their skills, making sure that governments are capable of, of producing their own goods and services, and having that core capacity to deliver, relative to sort of outsourcing it or or buying it. And that's where the questions around like, procurement, does it hollow out the state, is it part of a privatization agenda? And so that's where it starts, you know, I think we're, it's kind of a juicy piece of it from a government perspective.

Ryan: 07:49

Yeah. And there's, you know, there's been an interesting history on this. Right. And you and I have talked about this before, in the past. I mean, you know, I think back to, you know, let's go back to World War Two era, right. 1940s. And, you know, which is still within living memory for some people who are around today. I mean, you know, wartime measures, obviously, but government was able to build and procure, you know, huge fleets of vessels, and vehicles and materials. You know, even in the post war era, because of a lot of technical innovation that got driven, you know, out of necessity, during that period, government was seen as this real hub for research and development, you know, a lot of the best and brightest wanting to work there, whether it was in cryptography, or some of the, you know, emerging computer science disciplines. And then, like, over the decades, things changed, right. And in particular, I know, you've, you've talked with me about this in the past, you know, there's kind of this period in the 1980s, particularly around kind of Reagan and Thatcher, and this idea of, you know, the state inherently being inefficient, and we should, we should kind of slim it down. I'm wondering, we can maybe kind of unpack that a bit, because I guess, you know, the, the point that I'm kind of thinking about is that procurement hasn't always been the way it is now. Right, there seems to have been this kind of ebb and flow over history, which, as you say, is sometimes linked to certain kind of political agendas or political ideologies.

Amanda Clark: 09:05

Mm hmm. Yeah, like, I think on the, the sort of transition from the state being viewed as sort of an entrepreneurial actor that can like, really produce amazing innovations in a way that, you know, the private industry might not be capable of, because of its ability to shape both regulation and put a lot of money on the table, and kind of convene actors, you know, there's lots of tools at the disposal of government that make it a powerful player and potentially a very powerful actor in society. That seems like such a mundane and obvious thing to say, but we have, in many cases, sort of forgotten that. Right. And part of that, a big part of that, was the sort of neoliberal ideology of the 80s. Also, you know, like, jet, like, kind of economic downturns which, you know, over the years, you know, have have meant that I think we've kind of systematically either by design or in some cases just through neglect, like failed to leverage the state as that kind of a powerful actor, you're starting to see the results of that come sort of to like fruition in a, well that's the wrong term, actually, because it's sort of like a rotten fruit. Because, basically, you know, now we have these issues of massive service failures, things like the Phoenix pay system in Canada, or in the US, the classic example is healthcare.gov. But you don't need to go to those big examples, you see it all the time. And in the, kind of the ways in which it's been, you know, the state is falling behind, in its ability to kind of meet modern digital service expectations and modernize its processes. And so part of that is just that, like we hadn't, we haven't been bringing in those modern digital skill sets into the state. Instead, it was kind of primarily, you know, something that we were outsourcing whenever there was a digital need, there was a huge reliance on private tech vendors and management consulting firms especially. So you know, it's not surprising that we're in the mess we're in because, you know, we kind of like let the muscle atrophy. And then now it's like, not capable of doing much heavy lifting, and no one should be surprised by that. Like, that's an inevitable outcome of that, of that approach. So it's exciting, though, however, despite the kind of mess we're in, to see this global orthodoxy that is catching, catching on around; Okay, we know we're going to have to buy from private firms, but what would it look like to have a kind of core of expertise in the state to be a smart shopper, to work effectively with these players, and also to build in house when it makes sense to do so and then kind of maintain digital systems after you buy or build them. And that's where things like the Canadian Digital Service come in. And where initiatives like, even the Digital Academy at the Canada school and the work that is being done like broadly, including a lot of your work it through Think Digital and kind of building the digital capacity of the state.

