Ryan: 00:06

I'm Ryan Androsoff. Welcome to Let's Think Digital. So as you can see, we are not in our usual podcast studio, but in fact, we're here at the Aberdeen Pavilion at Lansdowne Park in Ottawa, live on location at Forward 50 2024. It's a chance for us to have an opportunity to talk to some of the many guests and speakers who are in town for this year's conference. You know, Forward 50 always proves to be the place to be to have interesting conversations about what's happening in digital and we're always super grateful to our colleagues at Forward 50 for giving us the opportunity to have space here at the conference. They interact with the participants and the speakers who are joining us from around the world. We were here this year with our team running a workshop called "What I Wish my Boss Knew About Digital". We're going to be talking about that a little bit later in today's episode. But to start with, I'm really happy to have Alistair and Hillary joining us. Welcome. They are the cohosts of this year's Forward 50. Alistair is the co-founder of this conference, which started eight years ago now?

Alistair C: 01:12

This is year eight.

Ryan: 01:12

Yeah, and you're both familiar faces and voices on the podcast, who've joined us a number of times. They are in the middle of their on-stage duties, but were able to join us for a few minutes, just to give us a bit of a sense of the vibe of what's been happening here at this year's conference, and maybe Alistair to start with you. You know, what are the big themes that we're talking about this year of Forward 50?

Alistair C: 01:33

There's always the themes we think we're talking about, and then there's the themes that emerge. One of the themes, obviously, is the precipitous decline that has everybody talking of Canada going from number three to number 47 in the world digitally, that means that we're behind almost a quarter of all the nations on Earth.

Ryan: 01:49

Right, and this is the UN e-government rankings.

Alistair C: 01:52

The second thing is that we are very interested in the outsized effects of AI, although there's been surprisingly little actual AI talk on site. And the third thing is this idea of resiliency and accountability. So really, can systems work, and can those systems help those they're supposed to and give recourse to people where automation or processes have somehow disadvantaged them?

Ryan: 02:14

Yeah. And Hillary, this is your, you've been to Forward 50, many times, but your-

Hillary H: 02:19

Every year.

Ryan: 02:19

Every year, I think, yeah, but this is your first year as co-chair of the conference. What convinced you to let Alastair twist your arm into coming up on stage with him and playing kind of a core role in this year's conference?

Hillary H: 02:31

Well, it was an it was an easy decision, honestly, when, when Alistair and Rebecca reached out. Forward 50 has been kind of near and dear to my heart since the very first year. I think it was 2017, was the first conference, that was my first year in Ontario as a public servant, and it really just became one of the communities that was both cup filling, but also really necessary for me and my team year after year. And we got a chance to experiment, do the regional Digital Government Summit kind of things.

Alistair C: 03:00

That's right, we started the regional thing for you guys.

Hillary H: 03:02

That's right.

Alistair C: 03:03

I forgot that you were the inception for that whole regional stuff

Hillary H: 03:06

Absolutely. And so it's just always been a place where not only could, could my team sort of take back the best practices that that we would get, but it's very, again, very cup filling. So when they asked, it kind of was a no brainer. And I think Forward 50, I've been on the advisory board for several years, and so seeing the content that comes in seeing the work that goes into, really ensuring that we are telling stories that will inspire public servants. They've just done a great job year after year. So, it was easy to say yes.

Ryan: 03:43

Well, and I think your point about, you know, the cup filling side of it, right? Like, you know, people often talk about Forward 50 as this chance to, like, refill the gas tank, because this is hard work, right? And I think sometimes very lonely work, in terms of people feeling, you know, I talk, I've talked about, kind of the proverbial pushing the boulder up the hill. You know, you're kind of constantly having to be in motion. You feel like you're sometimes doing it by yourself. And I will say, I think, you know, my experience has been this gathering in particular, there's other types of digital and IT conferences that happen. But this one, I think, is somewhat unique in that community aspect to it.

Alistair C: 04:17

I like that you're bringing up both Sisyphus and Dante's Inferno earlier really portrays that it takes a lot of work.

Ryan: 04:21

We're mixing our classic metaphors, yes, and because Alistair, I think that's been kind of part of the intentional design of Forward 50, right, is to be able to build that space, and I think uniquely this year, hybrid format, where folks are able to both in person and virtually, and with the executive cohort have different types of ways to interact with each other.

Alistair C: 04:39

For sure, we've actually gone through, I would say, three generations of the conference. The first one was in person only, and we grew that, and we adopted this kind of in and around format, which was amazing for the sort of intimacy and proximity we wanted. With COVID, we transitioned, I think, more smoothly than almost anyone else, to partly because we have a very technical team that embraced the company that produced the conference, we transitioned to something that didn't feel like a webinar. We did that for a couple of years. When we returned in person, we wanted to keep that because we'd been able to reach out to, I think, 212 regions around the world joined last year. You know, so many different places. 55 countries have been on stage. We wanted to retain that international flavor, which meant that we then had to reshape it. So we now think of this physical space in Lansdown Park as the studio audience. And obviously it's an audience of hundreds of people, but it's definitely a hybrid thing. And there are things happening online, that the audience in person can't attend, and vice versa. So we're really kind of running two conferences simultaneously, which is a lot.

