Agile as a Hedge Against Big IT Project Failure?

Why don’t governments hedge against their Big IT investments? And what if they did?

Back in November, John Ivison covered the saga of the Government of Canada’s Benefits Delivery Modernization (“BDM”) project for the National Post. Its already-enormous price tag has ballooned four-fold, to almost $8 billion:

What Minister Beech Can Learn From President Zelenskyy

I have an Op-Ed in Ottawa Citizen today, about how Canada’s new Citizen Services ministry can benefit from one ally’s resounding success in becoming a truly digital government.

Tl;dr: The success of Ukraine’s government app, Diia, isn’t about the war or the pandemic. It’s about the commitment the Zelenskyy government made early on to putting “the state in a smartphone,” and how they manifested that commitment, not just in words, but in their organization and authorities, their budget and laws.

DOL's New UI Modernization Strategy is a Template for Federal Departments

This post from Larry Bafundo at the Department of Labor’s Unemployment Insurance (“UI”) Modernization office is an incredibly insightful tour of how states can and should work differently on their customer-facing IT systems. Importantly it’s also a model document for how federal departments can and should help states spend the billions of dollars that the federal government sends to the states for those systems.

First Look at the Executive Order Creating Pennsylvania's New Digital Service Team

Today the Governor of Pennsylvania made it official: Add PA to the growing list of states adding digital service teams to their orgs, recognizing the gaps such a team can fill.

The Executive Order creating CODE PA is good, and interesting, particularly the language about what the team “shall” do.

Program Goals, Technology, and the Unintended Consequences of Automation

Digital gov and policymaking folks, take note of this story about military recruitment numbers tanking after the DoD automated importing recruits’ health records into their system. Check out the Military Times’ coverage of this example of the unintended consequences of replacing human interactions with tech.

Why did their recruitment numbers suddenly nosedive? Well, lots of recruits have disqualifying medical conditions, but they sign up anyway. Recruiters used to (quietly) tell applicants not to disclose them in their applications. But the new automation eliminated that step.

In other words, the program depends on inaccurate data. Automation, improving accuracy, broke the outcomes.

The Hill: So many broken systems, but this one has a fix

Hana Schank and I have an op-ed in The Hill today about about the positive impact federal shared digital services and other forms of federal help for state-administered programs could have on the timeliness, cost, and end user’s experience.

As I’ve mentioned recently I’m a big believer that when creating new programs that states will be expected to implement, the federal government can and should do more than just send cash stapled to policy requirements. My BeeckCenter co-Fellow Shelby Switzer is, too — and they wrote this terrific piece about it recently at Civic Unrest.

Why COVID Exposure Notification Apps Didn’t Meet Expectations in North America, And What We Should Learn From Them

A fair amount has been written about the recently retired COVID Alert, the Government of Canada’s COVID exposure notification service based on the Google Apple Exposure Notification (GAEN) framework. Several pieces have lamented that “only” 6.9 million people, or a little more than 22% of all adults in Canada, downloaded the app, and speculation abounds about why more people didn’t download it. I think that focus misses some much more important, if less sound-bite-friendly, issues.

(Update: I’ve added some more thoughts on this subject in two short(-ish) Twitter threads, first here and second here.)

Sample Code for Unemployment Insurance Modernization

The DOL today released open source sample code for implementing important pieces of the unemployment insurance systems they require states to implement. I am overjoyed. This is important, valuable precedent for changing how the federal government supports the policies it leaves to the states to implement. (See the last couple paragraphs of my post about this very subject.)

Moreover, a second lede is folded into this code launch: some of the released sample code enables states to use login.gov as an identity proofing provider, with Arkansas leading the way as the pilot case. Login.gov having its first state-level client is a huge step for federal shared services.

Sharing Federal Digital Services with the Other Layers of Government

The U.S. and Canadian governments are both considering legislation to enable it. It’s an important development that can’t happen soon enough.

With last week came the good news that the Government of Canada, in an omnibus budget bill, has included language granting the Canadian Digital Service (and its parent department) a new and important capability: Soon, knock wood, a legislative amendment will enable CDS to provide its digital platform services like GC Notify, GC Articles, and GC Forms not just to other federal departments, but to provincial, territorial, indigenous, and local governments throughout Canada, fulfilling a commitment the current government made in its 2022 budget.

The United States is not far behind. There’s a bill in the Senate right now with bipartisan support which, if passed, will enable federal agencies — like GSA’s Technology Transformation Service (TTS), home of login.gov, cloud.gov, search.gov, Federalist, and other valuable services — to make their technology services available to state, local, tribal, and territorial (“SLTT”) governments.

The Canadian Digital Service, Chapter 1

Last month I stepped down as CEO of the Canadian Digital Service. Canada was in election mode, and there are restrictions on what is and isn’t appropriate for public servants to talk about in public during such periods. But the election is in the rear view mirror now, and a new cabinet will soon be appointed. This seems like a good moment to reflect openly on the last three and a half years, and to express my gratitude for an unforgettable experience.