This article is written by Catherine Clasadonte, MPP Student, Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, University of Toronto and Jonathan Craft, Phd. Associate Professor and founding director of Policy Ready, Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, University of Toronto.

In January, Policy Ready and the Institute for Public Administration launched a new Digital Government Case Study Series. Our first case, which we wrote about in Apolitical, focused on the digital transformation of the Ontario Student Assistance Program, where we highlighted the importance of political leadership, interdisciplinary teams, and underscored the multiple facets of digital government transformation including the interactions among technology, policy, programs, political, and operational realities.

As anyone doing digital work in government will know, it is not without challenges. Our second case, to be released later this month, examines the award winning digital overhaul of Ontario’s Environmental Registry (ERO).

The original ERO platform was established in 1994 making it one of the first digital public consultation services in the world. By 2017, the system upon which the ERO was based became greatly outdated and the Government of Ontario embarked upon an ambitious rebuild.

Redesigning digital

Based on interviews and a focus group with key officials involved in the ERO redesign, the case study highlights the ups and downs of the first full application of the Ontario Digital Government Service Standard. It demonstrates both the value and challenges of user experience and putting people at the heart of an iterative problem-solving process where programs and services are designed and tested in real-time, with real users.

By focusing on policies, acts and regulations, and leaving instruments (permits and approvals) and migration of existing content until later on, the team was able to deliver a MVP quickly releasing the site to the public in February 2018

In the case of the ERO, "the user" was not a singular entity but was rather comprised of both public and internal government users, both of which were diverse groups, the preferences of whom were not well-known ahead of time. During the discovery stage, for example, findings from user research with a wide variety of potential registry users from helped the team make major design and accessibility decisions.

They highlighted that users were frustrated not just with the interface and features of the dated ERO system, but also with the general quality and consistency of the registries public postings. Additionally, internal participants explained that the design of the existing registry was biased to the processes and priorities of the environment ministry and wasn’t easily adaptable to other ministries.

This underscores the need for digital work to be cognizant of the multiple, and often competing user needs and experiences of programs and services.

Getting your team on board

The case provides a richer perspective on how digital government units like the Ontario Digital Service (ODS) work with partners in ministries and departments. In the case, we describe how a multidisciplinary team composed of members from the ODS and the Ontario Ministry of Environment and Climate Change (MECC) was formed and deployed.

The deployment model affords team roles to specific organisational members based on individual skills and knowledge expertise areas that are needed for the creation of a specific digital product. In this way, both MECC and ODS team members came into the project with different perspectives of work processes, expectations, and digital product outcomes.

The integrated team used agile ways of working that were not without their challenges given traditional institutions, processes, and cultures of government.

The actual practices, techniques, and approaches at the heart of digital now co-exist in the broader public sector that, for good and for ill, has its own traditions and ways of working

Working in sprints, with a product manager, and using stand-ups and show and tells were key to the team’s success. Following agile methodologies, the team was able to release over 20 iterations of the ERO without any added costs, sharing their work at bi-weekly show and tell presentations.

By focusing on policies, acts and regulations, and leaving instruments (permits and approvals) and migration of existing content until later on, the team was able to deliver a MVP quickly releasing the site to the public in February 2018.

Ready for scale?

This case study provides an analysis of the ultimate outcomes and major lessons learned for organising digital teams, working with partners in and around government, and the constraints and limitations of digital government. Important questions remain, however, about how scalable these approaches and techniques are given their resource intensity and the discretion and autonomy that executives and managers must provide to teams doing the work.

As governments around the world pour resources into digital government, our aim in publishing this case and the entire Policy Ready/IPAC case study series, is to highlight what’s required to make digital work. The actual practices, techniques, and approaches at the heart of digital now co-exist in the broader public sector that, for good and for ill, has its own traditions and ways of working.

We invite you to take a deeper dive into this award-winning digital redesign. The case will be open access and we also continue to invite governments and officials to continue to get in touch if they want to engage in the digital government case study series. — Catherine Clasadonte and Jonathan Craft

(Picture credit: Death to the stock photo)