Ryan: 05:37

Yeah. So conference is still ongoing, but I also want to ask the two of you, you know, what are you seeing from some of the presentations and the guests you've been talking to and interviewing about possible solutions, right? There's kind of this underlying theme of, we're feeling stuck. We want to get unstuck here in Canada. Has anything really jumped out at you from, from the talks you've seen that really you think as Canadians who are listening, we should be kind of looking towards as potential examples to move forward?

Hillary H: 06:06

I mean, I really loved Brian's talk today. It was, it could have been a dry techie DevOps talk, and it wasn't. It was about teams, it was about user centricity, but it was about how do you enable continuous improvement, continuous automation, continuous delivery. And I just thought everything that he hit on was so central to all the themes that keep coming up, both in my work and in past Forward 50, in terms of, you got to think about people, you got to think about practices, you got to think about tools. And, you know, there have been a lot of talks that have done that, but just seeing that on stage today was was really exciting.

Ryan: 06:45

Yeah, and I think anytime you can get into that practical implementation side of it, that's important for people, right? Because I feel, you know, having been in this space for a while, we talk about the high level concepts, but I do think people are thirsty to get into like, okay, so what do I actually do about it right, and how do we change how we work? Alistair?

Alistair C: 07:01

The big challenge with that is that you can talk at a high level, and everybody can attend. If you, when you get into the details, you are now talking to a product manager, or you're talking to a developer, or you're talking to a user design person. And it gets, I don't want to say wonky, but like, the acronym to word ratio goes up to the point where it's not targeted enough. Aside that, Brian did a very good job of like, lifting up the curtain of DevOps and saying, here's what's going on. One of the things I found most interesting this conference is I am also frustrated with how Canada has not changed, and I've been pretty vocal about that. My talk yesterday was unabashedly direct about the topic, and my talk at the executive cohort was called Why We Can't Have Nice Things. I don't know how I can be more blunt than that, right? But I think that one of the things I really liked was we talk about either the public or the private sector. Who should build this? The public or the private sector? Stories like, like Brian's and stories like the one we just heard from Global Affairs and Code for Canada, they put one of each person in the room. The result is a product that is better than if either had built it alone, because the technologist from the private sector knows how to do things quickly, and the public servant from the public sector knows the constraints and limitations and goals, so the end result is better. And there's this cross pollination, this osmosis, where the private sector person goes, Oh, I understand government better. I know where the levers are, what the issues are, how to adjust, and I won't burn out quite as fast. And the publisher in the private sector comes away going I'm much more technical now, and so I think that we need to talk about this third space, instead of public or private. There's these, and we have a model for this in software development of pairs coding, where I think we need to normalize pairs production like that, so, you know, shorter time frames so that you can hold a politician accountable because within their elected term, you're building or not building the thing they promised. Done for smaller budgets so that you don't have to go through tons of approval committees, by a person in the public and a person in the private sector chained to the desk side by side, will both upskill the public sector and normalize the standards that we need to follow when the private sector delivers things to government. And that's a model that I think has emerged from the conference that we didn't really have on the agenda.

Ryan: 09:21

And even, you know, we had our speakers from Estonia who were here yesterday, and that's part of their model too, right? Is it was very much a public-private partnership to build some of that infrastructure that's so famous now around the world.

Hillary H: 09:31

And what's interesting is Ontario did experiment with that several years ago. One of the former CIOs worked with one of the companies that you mentioned today, and did that. And they paired from top to bottom. They paired from the director and the product owner all the way down to the engineers and the designers, building, the building the MVP together, and it worked. And there was always just this sort of budget pressure of, how do we replicate that and how do we do it again? Which I think is an interesting model for digital service teams to consider. We always had that hypothesis at ODS, which was, yeah, there's just a lot of need for us to be shipping, but there could be this world, you know, in terms of thinking about hub and spoke and all of that, where that that central capacity is your, you know, it's your pair programming team that can get sent out and delivered together and upskill through the process. I think it's a really interesting model as digital service teams are sort of figuring out what their place in the world is, in 2024, to think about.

Ryan: 10:27

Fascinating.

Alistair C: 10:28

And what do you think of the Estonia talk? Because, like, we saw people in the chat going, finally, someone explained Estonia like there's everyone talks about it, great.

Ryan: 10:36

There's a lot of big thinking around Estonia.

Alistair C: 10:37

What did you think about Andres' talk?

Hillary H: 10:38

I thought it was really great for him to just kind of lay it bare. And to start with, there was no magic here. You know, no Estonia doesn't trust their government any more than anyone else.

Alistair C: 10:48

If anything, they trust it less.

Hillary H: 10:48

It's a low trust society. But here's what we did to build services that they'll trust.

Alistair C: 10:54

Yeah, and the three thumbs, like you move your thumb three times to get to anything on the platform. Like, as a design thinker, that's hard to begin with, but if you set that constraint, boy, are you gonna flatten some of those seven layer menus, right?

Ryan: 11:06

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Listen, I know you both have to get back to the stage momentarily, but thanks so much, as always, number one, for being a great partner with us, allowing us to be here, and thanks so much for putting on this conference, I think lots of interesting, inspiring ideas. And I know everybody who's here gets a lot out of it, and we're grateful to be able to bring some of the speakers to our audience to share a little bit more in-depth insights from from their perspective. So thank you to both of you.

Alistair C: 11:32

Yeah, for sure. I mean, I loved the sort of reminders throughout the spring of last year. It was nice way to extend things. So thank you so much for producing the content.

