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Stung Eye

The eye of the bee holder.

Andrew Burton and I spent the morning talking Open Data and Open Government with these passionate public servants at Canada Beyond 150’s three day conference in Winnipeg.

“Canada Beyond 150 is a ten-month professional development program involving a Canada-wide group of early-career public servants. The project is designed to support leadership and skills development, and to drive a culture shift across the federal public service.”

As part of this program, teams of public servants are working together to explore policy challenges including: reconciliation, open and transparent government, sustainable development, feminist government, and socio-economic inclusion.

Andrew and I meet with the open and transparent government team. Andrew was there in his capacity as the City of Winnipeg Open Data manager. I was there as executive directory of Open Democracy Manitoba.

We discussed the evolution (and/or disappearance) of privacy, the implications of a shift to digital government services, proactive vs reactive public disclosure, IT procurement, open source goverance, fake new, policy making as a participatory act, algorithmic biases, the logistics of open data, citizen engagement, artificial intelligence, techno-privilege, trust and reputation online, and so much more.

I was honoured to be invited to share my experiences and perspectives on these topics. It was inspiring morning. I look forward to seeing what kinds of improvements and innovations these folks will help bring to our federal public service.

Oh, and in case you’re curious, here’s why they chose Winnipeg as the location for their mid-project conference.