Some Recent Advice from an Assistant Deputy Minister

Earlier this week I sat down with an Assistant Deputy Minister of a major Canadian Government Agency to discuss employment opportunities, career progression and where I saw myself in the near to long term. For the record it was more of an informal discussion than a job interview, but the ADM did give me some advice I thought was worth sharing.

Be specific

Near the end of the conversation the ADM said that I wasn't being specific enough with my ask (in my defence I wasn't going there with an ask in mind) and that whenever I was going to sit down with a Senior Official I should have a clear ask and a (two page max!) CV that points directly at it.

Despite my often over the top nature, I am still prone to deference to authority, especially in my first meeting with senior leaders. I like to lay back a bit and get a sense of where they are coming from and why they asked me to meet with them. I like to think I'm good on my feet and can draw quickly on the breadth of my experience to back up my statements on the fly. That said, I've always wondered what would happen as a not-yet-executive if I just drove hard to the hoop as the ADM suggested. It obviously wouldn't work in every situation but at the very least using a CV as a map that clearly demonstrates what makes you valuable to their organization is far better than one that summarizes your responsibilities.

Draw them a map

During the meeting I committed to a complete overhaul of my CV in an attempt to do just that. Here is my old resume (PDF) and here is the new one (RTF). I'd love to know what you think about the two. Please note that I haven't proofread the new CV yet as I only just completed it.

I'm also interested in your thoughts on how aggressive (or perhaps is it decisive?) you have been with senior management in "hire-me" types of situations?

Thanks for taking the time, and Happy (belated) New Year!

Originally published by Nick Charney at cpsrenewal.ca subscribe/connect

Top 10 of 2012: A Year in Review

Before heading out for the holiday season, I figured I'd take a look back at the year that was. Here are the top 10 most popular posts on cpsrenewal.ca last year:

1. How to stop being tech support in 30 days 
2. Debunking the "risk" of working more openly
3. Used to be a public servant, took an arrow to the knee
4. Guerilla Renewal
5. Peak Bureaucracy
6. 8 Simple Rules for Budget Time 
7. All I really need to know about Public Policy I learned from Lego
8. Trust is the only thing that scales 
9. Mapping Internal Policy to the Hype Cycle 
10. Rethinking Government Grants and Contributions

Thanks so much for the support and your time over the past year. I appreciate every read, share and comment.

See you all in the new year.


Originally published by Nick Charney at cpsrenewal.ca subscribe/connect

Where ideas go to live and/or die

I just finished reading Steven Johnson's "Where Good Ideas Come From" and it's an absolute must read for anyone interested in the sweet science of innovation; he's actually got a TED talk that addresses some of these issues but it isn't nearly as compelling as the book).

I was so impressed with the book that I simply had to abandon my traditional Monday Book Review format and bring you a little something deeper. At its core the book is about the origins of good ideas, while explaining these origins Johnson goes through seven integral (and interrelated) concepts of innovation:

• the adjacent possible
• liquid networks
• slow hunch
• serendipity
• error
• exaptation
• platforms

What follows is a blend of the most pertinent excerpts form the book and my own thoughts on how those excerpts relate to the public sector writ large (warning: it's a long post, I've been chewing on these ideas for weeks).


The Adjacent Possible

The adjacent possible is a a kind of shadow future, hovering on the edge of present state of things, a map of all the ways in which the present can reinvent it self. Yet it is not an infinite space, or a totally open playing field... What the adjacent possible tells us is that at any moment the world is capable of extraordinary change, but only certain changes can happen. The strange and beautiful truth is that is that its boundaries grow as you explore those boundaries. Each new combination ushers in new combinations into the adjacent possible. (p.31)

Think of the adjacent possible as the doors leading out of the room you are in. The more you explore what's behind those doors, the more doors you find to explore. The key lesson here - one that I have argued repeatedly - is that exploring the edges of the organization is what creates the room for growth. In short, organizations need people who are willing to be nomads; they need tricksters who walk the line; they need people to open doors to new ways of thinking.