Ryan: 11:39

Looking forward to it. See you back on stage soon. Well, it is the evening now of day one of Forward 50 here in Ottawa, and I am joined by my lovely colleagues, Meghan Hellstern and Nicholas Scott. We are fresh off the workshop stage. It has been a long day. I'm going to warn folks ahead of time, they might be a little not unhinged, but a little bit punchy. A little punchy has become off it. We just ran, I think, a super interesting workshop called "What I Wish my Boss Knew About Digital", provocative title, and it was interesting because I had run a mini version of this workshop a week earlier at Forward 50's executive cohort. Today we were doing it with a larger group of public servants, and in part, we were comparing and contrasting their views on what digital competencies are needed in government and what digital competencies are lacking in government, particularly when it comes to leadership layers. And I think we got some, like, fascinating results and discussion. I mean, Meghan, maybe start with you, like, what really stood out with you from the workshop?

Meghan Hellstern: 12:48

I mean, the biggest thing, honestly, is how therapeutic it seemed to be for folks. I think we're striking at a nerve that has been growing over time, right as you know, sort of Canada, we see it in the UN e-government rankings and others that were slipping, and sort of, I think the word that's come up at this conference, "stuck", and so it really struck a nerve with folks. And there was a lot of candor, a lot of openness and honesty. You know, I really want to believe there's a world where we are able to rate our leadership as having higher digital competency than us. And yet, even between the executive and this recent one that we ran. In every case, folks are saying, you know, their leadership is falling behind, right? And so that really stood out for me. It was sort of that mix of candor and kind of the therapeutic group therapy type nature of being really open about the challenges we have in our competency and skills when it comes to digital.

Ryan: 13:44

For context for those who are listening, so one of the things we had participants do was talk about how digitally knowledgeable they are on a 1 to 10 scale, their supervisors, and then their senior leadership, so their deputy minister or private sector, the CEO of their company and of this group here today at Forward 50, they rank themselves as a 7.8 out of 10. Seem to make sense to me, you know, in terms of being a relatively digitally literate group. Their supervisors they ranked 6.3 out of 10, so kind of point and a half drop. And their senior leadership 4.7 out of 10. And like the distribution on that one tended to be on the bottom side of the scale, when you look at it, Nick, what did you think about that? Did these numbers surprise you, or is it what you expected?

Nick S: 14:28

I think I expected it. And it's in line with the pattern that we saw with the executive cohort as well. The further away somebody got from you, the more likely you were to rate them as at a lower level of knowledge. I think the thing that I really wanted to push the group on was, what does that actually look like in practice? Because it's really easy to say my boss has a low level of knowledge. But how is that showing up in a real, practical way? Otherwise, we're speaking in abstraction about it.

Ryan: 14:57

Yep, well, and so interestingly on that. So we asked people, you know, to say, what was the biggest blind spot for their, for themselves and their leadership? And so when we took a look at that senior leadership layer, right, you know, kind of the Deputy Minister later in government. I was actually somewhat surprised, like the overwhelming top answer was lack of understanding of technology itself.

Nick S: 15:20

Yeah, yeah, that, that one surprised me, too. And again, I think it gets at that abstraction piece right. It's easy to say that they just don't understand it without getting specific about it. I mean, risk aversion was a distant second. Like that actually really did surprise me.

Ryan: 15:36

But that's also, I mean, that's like, if I'm being really frank, a pretty dangerous combination, if people view their senior leadership as both being ignorant about technology and also scared of it, and risk averse. Like that is a recipe for inaction.

Nick S: 15:53

Yes.

Meghan Hellstern: 15:53

Absolutely, especially if you couple that with some of what came up around even basic digital literacy skills, being able to use things like Excel and Word, and even just sort of understanding how the internet works and the way it's transforming society, when you sort of have that shaky foundational layer, and then you're in a leadership position, needing to make decisions. That does feel like a really challenging front for the whole digital government, really, to start tackling. Now there's, of course, been great work to start addressing that, things like the Canada School for Public Service and their whole Digital Academy work and similar ones, I think, in British Columbia and other places like that. But this really reinforced, for me, just like the scale of what we still have to do ahead of us.

Ryan: 16:39

Yep. So I want to ask both of you, and you can answer this somewhat anonymously, but you know, still be an uncomfortable question, you've, and I'll answer it too. All three of us have been public servants in various parts in our career, various levels of government. Between the three of us, we have covered federal, provincial, municipal and international organizations. So I want to ask all of you, and then I'll give you my answer, what, what did you wish your boss knew about digital?

Nick S: 17:08

Okay, well, that I mean, that one's a pretty easy one, because we covered it while we were, while we were designing the workshop. And it lines up, mine lines up with what we heard in the room today at the workshop as well, which is that primarily for me, is that digital is not primarily about technology and tools. Digital is about a way of practicing the work. It's about our relationship and and with with how we work together, and it's about how we understand the way services need to be delivered today. It's more social science than it is computer science. And I think that's where I really wish my bosses, and all of their bosses' bosses understood better.

Ryan: 17:08

So you're, in your experience, you had bosses who viewed it just as a technology implementation challenge?

Nick S: 18:01

Yeah, which means that they, the focus is on tools. The focus is on, you know, specific technologies. The focus is on procurement. It's not a focus on capabilities. It's not a focus on practice. It's not a focus on the end user, which I think is the thing that gets lost in that kind of legacy understanding of digital is when we focus on the technology and the tools, we lose the, we lose the service user in all of that.

