The Radical How (with Anna Hirschfeld and Alex MacEachern)

Let's Think Digital

Canada has fallen from 3rd in the 2010 UN e-gov rankings to 47 in 2024. We’re stuck when it comes to modernizing government for the digital era. But our guests this week, recorded on location at this year’s FWD50 conference in Ottawa, have a new playbook that they say can help get governments in Canada out of the rut and back on track.

Anna Hirschfeld and Alex MacEachern and are two of the authors of a new report from the UK-based digital government advisory firm Public Digital called A Radical How for Canada (https://public.digital/where-we-work/canada/a-radical-how-for-canada). It takes inspiration from a similarly titled report that Tom Loosemore and others from Public Digital published last year focused on the UK. It lays out concrete recommendations on the steps that governments in Canada need to take in order to change how government works for the better.

Anna has been with Public Digital since 2020 where she is now their Regional Director for Canada. She has supported work with the Nova Scotia and British Columbia provincial governments, as well as other projects back home in the UK. Before that, she worked in the UK government including as the Senior Product Manager on the UK Universal Credit programme, scaling it up from a proof of concept to a live service supporting six million people.

Before recently joining Public Digital, Alex was Chief of Staff at the Canadian Digital Service as the team grew from just 30 people to 150, and was involved in a number of significant digital transformation projects in the federal government.

Related Links

• A Radical How for Canada

Watch on YouTube

https://youtu.be/kA0cc1mdQ7s

Chapters

00:00 Welcome and Introductions

02:41 Interview and Anna and Alex

07:40 A Radical How for Canada

16:34 Reflections on ArriveCan

24:48 Political Transitions

38:38 Funding and Procurement

46:47 Conclusion