We also interact and live in more of a digital world. We’re starting to develop more and more of a digital toolbox, a set of tools that we use to work in a digital way. For example, right now, we’re using Skype. This is an example of a digital tool.

It’s the idea of a toolbox, a digital toolbox. We use tools to help us do things more effectively and more efficiently. We develop a set of tools that we use regularly to help us build bookshelves, build a house, do all sorts of different things.

That’s the vision of the Open Accessible Digital Workspace. That’s conceptual. Another metaphor I like to use to make sense of what it is that we’re talking about, we’re talking about this Open Accessible Digital Workspace, this digital public square.

It becomes a public good, a public service, to all of society and all of the world. By building it together, and we can create a diverse and inclusive space for all sorts of voices and different perspectives. This digital public square can be used and reused, and adapted and ...

Through that, that investment, we can raise the bar not just ourselves and our team, but for everybody. That’s the benefit of open source. Anyone can add services into it. They can use the data to make better decisions.

The workspace is a suite integrated, accessible tools that connect people to each other and information they need to work better. It’s something that we can fund and contribute to new and existing open source projects.

What is the Open Accessible Digital Workspace? I like to think of the Open Accessible Digital Workspace as the digital public square, the public square of the digital world. It’s something that’s based on open source software, open standards.

There’s a huge opportunity here if we start collectively coming together, and solving them together, as opposed to trying to solve them in our silos. This is the opportunity that exists, and this is the hope we’re trying to capture with the Open Accessible Digital Workspace.

Particularly other governments, both within Canada, the many different levels of government, but also around the world, meeting people who work in governments in different countries, and realizing that we’re all trying to solve the same problems.

We don’t need to keep all trying to solve the same problem independent of each other. The outcome of this is that there’s an increased value that we can create with reduced cost. Something that really highlighted this problem for me, or this opportunity for me, is my role in ...

Public spaces are so key to democracy. What does a public space look like in the digital world that we now live in? There’s an opportunity to, now that we’re more interconnected and can share information, to build things once to the benefit, not just of our own team, but ...

It might exist on the other side of the world. We now have the tools to help capture and harness this knowledge to the society and the collective world. We’re trying to create an open and inclusive, diverse, digital public space.

We can find, recruit, and nurture talent, help connect skills with opportunities to use those skills to make change. We use the crowd to solve issues that matter to our citizens. Nowadays, we realize that the answer to our problems might not be within the knowledge of the actual team ...

We really need to do better. We need to be better at government. There’s also lots of opportunity here. We could do so much together. We could work, co-create with citizens and experts across sectors in a way that we never could before.

We’ve been very siloed. Government, society’s become more networked, and we’re still working in our silos. The world is changing faster and faster, and we’re still behind the curve, slow to react, and slow to change and keep up with the pace of change.

As people, we’re much more engaged in shaping our world and personalizing our experience to the world around to better meet our needs and our desires. This is something that government has been slow to respond to.

That’s had huge ramifications on how we experience the world, how we interact with the world, and the role government plays within that. Our society’s become more networked as a result. There’s way more data floating around that we can work with.

I think the problem we’re trying to solve with this is that the context that we live in has shifted. We now live a digital age. The majority of our interactions, and how we engage and experience the world, is now mediated and moderated by digital technology. Case in point, ...

We’re really trying to reflect on how government can work together to empower, connect, and work with people to co-create with each other, citizens to create a better world. First things first, what’s the problem we’re trying to solve?

The way I like to think of the Open Accessible Digital Workspace is it’s an example of open government in practice, taking the concepts and the theories, trying to apply it in how government works on a day to day basis.

I don’t want to talk too much about the digital standards, per se, but rather on a specific project or initiative that I’m involved in that we believe is helping -- or we hope is helping -- model what it means to be a digital nation. That is the Open ...

This is our second iteration. There was just a launch a couple weeks ago. It’s evergreen. That means it’s going to be continually changing and growing as our context shifts, and as we learn more through doing and trying to live out these standards, we’ll get a better understanding of ...

We got a whole bunch of feedback both internally, but also from all sorts of different community organizations and groups to help us figure out what should these digital principles, these digital standards be.

Now, we’re calling them digital standards, that will help give some direction and help us as a government become more digital. This is our second iteration. In the fall, the final version of this was made and sent out to the world.

That’s not necessarily what makes something digital. It’s much deeper. It’s more of a cultural change, a cultural transformation. To that end, one of the things that we’ve been working on as the government of Canada is a set of digital principles.

As well as we’ve joined the D7, the Digital Seven, which are seven countries, governments around the world, that are putting a big focus on how do we become more digital as governments? The key thing about digital is it’s not just putting government services on a website.

In the last year or two, we’ve also shifted into more of a leadership role on the international stage. We are hugely honored to become co-chairs of the Open Government Partnership for this year. Hopefully, I’ll see some of you guys at the summit we’re hosting in May for the ...

The focus of the mandate of our government for the last three years is, how do we make Canada into a digital nation? How do we make the government of Canada a digital government? We have a new CIO who’s really focused on transforming the way our government works on ...

Perfect, all right. Good, excellent. This presentation’s about imagining a digital nation. This is a topic that has become a very hot topic here in Canada over the last couple years. We’re really trying to bring our government into the 21st century.

Are you guys able to see my screen OK?

I think my introduction was done a bit earlier, but just again, my name’s Derek Alton. I’m part of the strategic partnerships team for the digital collaboration division for the government of Canada. Let’s start this presentation here. I’ll share screen.

Oh, boy. Hello, everyone. Hopefully, the connection holds. It’s crazy to think that right now, I’m calling you guys from the other side of the world. Good afternoon. It is currently 3:53 here in Canada in the morning. I’m very excited to be joining you guys here today.

Yes, hello. Can you guys hear me?