Ryan 0:05

I'm Ryan Androsoff, welcome to Let's Think Digital. In a previous life, almost two decades ago now, I worked in the minister's office at the Canadian International Development Agency. I also spent a year working at the World Bank in Washington, DC. And through these experiences, I got to see firsthand how the international development system works and sometimes doesn't, and I saw how important support from countries like Canada can be to help bring people out of poverty, build peace and security and drive economic prosperity. Today, Global Affairs Canada delivers around $15 billion a year for international assistance, of which approximately 6 billion is delivered through what's known in the federal government as grants and contributions to non governmental agencies, charities and other partners around the world. And while the amount and form of international aid given by Canada can sometimes be a divisive political topic and a difficult policy challenge, I think it's fair to say that everyone wants to see those international assistance dollars used as effectively as possible. So why am I talking about international aid and assistance on Let's Think Digital? Well, there's a really interesting digital transformation project happening right now at Global Affairs Canada. The goal of this multi year project is to transform how Global Affairs administers grants and contributions, the 6 billion in investments that are an important part of Canada's soft power in the world. This is a story of how you take a large bureaucracy with old, long standing and in many cases, manual processes, and re-engineer them using Agile digital practices with the aim of improving the lives of people all around the world. To tell us the story, joining us on today's podcast we have Brandon Lee and friend of the podcast, Dorothy Eng. Brandon is the Director General of the Grants and Contributions Transformation Initiative at Global Affairs Canada. Before taking on this ambitious project, he served as Consul General representing Canada in the Pacific Northwest in the United States. Dorothy is the CEO of Code for Canada, a national nonprofit that works with governments and others to leverage digital tech and design expertise to improve lives in Canada. Code for Canada has partnered with Global Affairs Canada to support the work on this Grants and Contributions Transformation Initiative. Both Brandon and Dorothy joined me on the conference floor at last November's Forward50 conference here in Ottawa. I'm so grateful they took the time to tell us about their work together and some of the insights that they have taken away so far on their journey. Let's listen to what they had to say.

Ryan 2:59

So welcome back to the conference floor of Forward50 2024 really excited to dive into another conversation, and this one actually a project close to home here in Canada. And I'm joined with Brandon Lee, who's the Director General of Grants and Contributions Modernization at Global Affairs Canada, and Dorothy Eng, who is a friend of the podcast, and folks might remember from [past] episodes, Executive Director of Code for Canada. And the two of you were here at Forward50 earlier today, talking about a really interesting transformation project happening at Global Affairs and Brandon, maybe I'll get you to kind of set the stage on this. You are embarking on a major transformation of Grants and Contributions. This is kind of like a super nerdy topic for government mechanics peaks, but it's a super important one. And I know a lot of folks who've worked in the G's and C's areas will know there is often kind of frustration with traditionally how it's done. So maybe you can share a little bit of background on you know, what is Grants and Contributions, what's kind of the problem that you were trying to tackle, and what's the work that you're doing?

Brandon L 4:01

Absolutely well. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here with Dorothy and hope to have a good conversation. But you're right, the subject of government innovation and reform is a vast one, so hopefully we can get to some interesting topics. So this reform at Global Affairs that we're looking at that we're actually two years in,is within the, if we set the broader context, we live in a world where we are seeing polycrisis at an unprecedented level. We also see the truest threat of nuclear escalation that we haven't seen since World War Two. And we're also seeing in many places around the world, the use of force as a political tool. And we see when, when you know governments and leaders use force, we see citizens suffer the most as a result, and the citizens that suffer most are women and those less economically privileged. So in this way, the Grants and Contributions, so Grants and Contributions are funds that Global Affairs gives for anything called international assistance. So this is about $6 billion a year, and the over half of it is towards what we call development or aid. But then this also includes counter terrorism, peacekeeping, security, economic development, trade, international trade. So it's any funding that Global Affairs gives globally that helps others in one way or another.

Ryan 5:54

And is that funding being given to other governments or to NGOs or to the private sector? What are the recipients look like that global affairs gives funding to?