My own experience is that I find it is rather easy to stand out as someone who engages in these types of activities because (in my view) its the path least travelled by fellow bureaucrats. No one ever speaks out against the notion that the public sector needs to be more innovative (its an untenable position) but my sense is that few of us actually invest time in truly understanding (and pursuing) what is required to achieve it. This is, at least in part, attributable to a culture that rewards keeping conversations within established (and hierarchical) channels. Anyone who has ever been "corrected" by a manager for corresponding with a colleague above their current pay grade knows this truth intimately.

It's fair to say that the general criticism levied by many against governments in general is that they aren't exactly environments that breed innovation; which I suppose leads us to the question, what kind of environment creates good ideas? According to Johnson:

The simplest way to answer it is this: innovative environments are better at helping their inhabitants explore the adjacent possible, because they expose a wide and diverse sample of spare parts - mechanical or conceptual - and they encourage novel ways of recombining those parts. Environments that block or limit those new combinations - by punishing experimentation, by securing certain branches of possibility, by making the current state so satisfying that no one bothers to explore the edges - will, on average, generate and circulate fewer innovations than environments that encourage exploration. (p. 41)

One of the key points that Johnson makes later in the chapter is on the idea of sustainability and that while there may be incredibly innovative individuals who leap ahead of what is currently possible, the innovation they bring to the market isn't sustainable because the prerequisite doors within the adjacent possible haven't been unlocked yet. If organizations are looking to embrace a sustainable approach to innovation they need to do a better job of weaving exploration and solidification into their business fabric. The (slightly frustrating) implication for would fast moving innovators and earlier adopters is likely that they need to slow down and work on building a foundation that will support their downsteam efforts rather then simply jumping ahead to those efforts right now.


Liquid Networks

According to Johnson ideas don't happen in a vacuum. While we tend to characterize the greatest ideas of our times as sudden strokes of genius and "aha moments", this characterization is incredibly flawed and often misleading:

A good idea is a network. A specific constellation of neurons–thousands of them–fire in sync with each other for the first time in your brain, and an idea pops into your consciousness. A new idea is a network of cells exploring the adjacent possible of connections that they can make in your mind. This is true whether the idea in question is a new way to solve a complex physics problem, or a closing line for a novel, or a feature for a software application. If we're going to try to explain the mystery of where good ideas come from, we'll have to start by shaking ourselves free of this common misconception: an idea is not a single thing. It is more like a swarm...  

When you think about ideas in there native state of neural networks, two key preconditions become clear. First, the sheer size of the network: you can't have an epiphany with only three neurons firing...The second precondition is that the network be plastic, capable of adopting new configurations. A dense network incapable of forming new patterns is, by definition, incapable of change, incapable of probing at the edges of the adjacent possible. (pp. 44-46)

Density matters; it affects the size of the adjacent possible. Maintaining a dense and diverse network is important for anyone looking to be more innovative. The more ideas you come up against the more raw materials you have for connections to be made betwixt them. Malleability also matters; yet public sector working environments are anything but plastic. I hope that public sector work environments loosen up a bit as people are increasingly realizing that less rigid environments are more conducive to innovating than rigid ones.  If you are asking yourself how to push your brain towards more creative networks, Johnson agues that:

The answer, as it happens, is delightfully fractal: to make your mind more innovative, you have to place it inside environments that share that same network signature: networks of ideas or people that mimic the neural networks of a mind exploring the boundaries of the adjacent possible. (p. 47)

Slow Hunch

... the snap judgements of intuition - as powerful as they can be - are rarities in the history of world-changing ideas. Most hunches that turn into important innovations unfold over much longer time frames. They start with a vague, hard-to-describe sense that there's an interesting solution to a problem that hasn't yet been proposed, and they linger in the shadows of the mind, sometimes for decades, assembling new connections and gaining strength. And then one day they are transformed into something more substantial: sometimes jolted out by some newly discovered trove of information, or by another hunch lingering in another mind, or by an internal association that finally completes the though. (p. 77)

