I’m not criticizing your juniors, I’m criticizing the hiring decision makers as it’s publicly stated that you’re following a GDS/18F blueprint, yet those entities had many employees (both senior and junior) with a proven track record in delivery (not policy) in the private sector. People who had working experience and belief in a different reality (and system) that’s the opposite of being pigeonholed in a departmental monolith like GoC’s TBS/CBSA/etc are. I still believe that’s a worthy narrative to consider.

And don’t get me wrong, Chris Govias’ hiring was fantastic, but that’s one dude, out of 23 people, with large scale private sector service design delivery experience (if the number is actually slightly higher, my LinkedIn stalking skills are failing me).

As far as you standing up for your team, I respect that. But I would venture to argue that defending hiring largely from within departments with horrible service delivery track records puts CDS in a bad light to those on the outside considering whether to throw their names in the hat. It clearly projects that you give priority to existing public servants regardless of their shipping history (these are words I heard on and on again in the last couple of months in conversations with people on the fence about throwing their names in the hat from within and from outside the GoC).

I’m going to reiterate, for me the key here is to stop telling people platitudes. You want some of us to join you, tell us what you’re working on. Tell us what you’re thinking of working on (specifically what, not “you’re gonna change the world blah blah”, we already know we want to do that, you don’t need you to sell us on it). And hire some people we can self identify with and we want to run with (and btw, you all seem like very nice people, I’m talking professional profiles here).

I’m sorry you’re taking these as personal attacks. They’re more like semi-sarcastic interpretations of the stir of CDS echoes permeating outside the firewall. And you’re absolutely right, my tone is completely out of line… for government policy memos.