Brandon L 6:03

Sure. So there are different tiers. As you say, we have tiers where the highest tier is maybe the multilateral so, you know, Canada's membership in the United Nations. This is also something we fund, the OECD, etc. We don't give money directly to other countries that often, we may co-invest with other countries, but then it comes right down to the bilateral, so Canada giving directly to an NGO, an international NGO or an organization directly. So it's the full gambit. Some are 100 million dollar checks that we cut, and others are 15-20k so it's all sizes, all purposes around the world.

Ryan 6:52

So $6 billion a year in grants and contributions. So you're leading a modernization project around Grants and Contributions, which to me, suggests there must be kind of a challenge with the status quo in terms of how we're doing. So, so what was that challenge? And what are you trying to modernize?

Brandon L 7:08

So there are a few, a few multi-layer challenges that we're looking at. One, I guess, at the highest level, is that it's taking Canada, because it's largely, has been, until now, largely a manual process on how we distribute $6 billion. So the time it takes is amongst our donor country peers, a little bit on the, the lagging, lagging side. And because it's been a manual process, we did, we've never had an enterprise system, single data repository to manage all of these, it's about 1400 to 1500 projects a year that receive the $6 billion. So we haven't had a single place, you know, a burning platform, I'll share this because it's public. The Auditor General did a review of our international assistance, and we had some very strong recommendations around the need for a single system, the need to manage all documents together, etc. But then at the user level, we have over 1000 officers at Global Affairs that manage these G's and C's. Their frustration is enormous. A lot of administrative, manual efforts versus value adds strategic design thinking, and then the recipients also, you know, from the NGOs to partners too, the the frustration there is incredibly high as well. So in fact, you know, at all tiers, we have a lot of room for improvement. And so to your point, what we're doing is, instead of just building an enterprise system, which would mean we were taking existing processes and digitizing them. And that's not what we want, so we're beginning with a full business process re-engineering, rethinking how we're managing them, and then we're building a system to manage all $6 billion in one system at Global Affairs.

Ryan 9:18

Wow. Big, challenge, but a very, you know, I think interesting approach, because you're right, a lot of places, when they kind of move down that digitization journey, they just take the way that they're doing things and simply kind of slap a layer of digital paint on it, as I sometimes say. So that's super interesting. And I mean, we'll dive into this a little bit more, but I think one of the other interesting parts of the story is you're also partnering with other organizations to help do this, including Code for Canada. And Dorothy, maybe you can kind of share a bit about Code for Canada's part in this and how you're working with Global Affairs together on this project?

Dorothy E 9:49

Yeah, for sure. So yeah, Code, reminder, Code for Canada. We are a mission driven national civic tech nonprofit dedicated to improving lives in Canada using technology, data and design. We mainly do that by embedding technology and design professionals into governments or NGOs to build the capacity of teams that are accountable for like, you know, delivering and sustaining great, you know, user centric digital services and, and really, the, the, the gap that we're trying to address here in our work is, you know, really focused around talent. So when we, you know, back in the day when Brandon and I first met and we understood we were, Brandon was telling us the same story of kind of the scope of the challenge, you know, the next, the next place where, you know, my mind tends to wander, and I think a lot of people's minds is like, how, how does a department go about embarking on this digital transformation journey, and actually, like, you know, shipping kind of modern software or systems? And that all comes down to people, right, with all with all organizations and all great projects. And what we know is that governments, in general, you know, they do really struggle to attract modern technology talent. You know, either maybe a lot of tech talent don't see governments as like a first place to apply for. That, that's one area. I mean, another area is that often that hiring cycle for government is quite long. It can be anywhere from, you know, six months, then you got to get security clearance, and that could be over, over 12 months. So, and a lot of...

Ryan: 10:07

If you're lucky.

