Treasury Board President Scott Brison opened a new academy this week to boost the “digital acumen” of all levels of public servants.

He says it’s intended to make government better, faster, and relevant again.

The new Canadian Digital Academy will be housed at the Canada School of the Public Service. It’s being run — and funded — in partnership with the Chief Information Office, headed by Alex Benay, and the Canadian Digital Service, with its swat team of tech geeks. Brison is also the minister of digital government, and all four organizations are under his portfolio.

They are also key players in driving Brison’s digital transformation of government, which, if successful, would change how it works, buys, builds, uses and thinks about technology. Attracting and training public servants with the right skills is central to that plan, he said.

“Service to Canadians is at the heart of any good government, and today that means digital,” Brison said at the academy’s launch at the Canada School of Public Service earlier this week.

“We can actually do something … better than anywhere else, and that is build top-flight talent, and enable our public service to develop their skills (so they become) the very best at delivering government services to Canadians anywhere in the world,” said Brison.

The curriculum is being designed to improve the “digital acumen” of all levels of public servants who are working to modernize operations, and to deliver the kind of digital services that Canadians expect. Separate streams will cater to executives and leaders, technology workers, and other bureaucrats interested in technology.

The focus of the academy is to advance the understanding of digital technology and the impact it will have on the work of public servants and the business of government.

Courses, which will initially run for one or two days, are still being refined and tested. The first cohort of students will begin in a pilot project in January 2019. The curriculum will cover data design, development and automation, disruptive technologies, artificial intelligence and machine learning.

In a release, Treasury Board said the academy would bring in a “conglomerate of partners” to teach the courses.

Brison has long argued that the very relevance of government is tied to embracing digital technology. He maintains Canadians expect the same kind of service they get when they’re shopping online from Amazon. They live digitally when they shop and work, using smartphones, social media and apps that do everything. They expect the same when dealing with their governments They want single IDs, digitally issued permits, applications, approvals and information on their personal devices, 24-7.

But if they don’t feel well-served by government, they can lose confidence in what it does, Brison warned.

“Government exists to improve the lives of people, and a digitally enabled public service gives us an unprecedented opportunity to improve government services,” said Brison.

Some say the academy is not only a long-needed investment in training for public servants, but a revival of the Canada School of Public Service, whose influence declined over time. The school has been through various reorganizations, with many questioning its direction and relevance. For years, one of its most popular courses with bureaucrats was retirement planning, which it no longer offers.

The school came under new management in July with the appointment of Taki Sarantakis, the former associate secretary at Treasury Board.

“The school appears to be going through a renaissance. It has a very dynamic management team, and that team is shopping for who can provide the best service,” said Maryantonett Flumian, a former deputy minister and director at the Blockchain Research Institute.

It should also be relevant, of high quality, and without an obsession for “doing it all in-house,” she added.

Debi Daviau, president of the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada, which represents the 17,000 IT workers in government, has long been pushing the government to rethink its hiring practices and training for the digital age.

She said it’s done scant training over the past decade, so the academy is critical to updating skills that technology workers in government need.

“I think it’s great if it means access to digital training and development for the entire computer-specialist workforce, and not just a chosen few,” Daviau said. “I just hope any public servant will be able to access it, rather than just those they want to fast-track to success.”

The government is taking other steps toward a digital makeover, such as: moving to cloud computing; allowing departments to lease computer capacity as they need to, from private-sector firms like Amazon Web Services; and using blockchain technology (record-keeping using cryptography). It has also drafted new digital standards, developed a data strategy and policy, as well as the fourth version of the federal plan for open government, which was built on consultations the Liberals had with Canadians.

Canada, which is hosting the Open Government Partnership’s global summit next May, has received international attention for its readiness for artificial intelligence.

Canada joined the D7, an international forum of seven countries considered digital leaders with the “common mission” of harnessing digital technology to improve the lives of citizens. D7 members also include Estonia, Israel, South Korea, New Zealand, the U.K., and Uruguay.

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