Digital Government Excellence. Siim Sikkut
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lose your mind. That is why you got to be pretty astute about what you pick to be your Skunkworks to make a difference.
What Sort of Competence Did You Seek to Add to the Team?
I needed people who knew how to get policy signed off by ministers. That was our weakest point from the three legs of tech, people, and governance—which includes policy.
I would always say that policy is useless if you do not execute and do not make it executable. Policy often is a too abstract thing. Take privacy as an example. There were always privacy people on the policy side saying we should not do this or that for some reason. I often asked, “Did you talk to a technical person because probably we could fix all those problems?”
We clearly needed the good policy, too, because just doing tech without policy gets you in trouble. Policy coverage also gets the funding you need and gets the projects off the ground. I needed policy people who got it and who understood the process of policy to steer us through it. In the GC, any policy must go through Treasury Board Secretariat, a bunch of ministers, and so on. It is quite a process.
Who Was Your Most Valuable Addition to the Team?
Bringing Olivia Neal from Government Digital Service (GDS) in the UK early on as our Executive Director for Digital Change to lead the people side of our work and a bunch of special initiatives. She had run the digital service standard work in GDS. She had no staff when she started, and she ended up having a team of fifty to sixty people running a lot of government programs when she was done. She added so much in a number of ways.
First, I find that Canadians are often insular, only looking at ourselves and not liking to compare ourselves internationally. It means that we are not always in tune with what is going on in digital government or technology around the world. Olivia brought that view with her instantly. She also was not part of the group thinking going on, coming from outside and even from another culture. I cannot imagine the challenge she must have faced with pushback. The way she handled it; I learned a lot from her. Bringing her on early also showed that we could attract the best talent from around the world, as she came from GDS.
I got her onboard because Olivia had been looking to come to Canada, and I heard through the grapevine she was talking to a whole bunch of different groups in GC. I told her that she could have the most impact with us. Also, the other groups were kind of dithering, as the typical government hiring takes time. I made it my number one priority to get her letter of offer done fast. In office, people were wondering why was the deputy minister focusing on her so much? Well, because she can unlock ten things for us. These things will unlock the next ten more macro things. That is why it was worth my time. Also, I believe in managing people with respect and did not want to leave her hanging or stuck in the government hiring land.
In addition, there were the managers or directors in the team who helped to take the vision forward and execute. Let us face it: the day-to-day work was down to them and not me.
What Do You Consider as Your Biggest Achievements in the GCIO Role?
I think we set up a policy framework and a legislative framework that gives this role the teeth and an ability to avoid another Phoenix if the right leadership and courage is in place. It brings hope that users would not have to suffer the way they have suffered in not getting paid and so on because of Phoenix.
As the result, the role became a deputy minister one during my term. We got it authority to execute and push the otherwise traditional town—the government in Ottawa—to fit the digital age better. These are the preconditions for success for the next CIO, who can now focus less on policy and legislation and more on getting actual change done.
Second, I think that people who bought into the program of doing things differently felt that the work they were doing was meaningful and that they were not bureaucratic robots, even if it was just for a moment of time. I could see it in their eyes; they would also tell me that it felt good to do some real things, because sometimes in a central agency, you do not feel like you are doing real stuff.
Last, I am glad that I am still in touch with a lot of people who worked there. Even if I did make some mistakes, like I became too deadline focused at times, and might then forget the people working for us. That is why it still feels great that we are still talking to one another.
What Was Surprising for You in the Job, Looking Back Now?
I think I went into the job thinking I knew how to manage stakeholders. Boy, was I wrong! The stakeholders I knew about were not a problem because I am very direct, and I want honest feedback back. This way we can have a conversation.
The stakeholders I did not know about are used to engaging with government through lobby arms and through letters to the minister or the prime minister. That is how the government had conditioned the dialogue in the past. So, when I came in saying that “I want to talk to you on LinkedIn, if you have got a problem with what we are doing”—not everybody was comfortable with that. A lot of people would still take the old traditional route and send letters to ministers, and that was where the disconnect happened.
For me it meant that I had to go to brief higher-ups instead of just doing the thing and putting it in front of people for codeveloping. If you end up writing briefing notes more than doing anything else, the project starts to slow down in this briefing nightmare.
I went in thinking I was a digital lead and everybody in my world knows and does things digitally. Well, it turned out even technology companies did not really do digital. It required that Scott (the minister) and I talk all the time, for example, to manage the outside relations. It required a lot of conversations outside the formal governance arrangements we had anyway, like the weekly department board or spending request meetings. It required also to build trust with other ministers and deputy ministers in the system.
Is There Anything Else You Wish You Had Known When You Started?
I would never take another position like that without giving myself a little bit of time to do some retrospect—or forward look—on what would be the things or interference that would cause me walk away from the job or be ready to take a big hit for it. I did not have that figured out when I started, and that caused me a lot of stress. For example, with the AI work.
We pushed for the policy that citizens cannot be serviced by an AI black box forever. If you are going to do AI in the Government of Canada, we need to have access to your code and be able to trace the decision from the machine. We were asking to have a dialogue on this, and it brought on heavy lobby toward senior government. Obviously, the vendors did not like the policy, because the code is proprietary.
In the end, we did change the tune and the position. We only did that because we got pushed back openly. But it made me realize that not everybody in this game of government is out there for the better good of serving citizens. That is why I think anybody taking a national CIO or any CIO job needs to be very comfortable with themselves about where they are going to draw the line on ethical matters. I was ready to jump on the grenade for our AI policy, so to speak, because the work our team was doing and how they were doing it—because I fundamentally believed in it. Even if lobbyists got some politicians to not like it.
The question to ask yourself—and myself next time—is what is the line that you will draw in the sand? What are your convictions? What are you willing to take a stand for, if asked to do something or not do something that you fundamentally disagree with?
What Do You Think Were Your Biggest Failures in the Job?
As I said, there was a period of some months when I became too focused on deadlines and too focused on managing up. It was a time when we had to find an alternative to Phoenix. I became too blunt with people in the team who were just trying their hardest. Someone had to call me out to make me realize it. To avoid it happening in the future, I would