Dorothy E: 10:27

If you're lucky! And a lot of people probably can't wait that long, and so, so there's a lot of barriers that governments face in attracting and retaining tech talent. And so, yeah, really, the work that Code for Canada has been doing with Brandon's team and with other departments at the federal government is, yeah, finding opportunities to place, you know, bring in this kind of mission driven tech talent to apply their skills, the skills that they might have honed in the private sector, to good, basically, like, have their have them contribute their skills, and, you know, to, like, the good of, good of the public service and the country, to benefit all, all Canadians. So, yeah, so that's been the work that we've been embarking on. And so, you know, it has started with and continues to be a large team of kind of Code for Canada collaborators, ranging from product managers, a product director, down to, like, over to, you know, UX designers, user researchers, service designers, software developers, and, yeah, and placing them to work shoulder to shoulder alongside the GAC team and to start collaboratively working on ways to, like, understand the problem space, understand, you know, do research with users, to set up like, different kind of agile practices. Agile being that kind of like, you know, iterative based, sprint based model for kind of delivering and shipping product in an iterative way that delivers value kind of constantly. And, and, yeah, it's been, it's been quite a journey of, like, you know, learning and trying things and learning again and trying again and, and I think in an organization like Global Affairs, like, you know, they've, they've been doing this work for so long, in a way that is that that organization has, like, its own kind of culture and way of doing things. And so it's, it's been quite a process just trying to, like, understand that and find ways to kind of adjust and expand it and be flexible as wherever we can so.

Ryan: 13:42

So I'm curious, you know how this has worked in terms of bringing that outside talent in to work with government, right? Because I think that's always a challenge when you're essentially trying to blend two different mindsets together and two different perspectives on it. Has that gone, has it been easy? How have you kind of approached that notion of trying to bring that outside talent and then getting them working with people who you know may have spent decades right working in this problem space.

Brandon L: 14:05

Absolutely, in fact, maybe there, I think it's it's important to state that no longer can the federal government believe that we can do everything ourselves. We have to be collaborative, open to partnership and co-designing solutions together. Even as we're rethinking our business processes, we're bringing in recipients into my team, so they're co designing even the business processes together for NGO recipients, so you know, and so Code for Canada and Dorothy's team are fully integrated. So I think this is where our thesis is that the interdisciplinary team is the stronger team, right? But to your question, that new culture of every, you know, the collection of all different backgrounds and expertise takes longer to ramp up. Versus, you know, just using the same old way. Of course, it requires more investment, it requires more emotional intelligence, more team building and rethinking processes to match. And so our, our process as a team, if we can't reform ourselves in building this transformation, how do we expect 10,000 people at Global Affairs to reform and use this new system, so we're under the microscope and in the laboratory, as much as the system is.

Ryan: 15:36

Absolutely and it's an interesting insight, because I think you're right that whenever you are taking a user centered agile, multidisciplinary approach, it does actually take more time and effort at the front end, right? I think sometimes people have this, you know, misnomer, especially a lot of senior leaders will be like agile means you go fast. But not recognizing that there's actually a lot of upfront investment in both time and money, in some cases, to pull that together. So, you know, part of this is you are trying to bring an agile approach in a different kind of project development methodology. I'm curious how that's been going, and how that meshes with the culture that exists right now, you know, in Global Affairs, but in the government writ large?

Brandon L: 16:17

And so this, this part of the conversation. I'm very interested to hear both your reactions, because I'm not, I'm not technical and I'm not a developer, but I've been in this world for many years now. And what I can say is there are two things that we've brought; agile, but we've also brought a product methodology as well. So shipping iterative, you know which the Venn diagram overlaps well. But if we speak about agile, what in my observation of private sector, whether it be a huge company like Amazon to a five person startup, the customer, the user, is the end of the story. If nobody buys Coke, then Coke will eventually crumble. But in government, this is where agile, I don't think, translates perfectly into government, because, okay, government, in Global Affairs, with this G's and C's reform, the recipients are one, right? The NGOs that are receiving our funding. But then there's another stakeholder in we also exist as government to serve the government of the day, to serve the minister. We also, because of the structure of government, have central agencies and so as a department, the amount of oversight, monitoring, regulatory compliance that we're subject to is not the same as private sector. So in fact, agile itself, where we're 120% focused on just what the user believes, I haven't seen. I think this is a tension where, you know, we have this term wagile Waterfall agile, because, you know, governance exists in government. We work in annual budgeting cycles. We don't have multi-year funding. So by nature, we have individuals and groups that in an ideal world, Dorothy and I would go and educate our deputy ministers. But if we get one presentation every six months that then you're on an agenda, a one hour, we have 20 minutes on an agenda every six months, we're not going to educate deputy ministers on agile. So in fact, we've adjusted to communicating very waterfall, communicating risks. Where is the project at, how much have we spent? How much do we need? And because, because it's not just not worth our time, and we won't achieve success if we start to explain product and agile within our 20 minute window of governance. So this is where agile, I don't think is best fit for public sector in certain ways.