I suppose there is some sort of ironic corollory that can be drawn between slow moving bureaucracies and the slow hunch, I'd rather side step it and instead focus on the heart of the matter, namely that:

Because these slow hunches need so much time to develop, they are fragile creatures, easily lost to the more pressing needs of day-to-day issues. (p. 77)

One of the biggest challenges facing governments is that they tend to focus on the immediacy of pressing needs to the detriment of the longer game. Its the cultural underpinnings that give us table dropped documents, last minute changes, and rush translations.


Serendipity

The premise that innovation propsers when ideas can serendipitously connect and recombine with other ideas, when other hunches can stumble across other hunches that successfully fill in their blanks, may seem like an obvious truth, but the strange fact is that a great deal of the past two centuries of legal and folk wisdom about innovation has pursued the exact opposite argument, building walls between ideas ... Ironically those walls have been erected with the explicit aim of encouraging innovation. They go by many names: patents, digital rights management, intellectual property, trade secrets, proprietary technology. But they share a founding assumption: that in the long run innovation will increase if you put restrictions on the spread of new ideas ... The problem with these closed environments is that they inhibit serendipity and reduce the overall network of minds that can potentially engage with a problem. (pp. 123-124)

I'm not sure this needs elaboration; it may be sufficient to poke you in the direction of thinking about how open to serendipity your organization is, whether or not you are encouraged to meet and engage in dialogue with people outside it, and how important it is that you be physically present in the office even when its inconsequential to your ability to deliver on your responsibilities.


Error

"The errors of the great mind exceed in number those of the less vigorous one." This is not merely statistics. It is not that the pioneering thinkers are simply more productive than less "vigorous" ones, generating more ideas overall, both good and bad. Some historical studies of patent records have in fact shown that overall productivity correlates with radical breakthroughs in science and technology, that sheer quantity ultimately leads to quality. [There is a] more subtle case for the role of error in innovation, because error is not simply a phase you have to suffer through on the way to genius. Error often creates a path that leads you out of your comfortable assumptions ... Being right keeps you in place. Being wrong forces you to explore. (p. 117)

Again, think about how accepting of failure your organization is; are the majority of new projects are born out of comfortable assumptions - the way we've always done things - or are they prompted by an admission that something is a miss and needs to be fixed from the ground up?


Exaptation

Taking ideas from other sectors and applying them to the public sector is what Johnson calls exaptation:

If mutation and error and serendipity unlock new doors in the biosphere's adjacent possible, exaptations help us explore the new possibilities behind those doors. A match you light to illuminate a darkened room turns out to have a completely different use when you open a doorway and discover a room with a pile of logs and a fireplace in it. A tool that helps you see in one context ends up helping you keep warm in another. (p. 156)

I've said repeatedly to people that if they want to be recognized as an innovator, all they have to do is look in the direction others aren`t. If the entire organization is looking left, look right. The marginal value of another set of eyes looking left is negligible. The value of the first set of eyes to look right is enormous.

What would you rather be known for?


Platforms

Platform building is, by definition, a kinds of exercise in emergent behaviour ... platform builders [don't] just open a door to the adjacent possible. They build an entire new floor. (p. 183)

The above statement isn't surprising if you are already familiar with the idea of government as platform; however what is surprising is what Johnson has to say about the potential of bureaucracies to be a platform:

Government bureaucracies have a long and richly deserved reputation for squelching innovation, but they possess four key elements that may allow them to benefit from the innovation engine of an emergent platform. First, they are repositories of a vast amount of information and services that could be of potential value to ordinary people, if only we could organize it better. Second, ordinary people have a passionate interest in the kind of information governments deal with, whether it's data about industrial zoning, health-care services or crime rates. Third, a long tradition exists of citizens committing time and intellectual energy to tackling problems where there is a perceived civic good at stake, And, finally, the fact that governments are not in the private sector means that they do not feel any competitive pressure to keep their data proprietary. (p. 196)

The first three points are bang on - and make a great case in support of open data - however Johnson's final point, that governments don't feel competitive pressure to keep their data proprietary, is (in my experience) wrong. There is tremendous pressure to keep things out of the public sphere, to minimize data sharing, and horde information; furthermore these pressures are felt at both the organizational and individual levels.


