Are you the Canadian Digital Service’s next CEO?

At the Canadian Digital Service our mission is to change government to serve people better. It’s no short order, but we know there are people out there who are as obsessed as we are about making government services easy for people to use. We’re looking for a new CEO to help us scale our growth and impact. We’re looking for someone to put the wind at public servants’ backs and make it easier for everyone in government to practice modern software development and service delivery. If that’s you, we’d love for you to apply.

The story so far

In 2017, the Canadian Digital Service (CDS) launched as an experiment to help modernize the way the Government of Canada designs and delivers digital services. We were so lucky to have welcomed Aaron Snow as our first CEO in 2018. With his support and leadership, we grew from a small team crammed into a couple of training rooms to a team of over 115 tech professionals working across Canada.

In our first four years, we:

• helped slow the spread of COVID-19 by shipping COVID Alert, an exposure notification service, in partnership with the Ontario Digital Service and Health Canada;
• helped almost two million people Find Financial Help During COVID-19 in partnership with Service Canada;
• helped Veterans Find Benefits and Services, in partnership with Veterans Affairs Canada;
• helped public servants easily send over 28 million emails and text messages to the people who use their service by launching GC Notify. It now supports over 180 programs across government.
• made it easier for public servants to put users first by updating policies to distinguish design research from public opinion research
• published the Government of Canada’s first Vulnerability Disclosure Policy when we launched Covid Alert

This year, Budget 2021 recognized the work completed and the importance of continuing to make sure that we can keep changing government to serve people better. With that major achievement unlocked, Aaron stepped down as CEO to pursue other exciting opportunities. We’re grateful to him for empowering us to do this important work, and for encouraging the Government of Canada to do something different, so we can keep putting the needs of the people who use our services first.

The next chapter

We need someone fearless to lead us through our next phase of growth and impact. We’ll soon open applications for a CEO who will help us set a strategic direction to keep changing government to serve people better.

This person will empower the team to do its best work, including our partnership and platform business units. They’ll help us scale our growth, continuously experiment and improve, and build a more diverse and inclusive organization and practice. They’ll build relationships with leaders across government and the private sector. And because they live the CDS Values, they’ll coach and inspire leaders along the way.

The cliffhanger

In coming weeks, the job posting will go live on our website and jobs.gc.ca and we’ll accept applications. Until then, feel free to reach out to me with any questions about the role.

We can’t wait to write the next chapter of our story with you!