Ryan: 19:08

Well, it's a struggle. Because I think, you know, there's couple of different aspects of this. So one, just the education gap, right? Because, again, I think a lot of, you know deputy ministers, senior leaders view agile as just being a synonym for fast, right? They think you can just go faster, not recognizing that it's about these kind of learning loops where you actually learn, you iterate, you're able to build on that and move. And you're right. Our funding cycles, our accountability cycles, are not set up for that. And I think the other practical challenge I see often, you know, for an agile approach, I mean, you need empowered product owners, right? And that's a big part of it. And in the private sector, you're able to kind of structurally do that. And as you said, there's a clear accountability. If you're the product owner for a new type of Coke and the Coke doesn't sell, you've got a pretty clear metric on what's good or not. Whereas I've found, in my experience, sometimes you get agile projects, you have a product owner who might be relatively junior, you know, maybe, like a director, usually, kind of a senior, senior technical advisor. And they may do a great job of it, but then suddenly they have this hierarchical governance structure that can overrule them, sometimes on very like, you know, granular, granular things, like you get a DG, who's like, Hey, this button should be blue instead of red, you know type of thing. And I think, I think that's a challenge. I mean, Dorothy, you're helping to bring the talent in to kind of empower these agile processes. But what has your experience been with this in terms of trying to take those methodologies and bring them into a government context, and I guess in your case, bringing people in who probably have experience on this outside government, and I suspect for some of them, this is probably their first exposure to working on this kind of tech development in the government context.

Dorothy E: 20:48

Yes, yeah, exactly. I mean, I think honestly, what it what it has boiled down to after kind of looking back at 12 months of, you know, as you mentioned, ramp up time and establish and getting to know the team and building that trust, and then establish then establishing rituals, and then doing the work, right? Honestly, a lot of it, what we found is just kind of managing expectations. It's, you know, if we're thinking of where, where did, where did the agile methodologies and principles come from? Where are they born out of? They were born out of, as, as Brandon mentioned, the private sector, where there's kind of a very clear customer, it's very clear what the value is that's being delivered to that customer. And so when you have that very clear goal, or like North Star, or like definition of success, it's it's quite easy to like align, if I mean not that, sorry, it's not quite easy. It's still challenging. But it's that that path to alignment across multiple teams, like interdisciplinary teams, is is a lot more straightforward, right? Because it's like, well, we know what we're delivering, and now we just need to kind of increase the pace of delivery so that we're delivering that value sooner. In what, I think, what, what our teams have learned, especially the folks on the Code for Canada side is under is managing their expectations with that pace right, like knowing that, oh, actually, the definitions of what are the kind of priority problems, and really, you know, who are the users, and which users are we going to prioritize, and what needs are we prioritizing? Is takes time to gain alignment across multiple groups with very different perspectives and different experiences, lived experiences within the government. And so, yeah, a lot of kind of time aligning folks. And you know, with that, it's definitely, it's, it's, as Brandon mentioned, like, you know, we're here to try new things. And so there's moments where, you know, maybe our team kind of proposed something, or did something to, like, get get things moving. And maybe, you know, that hit, that hits a bit of a wall, and it's like, oh, well, I guess we tried it, at least we tried it. We learned, we're gonna, like, adjust it for next time. And I think it's those, it's acknowledging that, like that in itself is the process for moving the needle. It's like, knowing that, you know, this is hard work, we're going to try something that's going to make people feel uncomfortable. Maybe, you know, we're going to get a talking to later, but at least we did it, and then we're going to adjust the next time so that hopefully the next time is not as bumpy, or people are expecting, at least, you know, the shock of like, a new, a new process.

