Canada’s vision for better digital services, UK urged to reverse climate rollbacks

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Global Government Forum’s weekly news roundup of public service intelligence

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Canada releases new vision for better digital public services

The Government of Canada has published the latest iteration of its digital service strategy. In it, the CEO of the Canadian Digital Service (CDS), Paul Wagner, called on public servants to “break down silos” in their efforts to “deliver digital services that meet people’s expectations”.

“The start-up days of CDS are coming to an end,” Wagner said.

“It’s time to take stock of what we have done, live by the lessons that we have learned, and set our sights toward new challenges.”

The strategic vision document outlines CDS’s ambition to create “a digitally enabled end-to-end service journey and the products and services to get there”.

It states: “Over the next three years [2024 to 2027] CDS will do a lot of work to grow into an enterprise leading organisation with the capacity to steer and support digital enablement at the whole-of-government level.”

It also lays out four “missions” that it says will underpin “a better end-to-end service journey for people and businesses seeking services from the Government of Canada”.

These include CDS’s mission to ease access to government services, which it says will require “multiple channels” for “varying user preferences and accessibility needs”, a “single front door” for “signing in and verifying identity”, and a choice for clients to “share data between services” to speed up service access. Its other missions include placing human-centred design at the core of services. This will require CDS to base each service on key life events, remembering the user’s service history, and notifying them of service status and changes. Services will also need to be “effective, efficient, and trustworthy”, prioritising user experience and allowing for continuous service improvement with privacy protection and anti-fraud measures built in.

Finally, the strategic vision outlines CDS’s mission to empower its people to “strive toward new levels of digital maturity”. This will require embracing “experimentation and innovation” and building “client centricity into all steps of the service design value chain from policy development through to performance measurement”.

In urging public servants to break down silos, the vision stresses the need to “move beyond departmental mandates”, “cultivate a culture of data literacy” and pursue “targeted recruitment and training programmes to deliver an integrated service experience”.

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UK urged to reverse ‘damage’ from previous government’s climate rollbacks

The UK’s climate watchdog has warned that the UK is off track to meet 2030 targets, with only a third of the emissions reductions required currently covered by “credible plans”.

The Climate Change Committee also drew attention to the “damage done by the previous government’s policy rollbacks”, which it said have increased the gap between the UK’s plans and its targets. The committee said that messaging on climate both domestically and internationally had “caused significant uncertainty about the country’s commitment to net zero”.

It has urged the new Labour government, elected earlier this month, to make a clear commitment to the net zero transition, backed with rapid policy action and a “sharp-eyed focus on removing barriers”.

The committee has published a priority list of 10 recommendations, including making electricity cheaper, reversing recent policy rollbacks, and ramping up rates of tree planting and peatland restoration.

In September, then-prime minister Rishi Sunak announced that the ban on buying petrol and diesel cars would be pushed back by five years to 2035. He also exempted 20% of households from the 2035 fossil-fuel boiler installation phase-out. Plans to force landlords to upgrade the energy efficiency of properties were scrapped.

“The new government has an opportunity to course-correct, but it will need to be done as a matter of urgency to make up for lost time,” said Professor Piers Forster, interim chair of the Climate Change Committee.

On a more positive note, the committee noted that the UK’s emissions are now less than half the levels they were in 1990, which is largely due to the phase-out of coal and the ramping up of renewables.

Read the latest Sustainability Monitor: Coalition launches the ‘backlash to the green backlash’, the new UK government’s climate to-do list, and more

Canadian public service workforce grew by 10,000 in the past year

The Canadian government added more than 10,000 employees to the federal public service last year, new figures show.

According to numbers posted online by the Treasury Board of Canada, the current population of the federal public service as of March 31 stands at 367,772 employees – up from 357,247 in 2023.

However, this growth is slower than in 2022-2023 when the public service workforce increased by more than 21,000, and 2021-2022 when it grew by over 16,000.

The size of Canada’s public service has grown by 43% since the 2015 election of prime minister Justin Trudeau, while Canada’s population increased by around 15%.

A report from earlier this year from the Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer found that personnel spending within the federal government was steadily increasing, reaching CAN$67.4 billion (US$48.7 billion) in 2022-23, compared to CAN$40.2 billion (US$29 billion) in 2016-17.

“To deliver the essential services on which Canadians rely, the public service adjusts its size according to government priorities and programme requirements, with deputy heads ensuring workforce alignment with mandates,” Treasury Board of Canada President Anita Anand told Global News.

A spokesperson told the publication that the government has committed to finding savings of CAN$4.2 billion (US$3 billion) over the next four years, including through the elimination of around 5,000 public service jobs over four years by attrition.

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