The Functional Government Podcast
The Functional Government Podcast explores why many government services are slow, outdated, or just plain broken, and how some countries have made them efficient. Hosts discuss digital government, covering everyday tasks like paying taxes, renewing passports, and claiming benefits online. They highlight Canada's decline in global digital government rankings and seek lessons from other countries that have built better systems. The show aims to understand how government can be made functional again, drawing on examples from around the world.
Episodes
Unsticking half a trillion dollars in property transactions
Alberta's Fouad Jallouli on dragging title transfer into the digital age.In Alberta, $340 million in real estate every day moves through a system that, until recently, was built on paper, fax machines, and processes so old that some of them weren’t even documented anymore. When COVID hit, the province’s land titles system collapsed. By December 2022, a straightforward title transfer that shou
When a democratic process becomes a spam target
Regulations.gov is a public feedback platform where citizens can comment on how laws affect them. It's democracy in action. But it's also drinking from a firehose, which Aaron Meyers was asked to fix.In the US, there’s a platform for public comment. Canada has one too: the Canada Gazette, “the official newspaper of the Government of Canada.” These platforms are how the government tells c
Why do I have so many government logins?
There are hundreds of different ways to log into the government of Canada. A citizen has to use different systems for benefits claims, taxes, passport renewal, business registration, title transfer, and so on. How can it be so hard to just have one login we use to interact with government?Turns out, very hard. Canada's tried to fix this. There's even a system called GCKey that works acro
Ukraine built a digital government app, from scratch, in 5 years, during a war
When Ukranian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy ran for office, one of his campaign promises was "a simple government app." In 2019, the country launched a really simple first app: your driver's license and registration on your smartphone. At the time, Ukranian citizens had dozens of different versions of the same information scattered across many departments. But Diia, as the new app w
Digital ID, single-sign-on, and what government knows about you
Digital ID is a spicy topic. Some view it as a slippery slope to the surveillance state, invoking images of Big Brother. Others claim that digital identity will magically unlock government services. The truth, as is often the case, is more nuanced.The government already knows plenty about you, and much of that information is outdated or wrong. Signing into government services is inconsistent and m
Quand la paperasse fait craquer le système
On tient parfois le transport pour acquis. Quand on peut toucher un écran et recevoir, une semaine plus tard, un produit venant de l’autre bout du monde, c’est facile d’oublier l’incroyable logistique qui se trouve entre les deux. Transports Canada est au cœur du transport aérien, terrestre et maritime, et bon nombre de ses services permettent à ces livraisons de continuer à circuler. L’une des r
When the paperwork breaks down the building
We sometimes take transportation for granted. When you can tap a screen and have something from around the world show up a week later, it’s easy to overlook the incredible stack of logistics that’s in the middle. Transport Canada is at the center of air, land, and sea travel, and many of its services keep those deliveries coming.One of the tasks that Transport Canada handles is marine safety and s
The wisdom to know the difference
Michael Wernick worked as a public servant for decades. His career culminated in a term as the Clerk of the Privvy Council—the most senior public servant in Canada. But before that, he had a front-row seat to Canada’s constitutional negotiations, and the crisis that almost tore the country apart.So when he says you have to accept what won’t change, and work with what will, he speaks from experienc
Is it Canada's Estonia moment?
If you spend more than five minutes talking to governments about modernization, someone will inevitably mention Estonia. The country's vast sprawl and relatively small population made it a natural fit for digital government, because it was prohibitively expensive to deliver services to tiny towns and far-off citizens. Now you can complete virtually any government task, from paying taxes to re
Canada tried to fix passports a decade ago. Here's what happened.
Canada's been trying to fix the passport system for a long time. Back in 2013, a small team of designers, developers, and policy experts got together to modernize the application process. They took a lean, iterative approach, focusing on the simplest fixes to the biggest problems first. This meant addressing boring things that offered huge improvements: they spent six months tweaking and test
How Ireland reformed passport applications
A decade ago, Ireland's passport service was in the same place as Canada: long queues, paper processes, and spiking delays. And then they decided to fix it.The country started small: a reservation tool to book time in the office freed up workers, letting them tackle the backlog. Then online renewals for adults, then children. Eventually, online applications with your identity certified by you
The problem with passports
Before 1970, if you asked for a passport, the government just believed you. But after 9/11, Passport Canada—a small, self-funding department that printed little blue booklets—found itself at the forefront of international security. After multiple failed attempts at modernization, and two entirely predictable backlogs that delayed hundreds of thousands of passports, Canada is finally launching a li
Breaking our own rules with Senator Colin Deacon
In Canada, there are 134 ways to apply for federal grants and loans. They aren't connected, so a Canadian has to try them all, like whack-a-mole. If you don't qualify for one, you have no idea why another might be perfect. Using a service like this isn't easy, either. The Federal government has 270 separate online services, which you sign into with 60 unique usernames and passwords
We can have nice things: Coding Canada's Services with Dorothy Eng
If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire—Code for Canada? Launched in 2017, this nonprofit works alongside government to build better services. We sit down with CEO Dorothy Eng to understand the structural and cultural challenges that stop government from delivering. Despite antiquated systems, "that's not how we do it" attitudes,
How the rest of the world does its taxes with Dr. Fabrizio Santoro
After learning about Canada's attempts to modernize the tax system, it was time to see how the rest of the world does it. In this episode, we sit down with Dr. Fabrizio Santoro, an expert on taxation who helps countries around the world design and implement taxation. We dive into a number of countries' systems, including Uganda's complete overhaul of registration, data collection, a
Why Canadian Income Tax is complicated with Alex MacEachern and Paul Craig
There's no government service that touches every citizen the way taxes do. Every April, millions of Canadians lose a weekend preparing their taxes, often with the help of paid software tools. Yet elsewhere in the world, there's no tax season—or you simply approve the pre-filled return the government sends you.There are plenty of reasons why it is this way. Taxes are the easiest way for t
Making Digital Functional with Ryan Androsoff
It's easy to criticize government, but making public services functional is hard. Nobody set out to build cumbersome, confusing processes. Bureaucracy happened for what were, at the time, good reasons. But they became gradually, inexorably complex. Why haven't other countries fallen into this trap? To help me understand how we got here—and how to move forward—I sit down with Ryan Androso
Welcome to the Functional Government Podcast!
Your host, Alistair Croll kicks off what promises to be a deep dive into the rabbit hole of government inefficiency in the hopes of getting to the bottom of how we can make Canadian government functional again.