Ryan: 11:53

Yeah, because it's, you know, it's an interesting point. And I think it's, it's, it's useful not to have it get lost, but that I don't think anybody is realistically saying, the government should do everything right, in the digital space, right? Like no one, I think, is legitimately suggesting the government should be building all of its own apps and software and hardware from the ground up. There's clearly cases where it just makes sense, right, to be able to buy something off the shelf or contract out. But I think this point of kind of atrophying, you know, those those kinds of muscles around how to do that effectively is such an important one. And I mean, I certainly saw this during my time in government as well. Because even if you're going to bring in outside expertise to do that, you've got to have people who are managing that contract, who are providing oversight, who are providing direction, you know, who kind of, who understand you know, enough about this, to be able to ask good questions, to be able to hold it to account to be able to kind of steer these projects. And I think we've seen just the reality that we're not there in a lot of cases right now. And so it's it's an important one, I think, to kind of pick up on. So in this context, Amanda, I mean, you've been over the last year or two doing a really interesting kind of deep dive into IT procurement, particularly with the federal government here in Canada. Be wondering if you could take maybe a few minutes and just, you know, share a bit of of what kind of the big findings were behind this, you know, what the genesis of the project was? And kind of where we are today? What's the current state of procurement when we're talking about federal government, in particular here in Canada?

Amanda Clark: 13:22

Yeah, so. So basically, you know, there were sort of like two streams to this research. So one side of it is interviews that I've been doing with public servants, not just in Canada, but also kind of, broadly internationally, to understand like, what the relationship is between the public sector and private tech firms and management consultants in the digital sort of service delivery and transformation space. So speaking to people who are on the frontlines in digital service teams, for example, or Procurement Offices, and getting a sense from them of like, how does this relationship- where should we be worried and what's working well? And there, I mean, it's been fascinating to hear some of the consistency across responses. It's largely, like you said, an awareness that this clearly matters to get this right, and that you're not going to build everything in house. I've only had of all the interviews I've done, I think one respondents said no, everything should be built in house and they were taking at it, if I'm being honest, more from a kind of pro union perspective, as opposed to like, you know, that they had a kind of different, like framework for evaluating. But all that to say, so that was clear. And, and then, you know, I'm happy to go into more of the findings around around that on sort of like the conditions that like allow the relationship to be healthy. The other piece of the project, which is the one that's received a bit more attention in Canada recently, is looking at the Canadian Federal Procurement Data. And this was done in partnership with a federal public servant, Sean Boots, who came and did a residency with us at Carleton for for a period of time, which was great and totally awesome. Like, thank you Treasury Board and Candidate School Public Service for funding that and making it happen. It was it was wonderful and, and so working with a team of RAs, Sean, and you know, who really did like kind of the bulk of the work and kind of getting this beautiful website up to date created a site that you can go take a look at: govcanadacontracts.ca. And essentially, what we've done there is we've taken the data that was released, a proactive disclosure requirement of the federal government to describe all federal contracts, not just in the IT space, although that was our main interest. And we, you know, turned it into a tool that makes it easier to search and analyze. And so from that project, we were able to then dig into the IT contracts specifically, which in some cases are hard to identify. It's not always obvious, there's tons of problems with the data and lots to do in terms of making it easier to, to be precise, but we could make some conclusions. And we basically wanted to evaluate the extent to which federal IT contracting aligns with best practice globally. And we know from studies like the Kaos report, which was a US think tank that basically looked at IT projects, software projects in like both private and public sector and through a whole, you know, large scale data set, they sort of were able to determine that, basically, small contracts lead to success in large contracts with long durations. So high dollar value, but also many years included in the contract, almost always fail. So we created like a series of rules around like, what would a good contract look like? The other piece of it we looked at was the extent to which open source has ever prioritized. We looked at questions about how much is spent on sort of buying contractors as opposed to paying for AI in house IT staff. Our findings found that on all measures, the government of Canada appears to clearly be breaking, best practice in modern IT procurement. And so we put forward some recommendations to fix that. Recommendations that pick up, they're not taken out of nowhere, they're largely borrowed from what's working well in the UK, and in the US context. So things like introducing spend controls, having caps on how long a contract can, can extend for prioritizing, hiring in house IT expertise, prior- like having kind of default to open source. All these things that are you know, to anyone in this space, like really obvious, but we wanted to really illustrate in a powerful way that like, we're not following these rules. And that's why we're spending so much money and not getting much for it. So I'm hopeful that somebody who has power to change these things will pay attention to that. But it seems like most of the political attention right now is focused on the specific issue of management consultants, and whether or not there's some political scandal to do with the Prime Minister's Office which we can get into as well.

