Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thanks to the committee for having me here today.
I'm Amanda Clarke and I'm an associate professor at Carleton University's school of public policy and administration. For the past decade or so, I've been studying digital government reforms in Canada and internationally.
When I first read about the ArriveCAN app, I have to admit I wasn't particularly shocked. Its cost is actually a tiny percentage of the government's annual IT contract spend, as Mr. Boots just illustrated, and certainly it's not the most outrageous contract that I've seen over the years. But when I say I wasn't shocked, it's more because ArriveCAN's story is pretty standard. Reliance on a staffing agency to fill gaps in in-house capacity, insufficient research into how the app would be used by frontline staff or the public, sloppy public communications around data stewardship—this is a pretty classic government technology story.
The committee has the policy brief that Mr. Boots and I prepared based on our analysis of the federal contracting data. In my remarks, I really want to focus in on what I think is the key question at play here, which is what it would take to build a federal public service that can better manage technology projects like ArriveCAN, because that's where we all want to get to.
The most important step is to earnestly invest in the digital competency of the federal public service. We've long chosen, both deliberately and by unconscious habit, to turn to private IT vendors and management consultants to fill what are glaring gaps in digital expertise in the federal government. In turn, very little has been done to hire and train public servants such that the government could make sensible, accountable and strategic decisions about technology. We let the muscle atrophy and none of us should be surprised today that it can't do much heavy lifting.
This is a problem for two key reasons. One, if you don't have sufficient in-house IT expertise, you simply can't be a smart shopper when you go to buy IT services, software and equipment. This helps explain why in our analysis the federal government regularly breaks accepted best practice in modern IT procurement. The contracts are too big. They're too long. The government doesn't prioritize open source or public ownership of intellectual property. The government locks into vendors and finds itself with few escape routes if a vendor underperforms.
The second reason that you need to build strong in-house capacity speaks to the fundamental role of technology in today's policy process. Everything governments do is shaped by the digital systems informing that work, and all government activities today result in some sort of digital output. It's simply not enough to treat technology as something that happens after the real policy work and that can be largely outsourced as a result.
Acknowledging this after decades of outsourcing as a default, leading digital-era governments are now aggressively hiring technologists. They're appointing senior leaders like Ms. Luelo who have a deep understanding of technology and its role in the policy process. They do this because they've realized that governments can build beautiful services that genuinely improve people's lives. Further, they realize that the state is, in many instances, far better positioned than private actors to produce trustworthy, reliable and inclusive digital public services. Notably, this consensus globally is shared by governments on the left and on the right. This is not a partisan debate that's happening here.
The question, then, is how the federal government can catch up with this trend. As I said, first we really need to earnestly commit to hiring tech talent. This will require being honest about salary scales, career progression models, evaluating bilingualism requirements and loosening requirements to be in the office. It can be done, though, and the Canadian Digital Service is truly a success story here.
Second, more can be done to upskill existing public servants through dedicated training, and I'd really like to see this training focus in particular on senior leaders. The vast majority of leaders in the current federal public service have never been asked to understand technology and its role in the policy process. In fact, in some cases those leaders purposely divorce themselves from decisions about technology because they so often end in failure. That learned helplessness is no longer acceptable.
The last point I want to make, though, is that hiring and training will do very little if the broader administrative culture of the federal public service remains the same. Public service leaders and researchers have long complained that the federal government is excessively risk-averse and burdened with unhelpful processes, reporting requirements and webs of opaque, nonsensical rules. This stifles creativity. It overly restricts the autonomy of public servants. It encourages apathy. It's near impossible in that context to build strong digital products, even if you have all the talent on staff.
The thing I really want to make clear is that we're not starting from zero here. There is an immensely talented group of public servants like Mr. Boots who are trying to do good technology work in the federal government but in a context where it's often hard to do the right thing. It's easier to not try to be innovative and creative and push the boundaries. Many of these public servants are burning out; they're ready to leave or they already have.
The key thing is that we address long-standing management and organizational failures in the federal public service. If we don't do that, any effort to bolster digital capacity is going to fall flat.
Thank you.