A visual conclusion selon moi

Based on my interpretation of Johnson's book; I've cobbled together the following chart that shows where I think ideas go to live and where they go to die (click to enlarge):

Originally published by Nick Charney at cpsrenewal.ca subscribe/connect

What I did last night instead of blogging

I miss colouring; don't you?

I've been chewing on a lot of things this week; but instead of sitting down and writing, I sat down with some of the people that matter the most to me.
I sat down and coloured a picture with my kids; something I haven't done for a long time.  My daughter commented about how happy she was that we were all at the table together enjoying the same activity.
I sat down with my mother and we talked a bit about how my folks are doing and what's coming down the pipe in the near future.
I sat with my wife and talked about our immediate concerns: my experience chaperoning our son's field-trip; some of the challenges she is facing in her current role as an acting manager within the provincial civil service; and the ongoings of her class that night (she is currently completing her Master's of Education).  Then we just poked around on reddit for a bit, laughed hard, joked around some more as I tucked her in, and laughed even harder.
I sat down with one of my oldest friends to shoot the shit, take a load off, and play some video games.
And finally, I sat down with myself and wrote this simple note that I wanted to share with you:  

Remember to nurture your relationships, its often far too easy to forget how important to you they really are.

Originally published by Nick Charney at cpsrenewal.ca subscribe/connect

Lean into it

Last week a pair of public servants published a couple of thought provoking blog posts; it was a conversation I felt I needed to get in on.

===========================

Kent,

It's perfectly natural to question the path you're on; I do it all the time.

I can't speak to your political views online (you probably shouldn't either) but I did want to speak to your concerns about the future the public sector; its what prompted me to start writing here in the first place.

You are right to compare our working conditions with those of the outside world and hope for more. Long gone are the times when back of house business was an truly internal matter. When you see photos of the Googleplex, the Shopify offices, or visit virtually any startup enjoying even a modicum of success its hard not to feel a bit left out of the mix while sitting in your cubicle. When you read about their latest product or sit down with a bootlegged copy of their employee handbook you can't help but wonder if you should've taken a left turn instead of a right one coming out of school (or perhaps even heading into it).

But here's a word of caution, the web brings you the best of the best 24/7. What makes the rounds online are the sensational success stories, the next hottest item, when you look out there the grass will always be greener. If you can understand it intellectually you are one step closer to coping with it emotionally. Call it satisficing or chalk it up to hedonic adaptation but if you want to enjoy success in this sector you need to make the daily effort to lengthen your shadow of the future. Success isn't as immediate or as readily available as what you read on the web may make you think.

I repeat: the grass will always greener my friend.

Social technologies are giving you a window in the carefully curated lives of others; a highlight reel of firehose like proportions makes it easy to get caught up in the wave. Whenever I come across someone who is down about their job or their prospects I tell them that even Batman has to be Bruce Wayne once in a while, that professional snowboarders still have to ride the chairlift, that not everything you do can be as exciting as what you read online.

In short I think we've become helpless romantics chasing the startup culture that Forbes, Harvard Business, and all the rest write about on a weekly basis. Make no mistake the romanticization of success puts you under constant pressure and lessens your overall satisfaction with your immediate surroundings.

I suppose what I'm trying to say is that you need to temper your expectations somewhat or you will forever be chasing them. I'm not advocating settling for less then you think you deserve (or can demonstrably earn) but rather trying to make a case for avoiding a career characterized by schizophrenia, not because your resume will suffer (as some people would argue) but because you may not actually learn all there is to learn prior to moving on to the next thing.