Ryan: 17:47

Yeah, no. And I do want to talk about that a bit. Because as you said, there's been a lot of kind of political oxygen on this topic as of late for reasons that are, maybe someone somewhat tangential to this, but, but at least they're kind of bringing some of this to light. You know, I just want to say, I mean, I think it's a it's an amazing piece of work that you and Sean did, as you know, I'm a huge fan of Sean Boots. I used to work with him back when I was in government. And I think it's actually the work you did is an interesting open data story as well. Because just just for our listeners who might not be aware, you know, for well over a decade now, the government's had kind of proactive disclosure rules around contracts where they have to publish all of their contracting. But I think shockingly, really, I think until you and Sean did this project, you couldn't really go somewhere and say, Hey, how much did the Government of Canada spend in a given year, right? Because it was on every department's website and different data formats, it was published publicly, kind of, but you know, there was some some pretty interesting, you know, kind of civic tech hacking to do to be able to scrape all that data and build one Consolidated Database and put it together. So just to say, I think this it's an interesting kind of case study of, you know, how open government and open data doesn't always get you useful things. And there's a lot of kind of extra work that has to happen to make that useful. But I think the the headline, Amanda, if I'm right out of that, at the end of the day was we're at about $15 billion a year that the federal government is spending on, on contracting, is that, am I right about that number on that?

Amanda Clark: 19:10

Yeah, the 2021-2022 figure, which is the last year that we have, for our analysis, for obvious reasons, is yeah, 15 point 1 billion in total, in contracts across all, and that excludes the Department of National Defense Commission's Review Committees of Offices of Parliament, partially because National Defense has, you know, they're buying incredibly expensive things, and it can really skew the numbers. So we kind of hive that off, but yeah, it's a big, it's a big figure.

Ryan: 19:38

Well, and that's what I was gonna ask you was, you know, like, do you think it is a big figure? Right, cuz I think that that's one of the interesting pieces of the debate that that's starting to come up. I recently saw an article by Michael Warnock, former clerk of the Privy Council, head of the public service for Canada a few years back, and you know, he was going to making this argument to say, Okay, we spend 15 billion a year on you know, consulting on contractors of various types. We spend 50 billion a year on the public service itself, right, in terms of the the 350,000+ public servants that work for the federal government. You know, and he was, I think, kind of a little bit implicitly in that article kind of making, making a bit of a counter argument to say, you know, what is the right balance on this? And so, I'm curious from your perspective, I mean, is it about the dollar figure? Or is it about how the money is being used? And you know, as you said, kind of the size or duration or structure of some of these contracts?

Amanda Clark: 20:30

Yeah, I think it's, it's a good question. And it's a good point he raises. This has also come up in the committee hearings around the, the management consultants, so this is happening in the House of Commons, the government operations committee is looking at this, and they've, you know, the motor forte minister for president, the Treasury Board, rather, was there this week, saying, you know, like, the Public Service has also grown like at a proportionate rate to these contracts with management consultants. So maybe like, this is just the cost of doing business is going up, right. And so I think to, Michael Wernic's next point, like, is 15 billion too much? I mean, not necessarily. There's no clear like, if you had a very active government that was doing lots of things, like a very ambitious policy agenda, or really expansive view of social welfare, like the cost of government would go up. And there's a lot of people who are very pro government folks who would want to see that number go up because they want more more things, more social housing, more transportation, whatever. And so I think it's really the question of like, how the money is spent and what accountabilities you have around it. I can't comment on all procurement, because I'm not an expert in like shipbuilding or, you know, I mean, there's lots of things the federal government buys that I know nothing about. But on the IT side, I think we have very clear evidence that the amount of money that's being spent, is it, sorry, the way the money is being spent, rather, not the dollar figure, but the way the money is being spent, is breaching best practice. So contracts that are exceeding, you know, you know, in the, in the hundreds of millions of dollars in some cases, but, you know, we just, we know that the evidence suggests that those are going to fail, right? It doesn't build in scope to do user research to prototype, you know, you're committing to an end product before you know what's going to work, what we advocate for instead, and it's sort of a recommendation that's agnostic about how much you spend on it through contracting, but rather, it's, it's, it's sort of the size of the contract, and also moving towards a modular contracting model. So this is something that's, you know, there's a really great guide that 18F, the US, one of the US digital service teams has put out there describing this model. But essentially, the gist is like, keep your contracts small and short, they don't recommend going over, under over, sorry, over $2 million, even for any given contract. That's not to say that a project might not cost more, but a given software project, sorry, software contract. And if the contract is capped at, you know, at two years, let's say, then you have room to switch vendors, if they're not delivering. You, you're better able to kind of bring together multiple vendors and have them work together. It also favors the use of open source, because then you're thinking about, well, how can we coordinate these different approaches? So I mean, that's kind of where I think the interesting work has to be done. And then you know, how much we should be spending is kind of more a question of like, how ambitious is your policy agenda? Maybe the only space where you'd sort of question it is, if even though overall, I think hiring in the public service has expanded in tandem with the cost of management consultants, let's say, I would say that the ratio that we spend on in house IT talent versus what we outsource right now is is out of balance. And when you talk to public servants working in this space, anecdotally too, they describe, like some of the things that were hiving off and giving to tech vendors and to management consultants could, could be done better in house, and we're not getting much value for money there as well. So that's, that's, I think, another another sort of specific area where I'm like, the balance is not quite right, you know.

