Three principles to help the Canadian government’s resiliency before the next crisis

Over the next couple of days, policy-makers and stakeholders will gather in Ottawa to discuss lessons that can be gleaned from the COVID-19 pandemic for government and its ability to continue operating for citizens in times of crisis.

Resilient Institutions, a conference organized by the Institute on Governance and the Institute for Research on Public Policy, comes at an important time when the stakes have never been higher.

Canada’s government, like others, is racing to address a growing list of critical challenges including an aging workforce and growing demand for remote work, national security and cyber concerns, the imperative to digitize and competing demands on government resources.

Failure to tackle these issues would not only relegate our federal and provincial governments to second-tier status in public service delivery, but are existential in nature.

I’ve been helping technology companies do business with governments for 25 years, and have never seen a more perilous situation. The good news is that I’ve also never seen industry and government so resolved to address the challenges.

The challenges are great, and will take time to address. But there are some fundamental principles that will guide our institutions towards becoming more resilient and ready to respond to crises.  . Here are three:

Get online

The federal government needs to build an intuitive nationwide public sector marketplace that serves as a one stop procurement portal that supports all levels of government in an agile way, including connecting buyers and sellers.

The recently-created Canadian Collaborative Procurement Initiative, which provides federal procurement tools to all levels of government, is a good start, as is CanadaBuys.ca.  But these efforts need to be broadened, and include more innovative thinking around automation and single-shop access.

Adopt what works

If other countries have already done it well, adopt their best practices, approaches and solutions. We don’t need to be innovators on everything, especially during a crisis.

Canada’s medical device licensing process is rigid and lengthy and lacks interoperability with other countries. When it makes sense, we need to empower government officials to turn on fail-proof switches that allow us to buy from abroad.

Our inability to manufacture masks and swabs during the pandemic is evidence of the need to rethink how we do short-term procurement.

Invest in advanced manufacturing

Even as we introduce more flexibility for immediate and unexpected needs, our long-term focus needs to be on a strategy that ensures governments can continue to provide public services, even during crisis. Less vulnerability and more resiliency, in other words.

For example, Canada is a laggard in terms of investing in commercial level 3D printing, particularly in the healthcare space – a critical technology as the world moves quickly to just-in-time manufacturing. This strategy also needs to include fostering small and medium-sized businesses, which are at the heart of hub networks and industrial ecosystems.

This is a potentially expensive strategy that could require some redundancy. The government will absolutely need to play a central role in providing incentives for production capacity, as well as a market for these businesses through procurement. The alternative – in a world of polycrisis – is a repeat of the pandemic shortages that almost certainly lead to thousands of unnecessary deaths.