Ryan: 18:02

Yep. Meghan?

Meghan Hellstern: 18:02

Yeah, I think that's an excellent answer, and I'd probably build on it. The biggest thing that I'm still hearing from leaders, and really wish folks would sort of grok deeply, is this idea that digital is everything. There's still, I think, this perception that if you're in a program area, or service delivery area, or you're somehow not in IT that digital is just something other people do, right? And I feel like that's extremely dangerous again, because, you know, there's that Marc Andreessen quote, right? Software is eating the world, and it truly is. Everything is digital nowadays. My watch, my partner has a bed that, you know, is a digital like bed, and has various data pieces to it. His couch involves technology, right? So everything is digital. And I still feel there's this sort of perception that it's, you know, sort of a silo that is off in a corner, and that there's still parts, especially of government, that are untouched by or don't need to care about, this sort of massive shift that is happening and has been happening for a very long time. The other piece, too, I think, that is really important, is that digital is not a fad. It's not just a trend. Of course, specific technologies may be trendy and have their kind of move through the Gartner Hype Cycle, as it were, but digital technology is here to stay, and is going to continue to become more and more sort of ubiquitous. And so I think any leaders who are still stuck in this kind of like, oh, whatever, we'll just wait it out type mindset are increasingly going to find themselves really left behind, and that has huge implications for the public and other people that we're trying to serve.

Ryan: 20:10

Yeah. Okay, so I'll give you mine, and maybe two. I mean, one is, I think having had bosses who don't recognize that they are not their user. You know, I think we fall into that trap in government a lot, where you, listen, you get a lot of smart people who are well educated, who think that you know, if you sit around the boardroom table and like, do a bunch of persona exercises and really think hard, you're gonna be able to, like, solve the problem of what your user needs, rather than having like, if I'm being really frank, the humility to realize you have to actually talk to real human beings and hear from them, and like, every time I've been involved in a real world user research project. You get surprised by the insights you hear and the things you learn. Because, listen, I mean, public servants are, you know, more educated well, you know, in terms of like economic status. Socio economic status are in like, the highest income brackets in society have, like, defined benefit pensions, which very few people have these days, like they are not living, particularly when we're talking about dealing with vulnerable populations, they're not like, we're just, you know, people aren't living that life. And as much as you try, it's tough to have that unless you can kind of close that gap. So anyways, rant over on that. But that's that's one for sure.

Meghan Hellstern: 21:28

I want to maybe just build on that too. It's funny, when you were talking Ryan, one of the things I had wanted to say, but was like, sort of slightly lower than my other two points, was around, I really wish leaders understood how to fill the gaps in their knowledge. So if you know you're not your user, how do you actually go about that? How do you ask the type of questions, who do you ask, right? Because there's also this fractured information environment around us, and so having that sort of intuition around, Hey, I am not my user, therefore I need to direct my team to go out and do user research or, oh, you know what, I have questions or concerns about this procurement approach. Who do I go to get neutral or objective advice? Right? So often they're ending up reading white papers by consultancies or things like that, and not necessarily able to really get at that sort of, you know, evidence, informed, unbiased type of decision making that I hope would guide a lot of the digital decisions that we're making. And so whether you're doing user research and getting that, you know, input from vulnerable folks or other people, or you're finding, you know, expertise across your organization, or hiring the right expertise in, I think that's another really core competency that that came up indirectly in the session, and sort of connects a couple dots. So I'm really glad you shared that.

Nick S: 22:43

I want to build on that also, because you did a really good job of, you know, describing how in a real Democrat, Democrat, oh, my gosh, democratic, not democratic. No, the demographic, demographic reasons why we're not our our users, socio economic reasons. But there's, there's another layer to that, which is we have tacit knowledge that the public doesn't have. We have social connections with people inside of the machine that the public doesn't have. And so to say that you, you, you are your user, kind of erases the fact that you actually know things that people don't, like you know how to navigate the system in a way people don't, you know how to understand the language in a way that outside people don't.

Ryan: 23:26

I mean, even simple things like what level of government does, what.

Nick S: 23:29

Oh, yeah.

Ryan: 23:29

I mean, you know, I've had discussions with people who are business owners and, like, you know, reasonably, you know, well engaged folks who, like, honestly, did not necessarily understand the distinction between municipal, provincial, federal government on things like permitting when you're starting up a restaurant, right, and the fact that multiple levels of government might be involved in something or like, I mean, a lot of people may not know that it's the provincial government that issues your driver's license versus the municipal or, like, have a clear mental model on how to, you know, we have this, like, some somewhat complex division of powers in Canada, which, like, you know, not everybody's a poli sci graduate who has, like, a clear understanding of what that means in practice.

Nick S: 24:09

100%. 100%. It really comes out during elections too. People don't know which, like, if they're voting federally, provincially, or municipally. You know, I've had people talk to me about complaining to their MP about sidewalks not being salted in the winter time, like it's not, yeah, you don't have to go very far, to outside of the system, to to lose that kind of knowledge.