Ryan: 24:08

Yeah. And so, you know, on this topic around tech vendors and management consultants, this has obviously been, you know, the headlines have been talking about this over the last few months in a way that we sometimes haven't seen, frankly, certainly not in the in the IT and digital space. And, you know, I think we had two big cases in the last number of months. Certainly the the revelations around the ArriveCan app which for those who aren't familiar with it was the travel app that the Canadian Border Services Agency contracted out, ended up costing, I think 30-40 plus million dollars with came out to be able to build which people thought was excessive for what it was doing. And then more recently, some revelations about the government spending a lot more money with McKinsey Consulting, in particular for management, consulting support around some different policy areas and some concern about political influence given linkages in the past to the government on that. This has led to a number of parliamentary committees studying these two issues over the last few months, you have been invited I think to both of those studies to testify before the parliamentary committees both around ArriveCan and McKinsey. Wondering, Amanda, if you could give just maybe a little bit of color as to, as to what it was like being at those committee hearings, and kind of, you know, where the discussion and where the questioning was going. And if you've got a little bit of a read on, you know, from the political decision makers and elected officials side of things, you know, what, what are they kind of clueing into on this or really kind of focusing on?

Amanda Clark: 25:37

Yeah, so I would say like, the, first of all, one thing we haven't had a lot of in Canada relative to other jurisdictions is political scrutiny of this question of like, digital government and capacity building in the state. So this was, to me a really exciting development. Because in other places like the UK, for example, in the US, as soon as the political level started to get upset about this, things changed. Like there was money on the table, there were lever, like policy levers were given to the right people, etc. So maybe that, I was, I'm hopeful. I don't know if it's necessarily going to come out of this process. But because one of the, if I could, like, track how I think this got on the agenda, I mean, you had the Globe and Mail a couple for the past few years reporting on how much the federal government spends on McKinsey. And then as a result, I think management consultants generally captured the minds of these of these committee members. So they had actually three studies, they had a study initially just on outsourcing, which I was like, Oh, this is cool, and then ArriveCan hit the news and all the concerns around how much the federal government was paying, essentially, like a middleman agency to be a staffing agency and hire, hire people to develop this app. And then the third study that hit was this McKinsey specific study, which actually is talking about the same things that those two other studies are talking about. So there's a little bit of confusion, and some of it is just driven by politics, and I get it. So what are these? What is the committee interested in? What are they asking about? There are definitely some committee members who are primarily concerned about McKinsey as a firm for its ethical record. And basically saying, like, why is the federal government spending, you know, so much money? Like a great, because it's grown quite a lot for McKinsey, it's actually a smaller amount of money than other firms, but it has grown a lot in recent years. And so they say why are we spending money on a firm that is implicated in driving the opioid crisis, or that is like hosting, you know, corporate retreats next to like, basically, well as one committee members calling them sort of concentration camps. And, you know, like, there's lots of, I think, justifiable policy discussions to be had and about whether this passes sort of the integrity rules that we have for procurement in the federal government. And if it doesn't, if that's a failure of that regime. And to be fair, I think that when the Minister for Public Services and Procurement came, like, her deputy was actually very forthright about that, and saying that, like, maybe we do need to re-examine the integrity rules. So that's an interesting policy discussion that's happening. There's other committee members, though, who seem much more concerned about why are we spending money on these management consulting firms, when this work could be done in house? Like, why aren't we building the capacity of the public service, and that, to me, is like the most exciting and important issue here. Because- there- we have, I think, you know, the growth in, in reliance on management consultants in the federal government should be a cause for concern. And it's also an inevitable result, I think of two things, one, not bringing in the right talent and expertise and modern competencies into government. And that's