A big highlight of FWD50 this past year was being able to work with Brian Whittaker on a panel celebrating outstanding public servants. We wanted to highlight that amazing and inspiring public servants are everywhere – working to change things often against the odds. These two videos are a small celebration of why people choose public service careers.
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Hybrid work is here to stay, which – for all of us as public servants – means a lot of hours in Teams or Zoom meetings. If you’ve ever had someone say “can you repeat that?” on a video call, this post is for you. Even if you can already hear your colleagues well, just using your computer’s normal microphone and speakers, that doesn’t mean that they can hear you. Here are some fairly cheap options that can make a big difference, when it comes to making it possible for other people to hear you better.
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Deepika Grover is a strategist at Finance Canada, a member of the Free Agents program, and a long-time practitioner and advocate for equity, inclusion and anti-racism work in the federal public service. Deepika has played a role in many of the public service’s innovation programs over the years. We’ve been friends on social media for many years and I’m always grateful for her thoughtful and candid insights on how to make the public service better. We chatted by email in February, followed up by virtual convos in April and May.
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Nick Wise is a long-time technology leader in the Canadian public service, most recently serving as the Chief Information Officer of Public Safety Canada. Previously as an executive director in the Office of the CIO, he was responsible for the GCtools team and for the small team that became the Canadian Digital Service. I’ll always be grateful for Nick’s insightful and humble style of leadership, and for his thoughtful stewardship of the teams he led. We chatted by email in October.
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Shannah Segal and Sheena Samuel lead the experience design and technology chapters, respectively, at the Ontario Digital Service. They’re brilliant and thoughtful leaders, and have brought experience from their careers in the private tech sector into government. Friends all across ODS speak very highly of working with them, and it was a real honour to hear about their experiences over the past nearly five years working in government. We chatted in late October.
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Sameer Vasta is a founding member of the Ontario Digital Service and one of the kindest human beings I know. He currently works on the Talent team at the Ontario Digital Service and until recently taught the “Government in a Digital Era” course at the University of Waterloo’s Masters of Public Service program. Sameer is on the board of several community organizations, an advisor to a number of small non-profits, and a mentor to early-career public servants. We chatted by email in June.
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Ryan Hum is the Chief Information Officer and VP of Data at the Canada Energy Regulator (CER), a federal agency based in Calgary, Alberta. He’s an inspiration to so many of the best designers and design researchers I know in government, and he’s championed user research work at PCO, at IRCC, and in projects with a wide range of departments. At the CER, his team has done above-and-beyond work in data visualization, mapping, open data, and technology transformation. We spoke on July 7.
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Christopher Scipio is a long-time champion for a more diverse, equitable, and anti-racist public service. He’s currently the senior strategic advisor to the Black Executives Network, and has previously worked in a number of policy roles at DND, ESDC, ISED, and Justice Canada. We’ve been Twitter friends since 2014 and his perspectives on the challenges facing the public service today are always insightful, candid, and eye-opening. We chatted by email in August.
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