Ryan: 24:34

Yeah. And then Meghan, I want to pick on one up on one of your points about, like, curiosity and how to find knowledge. This is my other one. Is like, I find there's a lack of curiosity sometimes, and a lack of willingness to do hands on learning. And so, you know what I mean by that is, I mean, if you're a chief information officer or, like, a technology leader, I might argue any leader in government today, like, I'm not saying you have to become a computer programmer, but you should, like, find a way to spend a day understanding what computer code is, and like putting your hand on a keyboard, and like getting messy with it, right? Because if you don't do that, it's just abstract concepts, and you can't connect it at all. And like, in today's world, there are so many free, easy ways, if you were curious to be able to, like, try these things out, or even, like, you know, these days, we're talking about AI all the time. I'm still shocked by the number of like leaders I talk to who still haven't fingers on keyboard, like, played around with some of these AI models. And then, you know, we in our digital leadership program we run with the Institute on Governance, we always try to bring in a practical, hands on component. When they actually do it, like, not only is it, I think, shocking to them to see it in reality, but it opens up possibilities. And, you know, these are smart people who kind of understand their organization, suddenly they'll be able to make that connection and say, Hey, maybe we can use these tools in this way, maybe these things we have to worry about. And I don't know what it is, but I feel like with a lot of people I have had the exposure to there is just this resistance to do hands on learning as an adult.

Meghan Hellstern: 25:11

That's a really good point. And I mean, one sort of thing that did come up in the workshop is around protecting time, for that learning. And I think that's already difficult for working level folk.

Ryan: 26:11

Nobody has any time.

Meghan Hellstern: 26:17

Let alone executives, right? And so, you know, from a leadership perspective, something that could be very supportive from the top is things like, whether it's a, you know, organization wide day off that is focused on learning, or, you know, making meeting-free chunks of time in the calendar, that sort of stuff, right, to protect that time, because it does take time, especially if you're learning something new, and I imagine that acts as a disincentive. The other thing I was going to remark upon that came to mind is like, when I think about a lot of the folks that are very digitally savvy, and I know are either the working level or leadership level. Often they have side projects or hobbies that let them learn and let them play with new things. Whether it's, you know, a volunteer group that you run that you're now trying out some of the new AI assisted graphic design tools for, or, you know, you're an amateur radio, you know, sort of follower, and you like to, kind of like, explore what's online in terms of broadcasts and that type of thing. Or you're building a website for your, you know, whatever your side hustle, you know, selling flowers, like all of those are ways to, sort of, again, in a lower stakes environment, get to learn and so, you know, I wonder if there's a world where we can, you know, gently encourage folks to develop these sort of hobbies that ideally are, you know, fulfilling some type of, you know, sort of just the general positive benefits of having a hobby and some downtime, that type of thing, but then also learning the tools and sort of the digital way of working, right?

Ryan: 27:43

But, and I think there's ways to build it into, like your nine to five as well, you know, I'm thinking back. So this is 10 plus years ago now, when I was at Treasury Board Secretariat. There was a deputy ministers committee on policy innovation that was set up, and they innovatively did this concept where each Deputy Minister had a reverse mentor part of the committee with them. So I was the reverse mentor for Treasury Board. And the very first meeting, very fascinating. You know, big, big kind of, you know, the big, kind of glamorous room in Privy Council Office, all the deputies get together. We got to sit at the table with our counterparts, but the chairs were like, you guys, have a piece of homework. And a very practical piece of homework, because a lot of this was about, this was early days of social media, trying to understand what it meant for government. They were like you and your deputy minister before the next meeting, have to sit down together, get them to create a Twitter account and have them send one tweet. And, I mean, some of them are like, Ah, this seems kind of silly, but, like, honestly, the impact of taking this abstract concept, because I think, I think I can say almost everybody around that table had never personally used Twitter or used social media in that kind of way, getting them to sit at a keyboard, create a Twitter account and, like, send a tweet out into the world, like you could, like, see the light bulbs go off, and I just, I wish we did more of that.

Nick S: 28:59

Yeah, it's such a simple thing to get people connected. I mean, Twitter had been such a huge part of my development as a public servant. And even before I was officially a public servant, just connecting with what else is happening around the world, you know, connecting with you guys and the work that you were doing. And, yeah, it's like you really open up a world of serendipity as well by getting them on board.

Ryan: 29:26

Do you think that hurts us now? Because I was talking to somebody about this recently. I mean. You know, Twitters, and that's a whole rabbit hole we don't need to get into, but like, Twitter, now X, you know, has had issues. But I think even aside from that, like, from that platform, there really has been a fracturing of social media in the last number of years. And even, like, you know, like, generationally, right? Like, I am not a big TikTok person, but like, there's an entire generation who's now in the workforce and in schools, you know who consume most of their public affairs information from TikTok. And it's like a whole different information ecosystem from people our age versus, you know, more senior folks. And I wonder, because, like, to your point, like, you go back 10-15, years, things like the W2P community and the federal government, and there's a lot of innovation communities that like having one or two platforms that everybody gathered on was a way of kind of pure learning. Like, I don't know what your thoughts are on that, but it does strike and I was just kind of putting this together now that it strikes me that, because our information ecosystem is fractured, I wonder if that hurts learning in a real way.

Meghan Hellstern: 30:24

Oh, I imagine it must, for sure. And you know that said, it may also have some benefits, in the sense of those who are, you know, gathered on a given platform may have a deeper camaraderie and like, you know, if it's a smaller community, that's more closely tight knit, that actually may be beneficial than having the massive public facing like, because my understanding of a lot of where social media is moving, it is sort of towards smaller, more private type communities where people can kind of be a bit more candid and frank, and they're not necessarily in the public spotlight.