This isn't easy.

It's something I struggle with daily and something I have repeatedly pushed back on whenever a senior manager pulls me aside and tells me that "[I] have so much potential, if only [I] smoothed the edges a little bit ..."

I think you're right to be worried about the tipping point. I'm of the firm belief (and have argued publicly) that in a hyper connected world defined by an increasingly mobile labour force, labour supply can (and ultimately will) self organize in ways that fundamentally reshape the fabric of some of our public institutions. Organizations with a solid reputation, built on openness, access, and trust will attract like minded workers to help them strengthen their culture while those with a reputation for rewarding ostrich-like behaviours will attract those who prefer to muddle through with their heads beneath the sand.

I haven't read Voltaire's Bastards (at least not yet) but I have spoken to a number of retired high ranking civil servants who talk with great admiration about that same bygone era; and I, like you, would like to see a return to a time where civil servants are treated with the respect I think they deserve but rarely enjoy.

I want to encourage you to lean into the challenges you face on a daily basis. Treat every obstacle as a learning opportunity. Write about the challenges you see, posit solutions and write about those too, read lots of books and share your insights about those too.

When we spoke briefly (weeks ago now) I told you not to look at the metrics around your blog. I want to reiterate that message again right now.

Write for yourself; your blog should help you navigate the system, help you challenge it, and help you improve it. If along the way it helps others, consider it collateral benefit.

Make no mistake, engage with your readers, network, connect people and ideas, seed communities wherever you think it makes sense; but never lose sight of the fact that your blog's primary purpose is to help you lean into adversity and turn resistance into forward momentum.

===========================

Erin,

As you can see, I too was struck by Kent's recent lament (as you so nicely put it). While you may feel that you face an uphill battle, I'd caution you on your use of metaphors. I do so only to point out that you are on the same side of that battle with your colleagues and casting your approach in antagonistic terms may breed more antagonism, which in the end isn't what I think you are working towards.

I understand that I'm writing you from position of what could be considered as relative power - having interdeterminate status, being a mid-level professional, and working in Ottawa - but don't want that fact colour what I am about to say, or how you respond to it.

I've travelled across Canada a number of times in the past five years and have met a lot of great people (public servants) along the way who are in similar situations as yours. My understanding is that its at least doubly difficult to get ahead in the (career) game in the regions. In some respects its a matter of scale, there is simply more opportunities here in Ottawa then there are in other parts of the country; but that may change over time, given advances in technology and, more importantly, management philosophies.

I, like you, fell into public service. I left the most incredible job I ever had - working for a National League Hockey Franchise during its Stanley Cup run - to join government and have been trying to recapture some of that magic ever since.

As you continue to move around the edges of the organization looking for opportunities to stretch its boundaries, know that whatever you choose to do there - be it speak softly or swing your elbows - will make some people uneasy. I came to the conclusion (read: was told by others) that I can be a fairly polarizing individual because I tend to push where the pain is the often greatest. Over time I became used to the fact that whatever I do, in any given situation, will result in roughly one third of the people in room being angry at me (because they are status quo people), one third being completely oblivious to me (because nothing moves them) and one third will be interested in what I bring to the table. That may not sound that appealing, but a 1/3 conversion rate is a fairly solid foundation that has (at least in my experience to date) created a wealth of opportunity (not in the financial sense, but in the learning sense).

You aren't a masochist for leaning into a challenge, you're better for it. Many prefer to take the path of least resistance; and in the public sector the road less travelled is less travelled for a reason, the path isn't groomed, its a tough trek, and often the incentives aren't there.

Its a path that requires you to be a self-starter, derive your motivation from within and know how take pride quietly in your work.

Keep leaning into the challenge, as you continue charting the route, leave markers for those who will follow behind you.

In time, the path will become more clear and easier for others to follow.


