I think I went into the job thinking I knew how to manage stakeholders. Boy, was I wrong! The stakeholders I knew about were not a problem because I am very direct, and I want honest feedback back. This way we can have a conversation.
The stakeholders I did not know about are used to engaging with government through lobby arms and through letters to the minister or the prime minister. That is how the government had conditioned the dialogue in the past. So, when I came in saying that “I want to talk to you on LinkedIn, if you have got a problem with what we are doing”—not everybody was comfortable with that. A lot of people would still take the old traditional route and send letters to ministers, and that was where the disconnect happened.
For me it meant that I had to go to brief higher-ups instead of just doing the thing and putting it in front of people for codeveloping. If you end up writing briefing notes more than doing anything else, the project starts to slow down in this briefing nightmare.
I went in thinking I was a digital lead and everybody in my world knows and does things digitally. Well, it turned out even technology companies did not really do digital. It required that Scott (the minister) and I talk all the time, for example, to manage the outside relations. It required a lot of conversations outside the formal governance arrangements we had anyway, like the weekly department board or spending request meetings. It required also to build trust with other ministers and deputy ministers in the system.
Is There Anything Else You Wish You Had Known When You Started?
I would never take another position like that without giving myself a little bit of time to do some retrospect—or forward look—on what would be the things or interference that would cause me walk away from the job or be ready to take a big hit for it. I did not have that figured out when I started, and that caused me a lot of stress. For example, with the AI work.
We pushed for the policy that citizens cannot be serviced by an AI black box forever. If you are going to do AI in the Government of Canada, we need to have access to your code and be able to trace the decision from the machine. We were asking to have a dialogue on this, and it brought on heavy lobby toward senior government. Obviously, the vendors did not like the policy, because the code is proprietary.
In the end, we did change the tune and the position. We only did that because we got pushed back openly. But it made me realize that not everybody in this game of government is out there for the better good of serving citizens. That is why I think anybody taking a national CIO or any CIO job needs to be very comfortable with themselves about where they are going to draw the line on ethical matters. I was ready to jump on the grenade for our AI policy, so to speak, because the work our team was doing and how they were doing it—because I fundamentally believed in it. Even if lobbyists got some politicians to not like it.
The question to ask yourself—and myself next time—is what is the line that you will draw in the sand? What are your convictions? What are you willing to take a stand for, if asked to do something or not do something that you fundamentally disagree with?
What Do You Think Were Your Biggest Failures in the Job?
As I said, there was a period of some months when I became too focused on deadlines and too focused on managing up. It was a time when we had to find an alternative to Phoenix. I became too blunt with people in the team who were just trying their hardest. Someone had to call me out to make me realize it. To avoid it happening in the future, I would try next time to find more people who are not afraid to speak. I would also ask them for feedback more often. We were delivering home runs and home runs, but it was killing people in the process.
I had been conscious about my own mental health from the start, but the job still had an effect. I gained a lot of weight, and my state was not always the best during the job. I was open about it and a deputy minister told me that I should not be showing cracks like that. It did not sit true with who I am as a person. I am very honest, am emotional and transparent as a person. I believe it is OK for people to see the leadership struggle because it is not easy all the time and nobody wants to work for robots anymore. They will not believe you then when you speak because you are not genuine. It would be like senior officials having people write their social media for them. Other people will know it and not buy it.
So, I should have made sure that my health and mental health came first. I did prioritize longer days over family at times, and that is no good. An evening eight o'clock call could have frankly just been a meeting the next morning, not happen immediately. The thing is that once you leave office at the end of your run, you are just a person. I should have realized that I was always first a person, while also in the position.
Was This the Reason You Moved On or What Was behind Your Decision to Leave Office?
It was a few things together.
I did not want to go over my three-year limit that I had set for myself at the beginning. Either the government could move me to another job, or I would just find my own job. I do not think that governments are used to people taking their future in their own hands and asking to be moved or to leave on their own timing. I got questions and comments back from people like, “You cannot leave, what are you doing?”
We had done so much change in three years, it was going to be more operational now. I was not interested in that. So, even if nobody wanted to move to another portfolio and thought I was doing a good job, I was ready to move on. Elections were coming, too. Scott and Yaprak had left, new people were coming in. Even if they were great, it was not the same relationship anymore that we had had with the minister or the secretary before.
It was also a time for me for reasons of health and family. My then wife was working in tech and some doors were closed to her because of who I was and where I worked. So, I had to put myself and my family first. I find that people who have not worked inside the machine and have scars to prove it do not understand the level of stress and damage that it does to your body and to everything else.
What Are the Remaining Challenges on the Table for GC and Your Former Team?
First, it is still necessary to do a better job of integrating all the new policies into the department. Also, to the other departments. I think it is necessary to move digital conversations all the way up to cabinet decisions more regularly and with more discipline.
The GCIO unit also needs to coordinate better with other departments that are involved in the digital economy. I have always been a believer that most governments around the world are still applying Industrial Age thinking to the digital world. But looking at places like Estonia and its e-Residency program triggered a thought that in the digital world it does not apply that government has a monopoly over the citizens' lives. What if Canadians could choose whom they get their services from because they could choose to launch a business in Estonia now and even never set foot in the country? This has impact beyond the government, on the whole economy, and we could intentionally work on that.
These would have been my next steps, at least.
How Did You Ensure Your Initiatives and Changes Would Be Sustained?
As changing policy and legislation in the Government of Canada is so darn hard, and I knew this, then I knew these things were not going to change any time soon. Because of our legislation and policy, GC now is doing AI, is using the cloud, all these things. The boring stuff and the stuff you do not announce publicly because nobody cares are the stuff that will stay the longest. The governance stuff.
The GCIO team also has got levers now. Say,