Ryan: 30:53

Good point.

Meghan Hellstern: 30:53

So, there might be some good to that too, but I agree, not having sort of the public water cooler. Which, you know, I think platforms like Twitter really did play for a long time, certainly is challenging, and it means events like this, like Forward 50 are very important, because they end up acting as sort of that both like online and in person, you know, sort of flashpoint that can bring folks together and create that, that sense of community. It also does seem like, at least from what I've been seeing, sort of communities of practice are moving to things like Slack, right? And so I'm part of probably half a dozen different Slacks of, you know, Canadian Digital Government people, or, you know, the global design and government community. And so again, that's an example of that sort of like closed social media, is Slack social media? Borderline. But the way that it's kind of used in this way, it sort of is, right? It's many different people coming together into, again, a sort of sheltered space. So it's a little like a muddled, I think, like, not entirely good, not entirely bad, like, just different.

Nick S: 31:55

And you need a space for breadth and depth. And I think what Twitter, especially before it had the algorithm that really kind of confines the waterfall of posts, you got a breadth of perspectives. And it wasn't, you know, as tailored to you at that time, and what I really benefited from was being able to see what is possible. It kind of helped give me the courage to try some things or share some messages in my home province that I otherwise I might not have had that same courage and same knowledge that I could, could move forward with some, some level of confidence to, like, push a new a new approach. Yeah.

Ryan: 32:39

So, I want to maybe talk a little bit about kind of the path forward. Because, you know, one of the themes on the podcast, and we've heard it a lot here at Forward 50 this week, is this notion of kind of Canada being stuck, right? And, you know, we're not making the progress we want to see on digital. Other countries are leapfrogging us. There's, there's just a real sense of a bit of a malaise that we're having the same conversations that we've had for a while. And, you know, I'm a believer that digital, like improving digital competencies and skills, is part of the equation to get us out of there. So, you know, the second half of the workshop, which the two of you were facilitating, was all about kind of solutions, right? You know, we spent the first half saying, hey, like, get off your chest a little bit, you know, your concerns about what level of competency your boss and others have. Second part was, what do we do about it? Right? And we had people go through an exercise of imagining they were giving transition advice to a new government, which one way or the other federal is going to be happening next year, right? Remember, provincial governments are going through that right now. Your home province of New Brunswick just had an election. Got elections happening, you know, in Nova Scotia and a few other places, BC as well, Saskatchewan, you know. So a lot of people right now are thinking about new mandates, and even if it's the same party, what did, how do they renew it and and the question was, how can improving digital skills be part of that? So I'm curious of what we heard from the people who were there, did anything kind of stand out to you as like tangible or like realistic goals we could try advocate for, that could be implemented, that could make a difference?

Nick S: 34:11

There's a couple that stand out for me. I mean, and it goes back to something we were talking about just a minute ago around giving people an opportunity to try new things and work in different ways. I know that came up, and the digital accelerator program came to mind as an opportunity to actually practice. Because I think we forget that this is about a practice. It's three dimensional. So there's not nothing that you're going to read only in order to build the skills and competencies you need to be digital and work on a multidisciplinary team. You can talk about working on a multidisciplinary team all you want, but until you actually do it and go through this sort of that, you know, stretching your comfort zone to work with people who aren't from the same discipline as you, who don't speak the same language as you, to work those group processes in that way, putting users at the center, using that as your north star, then you know, you're not going to exercise that muscle. You're not going to read about doing working out and build the muscle like you actually have to do it.

Meghan Hellstern: 35:15

Yeah, this is a core part of my ethos when it comes to capacity building, actually. So I'm an instructor with the Digital Executive Leadership Program with Ryan, and there's a reason why most of my session is actually getting executives to run through a full design sprint. Admittedly, it's a contained mini one. You know, we've been doing lately on hybrid sort of work and how we can make that experience easier for people. In the past, we've done air travel, something kind of neutral but still relatable. And, you know, we literally have them do user research interviews. They sit down, they act as note taker, they act as interviewer. You know, they do synthesis. They actually prototype and build things. Because there's only so far, especially with things like design, that theory can get you. And so, you know, those opportunities, and I mentioned this partially because it doesn't need to be big either, right? Like I teach that design sprint maybe over four hours, five hours, right? No matter how busy you are, like an organization can carve out that type of time to again, get people just trying this out, building that muscle, understanding how it feels, even if executives are not necessarily always going to be part of those processes, Understanding how it looks and feels in practice is really important.

Nick S: 36:30

It gives them an understanding that they can't get otherwise. And I've seen in, you know, we have the same ethos, obviously, and I've seen how transformative it can be to have that kind of experiential learning opportunity, especially when you're working on a real world challenge. So the way that we had done it in the past was we would bring in challenges from departments, and then we would facilitate these kind of sprints, whether it was a two day thing or actual five day thing, where people got to have that safe space to work on an actual challenge for a department with no pressure, right, to succeed in it, the whole thing, but just the realism of it meant that they walked away feeling like changed, right? And and we had something that we could show. So I really believe in like, this kind of training is that you're actually gonna produce something that you can show, demonstrate that it works. So people will be convinced when they see it, but they'll be changed when they experience it. And you have to create those opportunities for them to experience them.