Originally published by Nick Charney at cpsrenewal.ca subscribe/connect

I'm calling shenanigans on 'the $1.3 trillion price of not tweeting at work'

Listen, it's easy to sharp shoot someone else's writing. Especially when you don't know them from a hole in the ground. I generally steer clear of such tomfoolery, but to be honest, I read an article yesterday on FastCompany entitled "The $1.3 Trillion Price Of Not Tweeting At Work" and it left a bitter taste in my mouth.

Title inspired by Cow Days episode of South Park

The article derives its outlandish title from the McKinsey report I pointed to last week and wrongly positions a single social platform (Twitter) as equivalent to the broader term "social technologies" used in the report and (wrongly) recasts the estimated value of employing these technologies (in the global market) as the the cost of not tweeting at work.

The proof's in the pudding (here are the first three paragraphs verbatim):

On June 6, Larry Ellison--CEO of Oracle, one of the largest and most advanced computer technology corporations in the world--tweeted for the very first time. In doing so, he joined a club that remains surprisingly elite. Among CEOs of the world’s Fortune 500 companies, a mere 20 have Twitter accounts. Ellison, by the way, hasn’t tweeted since.

As social media spreads around the globe, one enclave has proven stubbornly resistant: the boardroom. Within the C-suite, perceptions remain that social media is at best a soft PR tool and at worst a time sink for already distracted employees. Without a push from the top, many of the biggest companies have been slow to take the social media plunge.

A new report from McKinsey Global Institute, however, makes the business case for social media a little easier to sell. According to an analysis of 4,200 companies by the business consulting giant, social technologies stand to unlock from $900 billion to $1.3 trillion in value. At the high end, that approaches Australia’s annual GDP. How’s that for a bottom line?

If that's not reaching, I'm not sure what is. It probably also worth mentioning that the article's author is the CEO of Hootsuite; meaning that the obvious subtext (at least in my reading) is that Hootsuite can help you get a slice of that juicy $1.3 trillion if only they could meet with your "Twitter-phobic CEOs".

I won't bother with the rest of the article as it offers up little in terms of understanding, applying, or challenging the findings of the McKinsey report. But I do want to close the loop on the issue of just how important (or unimportant) it is for your CEO (or in the public sector your Deputy Minister) to be tweeting.


Whether or not you CEO tweets is completely irrelevant

I could think of a hundred things off the top of my head that are far more important activities for my Deputy Minister to be engaged in than tweeting. In fact, I would position any of the hundred decisions they are likely to make during the course of a week as more important than the decision to tweet or not.  Furthermore, if anyone out there can show me a direct causal relationship between a private sector CEO tweeting and an increase in that firm's revenues (or in the public sector better outcomes) I will gladly eat my hat!


Whether or not your CEO is open to change is paramount

What CEOs (and again by extension heads of public sector agencies) need to be aware isn't how to tweet or why but rather the transformative nature of new communications technologies, how they affect information flows, how they can help the organization tap into it's  cognitive surplus and how the openness they engender disrupts their traditional business models.

Those at the top need to be paying attention to the likes of Clay Shirky, Don Tapscott, and, for a healthy dose of scepticism Andrew Keen; not jumping onto Twitter on the advice of profiteering social media hucksters (no offense).


My advice

Don't trust anyone who's selling the sizzle.  Don't throw money at tools before understanding the environment within which they operate.

Always put strategy before tactics and understanding before strategy because understanding informs strategy and strategy informs tactics. This isn't about learning how to blog, wiki or twitter, this is about learning how to be more adaptive to change.

While the former can be easily purchased on every corner of the web, the latter is much harder to come by and as a result will always serve you better in the long run.


Originally published by Nick Charney at cpsrenewal.ca subscribe/connect

Open Government or Openness in Government?

I've recently recommitted to working on a couple of book ideas; what follows is the preamble to a book I am working on on Open Government.

