OTTAWA – The federal government on Tuesday unveiled the new Canadian Digital Service, a group tasked with improving the design and delivery of the government’s online services.
A blog post by Treasury Board of Canada president Scott Brison warned that the new measures “will require disruption as we make the switch, both technically and culturally, to agile digital delivery models”, but added that “agile digital government requires taking risks.”
“We need to challenge assumptions, think experimentally, and constantly measure ourselves against that end goal: better service to Canadians”, continues the post. “No doubt we’ll make mistakes, but we will make them at the alpha and beta stage, not after launching at scale.
As I have often said, in this world you’re either digital or you’re dead. We can’t be a Blockbuster government serving a Netflix citizenry!”
According to an Ottawa Citizen report, the move is a change of tack from the Feds’ original website modernization project that would have seen all 90 disparate department and agency websites come under the Canada.ca domain name.