Ryan: 23:18

Yeah, well, and building that kind of personal resilience for people who are in that process. You know, navigating big bureaucratic systems is absolutely a challenge, right? But behind all of this. Brandon, I wanted to ask you, you know, in terms of the outcomes from this, because you're still very much in the middle of this transformation project, from what I understand. We hope you're successful on it. But want to get a sense from you, like, what does success look like, and what does you know a few years down the line, a modernized G's and C's system at Global Affairs, what does that actually mean for the clients that you're serving?

Brandon L: 23:51

Absolutely, so a few things. One, it means our funding becomes much more efficient. So we can get money out the door much faster, in a lighter way, which lighter for the applicants and lighter for Global Affairs officers.

Ryan: 24:14

And faster, I assume, too, as part of that.

Brandon L: 24:16

Orders of magnitude faster, hopefully. The second thing is that it will also become more efficient. It'll be better. So right now, for example, we're managing manually, 1,400-1,500 projects individually. With a single system, we'll be able to look at it through portfolios. We'll be able to actually manage risk. When you manage projects individually, every officer is trying to minimize risk. So how do we have a nuanced risk taking, a nuanced risk appetite? Only with portfolios can we say, then you know, what is the average Canadian... international assistance is difficult, especially in certain regions or certain countries. Then even the Canadian or the minister will say, I'm comfortable with 5-10% risk of failure. Then if we look at a portfolio, what is our 5-10% that we're going to take a bigger bet on? This is an interesting conversation. So our money, our grants and contributions will become better, more more effective in what we're trying to accomplish.

Ryan: 25:31

And I imagine over time, you'll have more data to be able to see what works and what doesn't.

Brandon L: 25:36

Aboslutely, with our centralized data repository. And then the third big goal is building more trust. Because, right now, we're managing, you know, to be a bit crass, we're managing grants and contributions by checklists. Tell me, do you have this? Do you have that? And we go through all the checklists, versus, let's be honest, the people on the ground delivering the projects. They have expertise that we at headquarters or we as Global Affairs don't see. We're not, we don't deliver, actually, we gave funding to someone else, to deliver. So, in fact, trust to have a more honest discussion on what do we need to see on the ground to be better. What, when we design projects and our ambitions as we translate the government of the day, we would like to do this, have a co-design, almost trust relationship with those on the ground. So this kind of conversation, the new system and our new processes will allow but at the end of the day, it's culture change, actually, or change in the culture of Global Affairs.

Ryan: 25:36

I agree. I mean, I think so much of the work that happens in this digital transformation space is really culture change work, right? Kind of with different terminology around it. Dorothy, from your perspective, what does success look like on this at the end of the day, as kind of an external partner that's working in a somewhat non traditional way, with, with government?

Dorothy E: 27:04

Yeah, totally. I mean, I would, I would say that like, you know, we have learned so much on this project and in this journey with, with the Global Affairs team. And if you'd asked me success, you know, 12 months ago, I would have leaned on, kind of this, the same theory of change that as a nonprofit we've always had, which is that, like, you know, if we, if we place technologists side by side with public servants, they will kind of co-learn, and they will probably, you know, gain alignment, that alignment in a reasonable amount of time or a quicker time, and then, and then, and products will be shipped, and everything is great. And, and I think what we have learned, especially working with this team that is working at this scale and ambition, but also taking on, really head on, like the real crunchy bits of like the systems and the structures of the Government of Canada is actually success. I think success, to me, in the Code for Canada team is really all about learning. Like, I think there is so much learning that happens on a daily, like, a weekly basis, a monthly basis, with these teams that aren't honestly, like, I don't think I've ever really been exposed until, because we're one of the few groups that are really doing it, like on the ground. And so, yeah, I think there's a ton of information that we've captured just in, like, kind of pushing the system and understanding like, Oh, how did the system react and oh, how can we adjust it next time? And we do have kind of small, small wins here and there that I'm like, we can always lean on. And that's what we have to remind ourselves, that like, yeah, kind of like, learnings and managing expectations, and yeah, these things don't happen overnight. In fact, they take decades. And so yeah, it's that that would be my definition of success. But just like remembering that this is, like, an experience to learn and to and to walk away from here with like, yeah, the legacy that we leave behind.