Ryan: 37:32

So that power of experiential learning being so important, and I think you're also both hinting at, like, making it mandatory? Like, I mean, I'm increasingly of the belief we can't just have this be something that people choose to do, because the people, frankly, in some cases, who need this, aren't going to choose to go there themselves.

Nick S: 37:49

Yeah, I think, I think mandatory. I would, I would delay as much as possible in making something mandatory, like I would wait till you're hitting this sort of late majority or laggards before you say this is a requirement. I would try to lean on building a movement more at the front end. So where you get people to have the experience, then share that experience, demonstrate the value, convince people that way, try to get as many people moving in that direction to a tipping point. And then you make it mandatory. Then you scale up in terms of policy like this is a requirement.

Meghan Hellstern: 38:26

Well, and I think mandatory can look like a lot of different things, including using tools we already have, like performance agreements and hiring criteria, right? So that you're actually saying, Hey, these are expectations that you either have coming in the door or that you are going to meet over time, and so use that to incentivize that sort of learning and that growth over time. That definitely stood out for me was a lot around sort of using our existing hiring HR type functions to support this adoption and this learning, right? Whether that's, again, through your criteria for hiring, that sort of stuff. The other thing that came up a lot for me in the solution space, and it's already something we've touched on, is pure learning. There were a lot of solutions around we already have a ton of great talent in our organizations. And so how do we create spaces for those folks to lead design sprints, for those folks to show their work, for someone to come and sit in on those user research interviews and learn from the best by watching and being present. And so, you know, even the reverse mentor sort of model that you shared, Ryan, is a good example of that, right? Of, sort of, hey, saying we have great folks here. How do we highlight that? It builds on some of the other recommendations around, even just mapping out what skills do we have. I think there's a huge gap around that, you know, what already is extant, that we can, you know, sort of build on, and where are there some gaps that we want to augment, whether it's, again, through hiring, upskilling, all of that type of thing. And so it was really cool to me, how, you know, we had 10 tables working in parallel, and they really sort of created almost a suite of recommendations that could build on each other, you know, that you could sort of see, okay, so map out what exists you, where you have strengths, get those folks in front of people. Get them, you know, teaching. Get them, you know, building capacity where you have gaps, start thinking about how you hire and incentivize for that. So it was really amazing how, in a very short period of time, you know, you had folks really developing a very powerful set of recommendations that I hope, whether it's in the context of a transition or just, you know, leaders trying to figure out, where do they spend their sort of priority and energy and time that they think about these types of things. Because you said it best, Ryan, like this is one of the most important, you know, sort of undercurrents, I would say, in the digital government sphere. And I'm not seeing or hearing enough attention or energy, you know, sort of dedicated to it, especially at that sort of very senior level. I feel like there was this era of more public service renewal focus, but felt like it was maybe a decade plus ago now, and I haven't heard as much about that lately, and I'm really curious like, how can we, especially with digital, you know, sort of like remind folks that, you know, a digitally equipped, capable Public Service has massive downstream effects that are positive for everybody.

Ryan: 41:19

Absolutely, yeah, and, and you know, our intent is to publish the findings from this workshop series we did, and, you know, share some of the data, and hopefully, by putting it out there can help to spark others to be able to move the ball forward on this. And again, I think, you know, in the next year, at various levels of government in Canada, organizations are going to be thinking about the future, thinking about their plans. And I really do hope this can spark a little bit of a conversation of, how does digital competencies and building a stronger cadre of digital leaders be be part of that solution? So as we kind of wrap up our reflections on this, final thoughts, I know we kind of asked people at the end of our workshop session to reflect a little bit on kind of, you know, what they learned, what they might want to do differently based on this, any kind of final reflections from either of you of what, what kind of stood out, or what you're going to really take away from today, or be thinking about tonight as you reflect on the day?

Nick S: 42:15

Yeah. Well, first of all, it felt like we opened a pressure valve, the way that they participated, like sometimes you have to really drag people in as soon as you ask the questions. It was like, I've never seen Menti light up so fast.

Ryan: 42:29

So Menti lit up. And then when we did the table exercises, where they were, like, doing, like, brainstorming, the words were flowing.

Meghan Hellstern: 42:37

Yeah.

Nick S: 42:37

It was, that was really encouraging to see. So I got that, that that that passion.

Ryan: 42:42

And also it was the end of the day and like, nobody left. I was prepared for like, half the room to leave halfway through. And like, people, people were in there, and they were intensely in there right till the very end, which says something.

Nick S: 42:53

It does, absolutely, and everyone's ready for dinner at this point.

Ryan: 42:56

Yes.

Nick S: 42:57

So I think so that, that stood out to me. You know, I I think my favorite recommendation, well, first of all, I want to say I think the suite of recommendations is a really important framing for what we were harvesting from this session, because it is going to take a suite. There's no silver bullet. There's no like one training program. So I think that's a really important way of thinking about this as like a suite of things that you can do, because it is a complex challenge that we have in front of us. But my favorite of the report backs was the one that focused on incentives, and I think that we don't go far enough with incentives. And you talked about this with the Pac-Man model, Ryan.

Ryan: 43:42

Incentives is a favorite topic of mine.

