Aaron, we can agree to disagree. Like you said, Benay has been in his position for 3 months or so. And as you pointed out, you’ve heard a LOT out of the CIOB over the past 3 months. This is exactly why I wrote the piece. What comes out of CIOB in the social media is just a collection of buzzwords and call to arms for fluff consultations, and there’s absolutely nothing being done that follows an established blueprint for success by other governments similar in scale.
Sure, he was successful at Sci & Tech Museum, but think about that setup. He came in 2014, and and had the full benefit of funding for a full reset (including a physical rebuild because of the moulding situation) of an organization that hasn’t had an update in close to 50 years. That’s a setup for success if I’ve ever seen one. Any reset like that will magnify the impact of the person in charge, even though improvement in that situation happens almost by default as it’s a whole different era in technology from the time the museum was originally opened. Very similar to the Estonia government part that i referred to in the post. He’s not going to reset anything in the GoC without an individual department that he can build from the ground up. Most of the CIOs he works with are the same CIOs that were there before him, and have the same ITC teams mired in mediocrity and stuck years behind technology. 2 day CIO kumbayas are not gonna fix our problems.
Messina’s background was accounting. Benay’s is sales. Pardon me for thinking WTF? I want service design professionals in charge. I want someone who deeply cares about the way services are created for Canadian citizens, regardless of whether the path is buzzworthy or not. I would’ve liked someone from GDS/18F/USDS etc. who has been through this at scale. What’s the point of waiting before addressing his approach? If he would’ve quietly went and also got stuff done, and had actually something to show in his social media diarrhea, it would’ve been fine. But it’s all sweet nothing. Telling CIOs that we have the potential to be the most technologically progressive government in the world given our current large scale IT project failures is beyond delusional, and exactly the same message that was broadcasted out of CIOB for the past 10 years.