partially a failure of the HR process, which the committee has talked a little bit about, but I don't know if it's going to get much attention. But they're certainly aware that you know, the average time to hire in the federal government is too long. And the CIO, Catherine Louella, has done a good job of illustrating that the issues just have like a lack of talent in the Canadian market. So it's like hard to get people into government. And I made some suggestions on how you could do that. And it would mean kind of creating a new regime, basically, to make it the special IT workers who are really demand, in high demand like to make it more appealing for them to work in government. There's lots of things that could be done. And so that's one part of it. The other part of it is like, even when you have that talent, and you do have a lot of talent in the federal government, like I definitely, that's not the takeaway here. It's not like there's a bunch of public servants who don't know what they're doing, far from it. I think it's that historically, and this is very well documented in the Canadian public administration literature. We've kind of mired federal public servants in excessive oversight and accountability regimes that really prioritize kind of top down centralized control and that make it very difficult and in some cases, incredibly frustrating to try to be nimble in the federal government to try to move forward initiatives and, you know, this is partially a response to a hyper competitive political and media environment. It's partially a nature, you know, over the years in response to things like the sponsorship scandal, and the grants and contribution boondoggle and you know, and communications controls that were implemented or maybe strengthened under the Harper government. Like, there's lots of reasons why this exists. But that's the state we're in now. And I think unless you both like, deal with the talent pipeline issue into government and also free up current public servants to do the good work they're capable of, when a minister asked for something, and they need it done quickly, they're probably going to turn to a management consultant who can like, get you a team tomorrow, and they will do anything you ask them to do, and they will promise and, and they'll be able to deliver it as a good quality. Some cases. Yeah. But in other cases, like, it's, it's inappropriate to be spending that kind of money when you have staff on hand who should be doing that work? And, frankly, who want to.

Ryan: 30:54

Well, and there's, yeah, I mean, I mean, and there's inherently an, and I say this as somebody who is, you know, who used to be a public servant, I now, you know, work as a consultant and do work on the other side of the fence with, with our company, Think Digital. I mean, you know, there's a space, obviously, to get outside advice and outside expertise, and in some cases are specialized expertise that might not make sense for government to have in kind of large pockets. But there's clearly an issue somewhere, that, you know, Government writ large, but certainly senior management or elected officials are feeling like they can't get what they need from the public service. And they're having to go out, outside as a result of that. And I think one of the one of the interesting paradoxes around this whole procurement question is like, I think everybody hates the procurement process as it is right now. Like, you know, staff and government hate the process, I can guarantee you that, because I've been on both sides of it, you know, it's slow, it's frustrating for them. I mean, they can't, you know, there's all the hoops, they have to jump through the take forever to be able to get through. You know, I don't, I think the procurement departments or their procurement organizations themselves are frustrated, because you know, everybody's mad at them. It's, it's, you know, they've got this burdensome set of rules they have to work with. The businesses who are trying to work with government don't like it. And I've been through this myself now being on the other side, where even for somebody like me, who kind of speaks government, I can navigate through these processes, but man, it is complex and opaque and difficult to go through, let alone like, if you're a tech startup, a small tech startup company in Canada that might have something valuable to do with government, there's no way you're gonna even try navigate some of these very complex procurement rules. So all that to say, it's like, we've got a procurement system that everybody's unhappy with, it seems, and I always kind of turn my head to like, you know, what are the underlying kind of incentive structures in the systems that have kind of led us there? And I know you've touched on this a bit, but maybe just you know, as we start, kind of closing out the conversation, I'm like, I'm curious to get a little bit of your diagnostic as to like, how did we get this like, you know, multi headed beast that like, nobody's happy with it, but, but that we also seem unable to change?

