Who we are
This year has been an exciting time for Strategy, Architecture and Business Relationships (SABR) within Innovation, Information and Technology Branch (IITB) from Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC).
Denis Skinner came to ESDC in June of 2018, who is presently the Director General of Strategy, Enterprise Architecture, and Business Relations within IITB. Upon his arrival two new teams were created: IT Strategy (yours truly) and IT Research. The challenge issued to these newly created teams was to help modernize a large impactful organization in the age of the notorious, and perhaps inappropriately named, “Digital Transformations”. Armed with knowledge from eight other Government of Canada (GC) departments, the teams set out to bring about positive radical change as quickly as possible. It has only been a few months now though, as you can see from the website you are now visiting, it’s been an intense couple of months. We’ve wasted no time to begin pushing for better services for Canadians.
The IT Strategy team dreams big, see the Human Development Life Cycle. We tirelessly work to bring our dreams to fruition through practising what we preach, which is why we included Lead by Example into our Mandate. We’re passionate about the power of collaboration, which is why the IT Strategy team plays leading roles in both the Agora - Open Source Software (internal for now but soon to be open to external participants) and the GC DevOps League (@gcdevopsleague) communities. We also Work in the open. We cannot insist enough to all of our friends throughout the GC, there are hundreds of thousands of us. We assure you, whatever problems, hurdles, and obstacles, you are facing (technical or not), there are others who are working through, or have worked through, the same things. Reach out. Contact them, and if you don’t know where to start, please contact us!
The IT Strategy team is passionate about the GC delivering the best possible services to the Canadians citizens. This does not allow us to accept the adage “you can’t do that in government”, or “this is the public sector”. We consider the commonly heard and flippant remark of “you should work in the private sector, then” as a compliment and testament that we are pushing people outside of their comfort zone – a healthy thing to take place on a regular basis. We believe in a culture of learning and the relentless improvement of our services, the GC at large, and ourselves. Which is why we all have copies of our favourite books strewn across our desks, many such resources can be found in our References.
The public sector today does not look as it did 25 years ago, and this change did not come easily. Change never does. Our advice to all our fellow travellers from throughout the GC is to ensure you are continually learning, educate yourself nonstop, entertain the idea of change outside of your comfort zone, and move forward – always forward. Do not accept that things must always be as they are – because we know this is not true, especially as the rate of change continually increases in our digital world.
“The rate of change today is the slowest you will ever experience.”