Honey Dacanay, Director-General for Digital Policy and Performance at the Treasury Board Secretariat of Canada’s Office of the Chief Information Officer

1. How do you use technology/policy to improve citizens’ lives? Tell us about your role or organisation.

I am currently the Director-General for Digital Policy and Performance at the Treasury Board Secretariat of Canada’s Office of the Chief Information Officer. My team is responsible for the government’s Policy on Service and Digital and Canada’s Digital Standards, which set out minimum expectations to ensure that Government of Canada services are secure, trustworthy and easy-to-use.

My work does not have a direct impact on citizens’ lives, but my mission (and that of my team's) is to ensure that the people who are working on those services are set up to succeed.

2. What was the most impactful project you worked on this year?

The two most impactful projects I worked on this year are around the measurement of internal administrative burden. Our team started to focus on removing administrative burdens or red tape within the government so that teams can deliver services more quickly.

We exposed some of the onerous approvals processes and were able to make the case to right size how we do governance internally.

The other was to change the way our team used data to see how the government’s investments in people, technology and data assets are doing and to be able to manage risk more proactively.

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The above projects sound very “back-office”, but in government, that tends to be what stands in the way of delivery.

3. What was one unexpected learning from 2024?

I didn’t expect to see or hear so many people care so much about the internal workings of government. I appreciate that there finally is recognition that when internal policies and processes are broken, it will manifest (sometimes very catastrophically) externally.

4. What’s a tool or technique you’re excited to explore in 2025?

I do want to pick up on work that I was really interested in but didn’t have the opportunity to pursue in 2024, which is Rules as Code. There are lots of potential applications inside the government.

5. Everybody’s talking about AI today – give us your hot take on AI and what it means for the public sector.

I am the person who will need to break the bad news and say that AI will not solve many public sector problems; if anything, it will expose all the cracks in the foundation.

6. What are your priorities for 2025?

My priorities for 2025 are to really reorient our existing policy suite so that it helps the Government of Canada deliver better services at scale. That is more exciting than it sounds. Policy and processes are how we codify in an organisation what is valued, and I want to make sure that if we value better service delivery, our policy suite reflects it.

I also want to work more closely with departmental delivery teams and make sure that we have a consistent feedback loop for our work, and that they see a difference in terms of their day-to-day as a result of our work.

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7. What advice do you have for public sector innovators?

The advice I would give to other public sector innovators is to remember they’re not alone. Our problems span across jurisdictional boundaries. There are so many communities of public servants wanting to make things better.

8. Who inspires you today?

I am inspired by many public servants in delivery teams who are doing everything they can to make things better:

One is Tamara Srzentic, Minister of Public Administration in Montenegro who lifts others as her way of doing things.

Another person I admire is Gulsanna Mamadieva, whose work in the Ukraine shows what is possible for so many others.

In Canada, it is Liz Dussault and Daphnee Nostrome, and their work improving public-facing services at Service Canada.