Amanda Clark: 33:01

Yeah, there, I mean, and there's a whole field of research around rural proliferation and organizations and how these regimes can like, you know, become more complex over time. I do think that there's a kind of default in the federal government that is particularly acute relative to other jurisdictions to add more process and more rules, in order to manage risk, as opposed to acknowledging that in some cases, those administered- as if adding a rule is cost free, when we know that every time you add a rule in a process or an oversight body or reporting requirement, it's an administrative burden that someone has to deal with, right, and it can actually, you know, make, it doesn't necessarily de-risk a project, in some cases, that adds new risks, because it means things are delayed or that people are not focusing on the actual outcome. Like, for example, making sure a service makes sense to users. So this like focus on internal compliance, as opposed to does this generate public value as a metric of success? Right. So that's a pretty pretty, like, rampant problem across the federal public service, especially in the procurement space. One of the things that I've cautioned the committee about and that I'm concerned about is, if the response to the... if their recommendations is, are basically like, Well, clearly procurement is out of control, we need more rules. You know, let's have a like, let's let's, let's add a new officer of Parliament, let's add new reporting requirements. And that will make this problem worse, frankly, it also favors the incumbents because as you know, like, there's the procurement process, given, it's burdensome for public servants, but it's also burdensome for firms. And so the more requirements you have, the more likely you are to just get big, big firms coming in. And I think there's a whole- and this is where it gets exciting about thinking about what could good partnerships look like, right. And this came up in a lot of those interviews that I was doing and, you know, there's a whole range of firms on the outside of government now that are really focused on public value. Of course they have a profit motive. I mean, it's a consultant, that's the nature of their business, but they also are aligned with kind of, they have the values of wanting to kind of build public sector capacity, leave government stronger than they found it. Often these, you know, newer consulting firms in the digital space are staffed with sometimes former public servants, you know, which, in some cases, you know, I think a lot of these other firms are too, but they're kind of from the digital space. And they, they, they're, they're, there's a fluid boundary in the gov, gov tech space, right between like, actually working in the public service and working for some of these kind of civic tech type organizations. And these firms don't partner much with the federal government even. And it's a huge untapped resource. And so, I'd like to see us thinking more about how we create space for those kinds of firms to partner with the state and provide surge capacity. So that it's kind of like a two track thing. On the one hand, we're going to build a lot more capacity in government, by loosening up the rules, creating space for people to actually be nimble and apply these methods without having to convince, constantly convince people that it's okay to do things like user research, for example. Bring more talent in, but then also think about what the ecosystem outside government looks like, and how you can better kind of work with some of these kind of public value oriented, like mission driven type organizations. I guess what I'd say if I could be blunt is, you know, the minister, of the Treasury- President of the Treasury Board, and also Minister for Procurement, both repeated in their testimony to the committee that they, they really felt it was responsible and prudent to turn to outside players to check the work of government, that working with management consultants, especially on things like digital initiatives was an essential way, it's like a responsible policy approach, because you're not just working in house in an insular way. And I thought that was like both true and untrue. Because no one's saying that public servants should do this all on their own, far from it. But if I had to turn to an outside player, like I wouldn't turn to KPMG, I wouldn't turn to McKinsey for modern digital expertise, maybe in some cases, but these aren't the people you should be, who should be checking your work, or you should be, I think, turning to for surge capacity on on digital delivery. Like that's not where that expertise strictly lies.

