HOLLY: I think it's so important. We don't do it enough.
We're reorganizing in Alberta to bring all of the sector CIOs,
or Elizabeth's role, into one shop.
And from there, to be able to balance business needs and to be able to look out through
them at their external stakeholders, which is so important.
But the piece that we often overlook is the federal and provincial lens together
because there are things happening at a federal level that Elizabeth talked about today in our
panels and I went "Hey, that's really great, we should connect" and there are
things happening provincially that we might have a different way of doing things
or be focused in a different way. And I think traditionally there's been a
bit of a wall between the federal and provincial, but seeing more of that and
not just in FPTs or traditional committee sense, but really working
together as colleagues, being able to reach out and go
"Hey, you've got this challenge too at a different level.
What are you doing and how can we learn and work together
and be a better overall government at all levels?"
ELIZABETH: Yeah, absolutely.
ELIZABETH: Aside from... if we look at the private sector, I'll also include academia there,
as resources and partners in our digital journey, there's different ways
we have to look at how we do that. One thing we're doing with... we're also at the PSC
we're a member of the CIO strategy Council, where we have public and private CIOs
coming together talking about the issues. A lot of the issues we talk about isn't
technology or specific technologies, it's people, it's culture, it's talent, it's how do
we attract and help nurture the talent within our organizations, as well as
the workforce of the future.
So there are some opportunities here, beyond just buy and sell if you will,
that are going to be so cornerstone to the success of
everyone from a digital perspective that if we don't do it together
nobody will get there.
HOLLY: Well, I think it's been awesome and I would echo that one of the things
that I think we miss out on is we bring private sector in as a contractor, or as a
consultant, or as a contract in government, but what we aren't doing is
leveraging those skills and knowledge to bring it back in-house and make sure our
workforce is the smarter and the stronger as we finish that work.
And I think events like these give us an opportunity to connect with people who
are doing work with government, who are familiar with the government environment,
but bring skills that we don't have. But again, just to build on that, I think what
we need to do is make sure that those skills aren't walking in and then walking out
and that we can build a stronger strategic partnership with
industry by saying "When you come in leave the world a better place when you go"
and help our employees be able to reach further out and do more.
So I think that's one way, and then from the academia perspective, I really do think
that there's an opportunity for us to look at what the economy is,
what the trends are in the workforce and work with them to understand what the
barriers are for people getting into those educational opportunities,
finding placements, bringing in interns, because they're keen. They want to do work.
They're motivated to get that experience and really the skills that we're talking
about in tech are all those new trends and what a great place to get them but
from the youth and the folks who are entering the workforce.
Bring them in. They make us smarter. They make us look better
and hopefully we provide an opportunity for a career for them as they go forward.
ELIZABETH: I think today has been a great success.
I think just even getting together with our colleagues
from the province, with the KPMG, our chair, and it was really
an opportunity for us to see what's similar and you'll see even from the
panel that we were on together that we're all facing a lot of the...
either the same challenges or we have the same opportunities ahead of us.
So it was really great. I think it's an important day to come together.
HOLLY: And I think what's neat about the Public Sector Network events as well is that as
you go to a few of them you connect with different people in different regards,
but you find out that the passions extend to the next event.
So you might meet one in a leadership role and then you find out that they actually
have a technology lead and you work with them there.
And I think that that's powerful.
I found out that one of the vendors, industry folk, in this part of this show
is actually meeting with our CISO on Friday to do a leadership podcast.
So I connected with the two of them and so I think it's a really great way to
build new relationships and strengthen the Canadian economy because really
that's... government's there to do that and and to help inspire it.