Brandon L: 29:05

That's well said. And what you say reminds me of a Nelson Mandela quote where he says, It feels impossible until you reach the end. And you know to unpack that quote is every day we are swimming up river, we are pushing the boulder because it's reforming bureaucracy, by definition, is is difficult.

Ryan: 29:29

And I think on the learning point, it's great that you are here at Forward50 and talking about this work publicly, because being able to share that learning too with others, I think, hopefully helps others who are going on the same journey to be able to go a little bit faster than they could have otherwise.

Dorothy E: 29:44

Yeah, exactly.

Ryan: 29:45

Before we wrap up, Brandon, I want to ask you one other thing a little bit unrelated, but I know in your previous work at Global Affairs, before you moved into this Grants and Contributions role, you were more kind of directly on the diplomacy side of the house, so to speak. And you served as Consul General on the West Coast of the United States, and I know you had an interest even back then, I think the first time you and I got connected, in looking at, from a diplomacy and economic, you know, relationship with the US, how digital fits into that. And I'm wondering, if you can just speak a little bit, you know, the kind of Global Affairs broader mandate, how is digital factoring into diplomacy these days? And is this something that you know, Canada's diplomats are actually kind of viewing as part of their job as well?

Brandon L: 30:29

It's a great question, and you know the maybe to answer your question from a high level first. That's exactly part of an enormous transformation of our department that we are in year two of, and it's to create capacity to look at digital these, these polycrises within our diplomatic and trade and political streams that we have at Global Affairs. We have five business lines, but to allow flexibility and allow us to address all these issues, like to look at what the impact of AI, cybersecurity, digital innovation, how is that actually impacting our foreign policy?cYou know, we're in the process now of restructuring the entire department so that we can create that flexibility, in fact. And so that's where, you know, like most government departments, senior managers work in their domain. So if we call them silos, they're silos. And so we're working to create these horizontal, pan-geographic, you know, one of our reorgs, we took all the G's and C's pieces, most of them, and we put them in one huge branch so that we can create some of these synergies across and reallocate as we need.

Ryan: 31:58

Yeah, yeah. And I think you're probably right as within so many domains in Government writ large, you know, digital tools and communication and technology have kind of forced us to collapse some of those silos, and it doesn't surprise me to hear that within diplomacy, it's the same situation that you're facing on that. Listen, this has been a fascinating conversation. Again, thank you for sharing your learnings about this. I know often some of this modernization work kind of happens silently, and I think in general, it's better when we can do it in the open. It's better when we can learn from this as it goes. And I hope a couple years from now, we can have you back on the show to share the results of what actually happened and what you learned along the way.

Brandon L: 32:37

That'll be great. Thank you for your time.

Ryan: 32:39

Thanks so much for joining.

Dorothy E: 32:40

Thank you. Thanks, Ryan.

Brandon L: 32:41

Thank you.

Ryan: 32:43

Big thanks to Brandon and Dorothy for talking to us about the Grants and Contribution transformation project and sharing what they've learned from this work so far. We're gonna keep an eye on it, and hopefully we'll have them back on the podcast in the future to provide an update. And that's the show for this week. If you're watching on YouTube, make sure to like and subscribe, and if you're listening on your preferred podcast app, please leave us a five star rating and a review. We always love hearing from our listeners, so get in touch by emailing us at [email protected], visiting our website letsthinkdigital.ca, we're using the #letsthinkdigital on social media. We'd love to hear from you. Today's episode of Let's Think Digital was produced by myself, Wayne Chu and Aislinn Bornais. Thanks so much for listening, and let's keep thinking digital.