Ryan: 37:19

Well. And there is I think there's just there's a risk for Government writ large, where if it as an organization feels that it doesn't have the capacity itself to decide what's good, and what's not in this, like, what does good digital service delivery look like? That's a fundamental weakness in my view of the state, right? Because I mean, if you're completely dependent on outside organizations to tell you if this is good, bad or ugly, or somewhere in between, that's that your your, as we said, at the beginning of this conversation, you know, it's it's a symptom of that hollowing out of the capacity within the state to be able to do this. And, yeah, I mean, I think I think that's concerning, right, that, that, that disconnect, that somehow there's been kind of a lack of trust between the public service and, and political leaders in it seems like in some cases where they feel like they're not getting the types of answers and responsiveness they need. But I think you're, you're bang on Amanda, in terms of kind of where that problem is stemming from it's, it's, you know, these successive layers of rules, accountability regimes, etc, that, in my view, kind of give us the illusion of de risking, but actually, you know, we still have huge project failures, right? What it does is it alleviates any individual person from taking, you know, accountability, because they can say, well, I checked off the boxes on the checkbox, right? I did the governance process, you know, and things like Phoenix then happen where, you know, no individual person seems to be accountable for that yet we have a massive system failure, even though you know, even though it checked off all of the boxes in the governance processes all the way through, right up until the moment that it launched and spectacularly didn't work. And that's problematic.

Amanda Clark: 38:55

Especially when there were signs throughout that it was going to fail. Right. And I mean, the Auditor General at the time, his appraisal was, it was Michael Ferguson, I guess, at the time, it was basically that, you know, this was a product of a lack of courageous leadership in the federal government that we have a kind of, you know, move things along and check the box, but don't stick your neck out type culture. I think we need to like really look at that. This also came out in a study that that was produced out of the Brian Mulroney public policy school at StFX recently, I think, in partnership with the IO G in Ottawa, basically finding that, you know, senior leaders in the federal government don't feel that they can speak truth to power anymore. So there's this issue of like, I think not having leaders who are willing to like call out failures as they're coming and try to work in new ways because that's viewed as risky, even though the current status quo is clearly leading to these risky and problematic, like, failures. The other part of it, though, is I do think we have a senior leadership that has never been asked to understand technology. Right, it's never been true, it's always been hived off is something that the IT folks do. And even then it was like, well, IT is probably just gonna, like contract it out. And we have to really break that myth like understanding digital understanding how it plays into your policy program or, you know, the the kind of broader, like met service mandate of your department. Like that needs to be something that you understand intimately as a public sector leader, you don't have to be a developer or a coder, I'm saying, but I think just pretending that the IT stuff is like a nice add on, that can happen later, as opposed to something that needs to be baked into early kind of policy planning, and that you are taking an active role in overseeing and managing. That's really a problem that we don't have that expertise. And there's going to be a combination, hopefully, of more executive training in this space to try to remedy that. And then also, I think, you know, straight up hiring, like some different types of, of leaders to come in to the federal government, who, who have that tech expertise, you know, who can- and that like, until that happens, it's still going to be a sort of uphill battle for the folks who kind of get it in the middle ranks, or on the frontlines. Because the you need your deputy to be excited and to demand that a project has modular contracting, or has user research baked in, they're not asking for it. It's, you're not incentivized to do it. Right.

Ryan: 41:17

Yeah. Well, and I would argue, you need your deputy to think that way, you also need your minister to think that way. I think we're gonna need both, you know, public service leaders and political leaders to be able to think, intelligently and nuanced about these issues in a way that's going to drive it forward. And you're speaking my language. As you know, I'm passionate about this issue around, you know, digital leadership and capacity building and getting there. You know, Amanda, I mean, last last question for you, as we kind of wrap up the, what has been a fascinating conversation on this. You know, I mean, clearly, we've talked a lot today about some of the challenges around procurement. I mean, I think when we look globally, there are some bright lights, and we're seeing jurisdictions, you know, the UK comes to mind, where they've taken some innovative procurement approaches in Canada, the British Columbia government, I know has done some really innovative stuff around kind of agile-based projects or procurement mechanisms for digital teams coming in. So there seems to be some movement happening in places around the world. What's your, you know, maybe kind of a closing thought on this? How optimistic or pessimistic are you about change coming? I mean, we, you know, as we've said, there's a little bit of political attention on this right now, which is great. What's your gut sense as to if this is going to turn into anything real?