===============

Last year I was sitting in a small coffee shop off the beaten path with a couple of friends - fellow bureaucrats - when one of them, a particularly astute young lady, asked me if I was passionate about my work because I worked in the public sector or if I was just a passionate person. The question was particularly poignant given my profound respect for my colleague and the fact that I was in the middle complete career chaos at work. The powers that be had just torn a sizable strip (rightly or wrongly) off me and left me questioning whether or not a career in the public service was still the career I wanted.

You see, for the last five years I've walked the fine line between being professional and non-partisan civil servant working behind the scenes while writing openly about the public sector online. It’s been an odd journey to say the least. You might think me lucky to have married my passion and my work load, but the marriage is often tumultuous.

I've held several different positions during my time in the public service. I've seen both the best and the worst the institution has to offer. I've been its most disengaged employee and its most vocal advocate. I've spent time toiling away in the trenches as a relative unknown and time in close proximity to senior management providing coaching and focused advice. I may not have the whole picture yet, but I know my opportunities have been good ones and I certainly feel privileged for having seen and experienced everything I have thus far in my career.

I've managed to cross this great country a number of time, speaking to public servants from all walks of life, levels of government, and times in their career. I've accepted every invitation to sit and chat over coffee with our sector’s established leaders, its up-and-comers, and its down-and-outers. I've tried my best to be an ear that listens critically, an empathetic shoulder to lean on, and an outstretched hand offering support to those who need it.

When I started my blog five years ago, I never envisioned it would be a springboard to these types of opportunities. Truthfully it was never its intention. I'd love to say I had a plan and executed it, but I didn't. I had a feeling, I thought I perceived a need, and I started writing with the aim of filling it. Despite my efforts, and the efforts of others, I still feel as though thought leadership from future public sector leaders is an underserved market. I wasn’t the first, nor will I be the last. When I started I was inspired by what I saw others doing in the space. Over time I found my voice and awoke to the possibility that there is more to life in the public service than being tentative, deference to authority, and authorization forms.

Once you awake to something like that, it is impossible to turn back.

In addition to blogging I invested a significant amount of personal time writing a small whitepaper, Scheming Virtuously: A Handbook for Public Servants. It was inspired by the work of a number of friends, mentors and fellow public servants. Seemingly out of nowhere Scheming turned into an opportunity to get in front of a live audience and my career kind of snowballed from there.

What I’ve found since then is that people are willing to invest their time in things that they believe in. What I’ve come to believe in is that exploring the confluence of people, public policy and technology will lead to innovation, it will lead to improvements in how we deliver services to citizens and how we work with one another.

While I have done my utmost to keep the work on my desk and the work on my dining room table separate, they undoubtedly have had a profound influence on each other. I firmly believe that my blog makes me a better civil servant, and being a civil servant makes me a better blogger. It's a delicate balance to be sure, but one I have thus far been able to handle.

A lot has changed in the last five years, and although it may not feel like it at times, the bureaucracy has made remarkable improvements. We have better access to collaborative technologies than we had previously, there is a push to better manage our information resources, and a keen focus on improving how we deliver service; and while you may think my last statement is jargon, I think the fact that Open Government is even a topic of conversation in this country is evidence to the contrary. It certainly wasn't part of the discourse when I was signed my letter of offer five years ago.

That said, the conversation about Open Government in Canada is still, in my view, nascent. Yes, the discourse has gained some mainstream attention, but it still has a long way to go, especially inside public sector organizations.

Sure there are early adopters but for the most part the issue isn't really on the radar writ large. There are a number of reasons for this: exclusionary and technocratic language; entrenched bureaucracies; institutional momentum, and a gross underestimation of the depth and breadth of the coming change.

That notwithstanding, the issue may be simply one of perspective. My experience is that most public servants aren’t as interested in broad and sweeping societal movements or changes, as they are in having timely access to the information, people, and expertise they need to do their job effectively.

In other words, what bureaucrats are really after isn't Open Government per se but rather greater openness in government.

===============

I'm still running my IndieGoGo campaign to get my handbook translated. Click here for more info!

Originally published by Nick Charney at cpsrenewal.ca subscribe/connect