Nick S: 43:44

Yeah, well, the way that they framed it is what stood out to me, and what I would like to close with, which is, essentially, we don't understand, or we don't take into account the incentive to maintain the status quo. And if you want to change, we need to offer incentives that at least match, if not exceed, the incentive for the status quo. And so that recommendation about incenting people, you know, if you do that, if you do the training, or if you engage in these ways, you get in this like promotion pool, or what have you, I just think that we really need to focus on incentives.

Ryan: 44:19

Yeah, and maybe you know again, I recognize that the controversial piece about making it mandatory, but this idea has been floated about; should digital competencies, particularly for executives become mandatory, not just for IT roles, but to recognize that every leader in government today needs to have some understanding how digital world works? And in the same way we've done it for things like public policy analysis and, you know, understanding economic concepts, right? Should that, should that now, you know, digital literacy, of kind of how our modern digital world works, should ever achieve the same, same status? And I think the answer is yes. I know there'll be some debate about that, but it's worth it. Meghan, final word to you.

Meghan Hellstern: 44:58

No pressure. So a big one for me that stood out was even in this room that represents, you know, dozens, at least, of different public sector, private sector, different jurisdictions, there were common themes that came up. And I feel sometimes, as someone looking at the system, it can feel overwhelming, and it's just like, wow, digital is so unique in each context. And like, how can we possibly come up with any type of sort of consistent approach to this? But the reality is, is like there were some very strong, solid clusters in there. Cyber security is indeed something that a lot of people need to learn about and struggle with. And so can we not centralize, or at least learn from each other, and, you know, focus in on those priority areas? So that was a big one. Was just kind of like, there are actually some pretty solid clusters here. You know, basic digital literacy being another one that I was a little surprised, I'm not gonna lie, to see in there that this is still in 2024 going into 2025 you know, Excel and Word and basic, you know, sort of digital literacy is still needed. So it's sort of that surprising amount of consistency, even in a very diverse contextual environment where lots of different types of work, whether you're in policy or service or program, like, a lot of the things you need to learn are very similar. And so I hope folks who are in a position like us, who are, you know, teachers, and folks who are running organizations that have elements of capacity building pay attention to that and say, hey, you know, there are ways to prioritize and pick the topics that are going to have the highest impact. And then the other piece that is like, again, was very humbling for me is like, don't forget the basics. Don't underestimate the need and value of, you know, sort of that level setting of how to use the internet, how to use Word, how to use Excel, how do you, like, those pieces are essential foundations for any of the more advanced digital topics. And so, you know, making it feel safe for folks to be in that sort of open, honest, hey, like, I don't quite understand this. Can I learn, whether it's through reverse mentoring or peer learning or things like that, especially for executives, where there's that pressure, right, to know everything and appear strong. I still hear stories about people who have their, you know, staff type things up for them because they're not really able to type very effectively. And it's not because of a disability, because they haven't had experience or aren't able to do it very well. And it's sort of like, well, it is 2024, typing is one of the core, you know, sort of ways that we communicate. And so how do we again, make those spaces that executives and everyone can feel safe learning whatever your skill level, even if it's starting at, you know, effectively zero.

Ryan: 47:34

And it's, and it's a great actually, reminder that, particularly later in your career, it requires a degree of vulnerability to actually be a learner again, to be a student again, right? And and creating, you know, again, on the one hand, I'm saying make it mandatory, but I think it's also recognizing you got to give people space to be vulnerable and not feel like it's going to be a punishment if we're going to be able to move them along.

Meghan Hellstern: 47:56

Space and time. The time to do it, because it does take time, and psychologically safe space to go into that and to learn and to mess up, to fail. That's part of what we were talking about, even with having those kind of smaller internal or side projects, where you can kind of just mess around and ultimately make a couple of mistakes that help you know that the next time you're doing that in a big public venue, you've learned on training wheels.

Ryan: 48:22

Exactly, exactly. Fascinating conversation. I know we could probably carry on for longer, but I'm conscious, I think, as people can see behind us, we are the last folks in the hall. We are going to get the boot soon. I think it's time for us to grab a beer after a long day, but I wanted to say thanks again to both of you. It's a pleasure, as always. I think it was a really provocative session, and I think we learned a lot from it, and I'm looking forward to sharing back our findings publicly through this podcast and with our summary report, and hopefully this sparks more conversations on this to come. So, so Thanks to both of you for being here and being part of today's session and being on the podcast today.

Nick S: 48:59

Thanks for having us.

Meghan Hellstern: 49:00

Yeah, thank you. It's a real privilege.

Ryan: 49:02

And that's our show for this week. This is the first of a series of conversations that we recorded here at the Forward 50 conference in November of 2024. We're looking forward to bringing you a number of these over the coming weeks and months. And I just want to say a big thank you to Alistair, to Hillary and the entire Forward 50 team for letting us once again be able to set up shop here, take advantage of the great speakers who are in town for Forward 50 and really get a lot of interesting conversations happening here on the podcast. As always, if you're watching on YouTube, be 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. And finally, as always, we'd love to hear from you so you can email us at [email protected], you can visit letsthinkdigital.ca, our website, or use the #letsthinkdigital on social media. Let us know what you thought of today's episode, and let us know what you think about future episodes coming down the pipe. And finally, today's episode of Let's Think Digital was produced by myself, Wayne Chu, and Aislinn Bornais. Thanks so much for joining us, and as always, let's keep thinking digital.