Amanda Clark: 42:30

I don't know. I've, the last few years, I've been a bit of a like a downer in that I've usually concluded when someone asked me like, What do you think the future holds, is that we need a massive sort of citizen facing failure that has real political costs for for, for the government for this to change, right. And that's a kind of sad thought, because that failure might look like old age security checks not going out, right, which has real implications for people who are dependent on that money to pay for medications or whatever. So I hope we don't have to go there. But I, in other cases, that seems to be the way you get this change. This committee like, I think, partially because there's this question of, you know, is the Trudeau Government favoring McKinsey as a kind of, like, buddy, buddy relationship? Like, that's becoming a bit of a distraction from what I think is the core issue. I mean, I'm hopeful though, and as much as like, I've actually been impressed with members of the opposition, I think, MP Stephanie Cousy, for example, who is, like, likely slotted to be working as a future president of the Treasury Board, if there's a change in government, you know, she seems to be really paying attention to this issue of public sector capacity. And I'd like, I'd like to see a future government, whether it's like a... I mean, I don't know, I feel like maybe the Trudeau Government, they started off with a lot of ambition around public sector reform, and it hasn't really gone anywhere. So it doesn't have to be another government. But I, I could see it being something that maybe, maybe this could be a way to drive that interest in, in a future government. I think the problem is always that we, most Canadians don't really care about Civil Service Administration. That's not something that's a hot button political issue. And so it doesn't tend to be something that, like, a government is willing to put a lot of effort into. It's also one of those classic kind of issues of the electoral cycle doesn't favor things that take a long time to change. Because by the time you improve HR processes and build the digital capacity of the state and clean up procurement, it might be like the other ones who are in power and benefit from that, right. So it's not an immediate win. And it's also not a win that has a lot of salience per se. So I think the work for people like you and me is to try to translate to political leaders, why not building digital capacity will affect the things they do care about, like it means you won't be able to deliver on all those policy proposals you've put out there. Or if you're a kind of political leader who's concerned about efficiency within the state, that's another narrative that we could play to, as well. So like I think there's, it's a failure as well, perhaps, of the kind of advocacy, advocacy community around this, like myself included, to really translate to Canadian public leaders like why it's, frankly, absurd and irresponsible, that we continue to manage the federal public service the way we do. And, like, I think we have to do a better job of communicating why that needs to matter to them, basically.

Ryan: 45:32

Yeah, no, it's a great point, I always like to kind of say that I think digital as a topic is a nonpartisan issue, in a sense that everybody wants, you know, I think across the political spectrum wants government to be more effective, more efficient, you know, to work better, to be more modern. But I think you're right, and this has been a thread that's come up a few times in some of the podcast episodes we've had so far is that perhaps we have not done a good job of making the case around that and why it matters. So. So let us hold out hope that, you know, some of this attention that is getting right now does translate into into tangible action. I think it's an interesting moment, you know, in these discussions, and, you know, I'm personally happy that it's a bit more on the radar now than it has been in the past. And frankly, Amanda, happy that you've been able to be speaking about this publicly and getting involved in the, in the conversation and the work that you and Sean and others have done. You know, I think sometimes having numbers and actual research behind this makes it much more concrete than the sometimes abstract discussions we have about it. So, so really glad you could join us today to unpack these topics a little bit. And I suspect it's something we'll be talking about more in the future. So thanks again, so much, Amanda, really great to have you here.

Amanda Clark: 46:37

Thanks so much. This is a lot of fun, Ryan.

Ryan: 46:40

So a big thank you to Amanda, for joining us today. Amanda is really one of the leading academic experts in Canada, around how government is, is modernizing itself in the digital era and feel very fortunate to have her on the podcast and have the opportunity to work with her more broadly in the work that we do with Think Digital. I really encourage you to check out her work, including the website she mentioned, which contains the result of the large procurement study that her and her team did, which is available at govcanadacontracts.ca. So what do you think we'd love to hear from you about what you thought about this episode and your thoughts on this topic around government procurement and the links to digital transformation. You can reach out to us on social media using the #letsthinkdigital, or email us at podcast@thinkdigital.ca. And remember, if you like what you've heard, please spread the word. Give us a five star review on your favorite podcast app, let others know about the podcast, and like and subscribe if you're watching us on YouTube. Today's episode was produced by myself, Wayne Chu and Mel Han. Thanks so much for listening and let's keep thinking digitally.