Unleashing potential: The transformative power of hackathons

March 8th is International Women’s Day, a pivotal moment to reflect on the strides made and the paths yet to be forged toward gender equality. This year, the Government of Canada (GC) has underscored the theme “Invest in Women: Accelerate Progress”. This acts as both a reminder and a call to action: to foster environments that champion inclusivity for women and non-binary individuals, in order to build a future where everyone can thrive. Despite the remarkable surge in technological advancements and the escalating demand for digital expertise, only 24% of Canada’s tech workforce is made up of individuals from marginalized gender identities (trans, cis women, Two-Spirit, gender nonconforming, and non binary individuals) – 2023 data.

To learn how building a culture of innovation and trust can create a more equitable workplace, we sat down with Jumana Bahrainwala and Sylvia McLaughlin, two developers from the Canadian Digital Service (CDS). Not only are Jumana and Sylvia working to improve services across the GC by developing tools that are accessible and secure, they’re also interested in building a culture of learning, curiosity, and innovation here at CDS. Together, they ran an AI Hackathon with teams across CDS late last year to explore how we might use generative AI in our work. This International Women’s Day, we want to highlight the work Jumana and Sylvia are doing to foster creativity and inclusion here at CDS, and across the GC.

Unlocking potential

We asked both Jumana and Sylvia to shed some insight on themselves and the beginning of their individual IT careers. For Jumana, her career initially started in finance, but after a co-op stint as a software developer, she was hooked. “Not only did I enjoy it, I spent hours trying to get better and working on my skills outside of work. I then started taking all the computer science courses I could in university and haven’t looked back since”, Jumana shares.

Similarly, Sylvia’s trajectory took an unexpected turn from her original plans of pursuing mathematics. Her introduction to tech came during a university lecture, where she opted for a computer science elective. “I chose a computer science course as an elective and really enjoyed the challenging problem-solving in programming – it felt like solving a new puzzle every day. Plus, it seemed to offer better job opportunities than the Math degree I was originally thinking about pursuing.”

A culture of empowering innovation

CDS’s goal to empower government to serve people better involves building digital products that solve common problems. This requires an extra level of innovation and out-of-the-box thinking that can often be stalled by bureaucratic red tape (more on this later). We asked both Jumana and Sylvia to speak on the innovation culture at CDS. “Innovation is constantly encouraged on the team!” Jumana shared. “I love that developers look for open source tools to add to our workflows. Our Project Manager (PM) thinks of ways we can serve our users better and the design team is always looking at different ideas that might be useful for our context. No one is told no, and folks are encouraged to try new things as long as they keep Personally Identifiable Information (PII) in mind.”

Jumana also shared that the tools used at CDS are similar to those used within the private sector. “We use Github, MacOS (or Windows), AWS, and Slack, and nearly all our repositories are open source.”

Sylvia talked about being drawn to the forward-thinking approach of CDS. For Sylvia, finding job satisfaction while making a positive contribution to society was of the utmost importance. “The commitment to openness at CDS, demonstrated by our practice of making most of our work open and available to the public, greatly appealed to me.”

Sylvia also touched on the importance of encouraging innovation by putting trust in employees. “In our environment, innovation thrives because we have the freedom to choose our technologies (within reasonable limits). This freedom plays a big role in how we develop our solutions.” She continued by adding, “Giving people the right tools enables them to come up with creative and intelligent solutions. Moreover, our approach of adapting open-source tools to meet our specific requirements enhances our ability to innovate and helps us finish projects faster.”

Hackathon – a first of many?

What is a “Hackathon”? It is essentially an event where people meet to engage in collaborative computer programming, either to build or improve a software or digital product. For Sylvia, a hackathon “resembles a burst of creativity where teams work together to solve problems, learn, and compete for prizes with their inventive projects.“ She emphasized that this particular event was “Jumana’s brainchild, which I helped execute.”

As the co-leads of the project, we asked Jumana and Sylvia to share how they got started. “I honestly wanted folks from across CDS to come together and look at Generative AI (GenAI) tools that might be useful in their daily work. There has been a spring of innovation in the AI field, and I wanted CDSers to take advantage of tools that might be out there. I talked to Sylvia about this idea and she was more than happy to help me organize! Together we put together an event where all of the CDS came together to ‘hack’ on projects and discover different GenAI tools”, Jumana explained.

Sylvia emphasized that when they started planning the hackathon, they were aware that people had varying levels of expertise when it comes to these technologies. “We wanted to create a space where attendees could explore AI and see how it could help them in their jobs.”

The event was a half day hackathon aimed at inspiring CDS employees to experiment with AI tools that could improve their work. Sylvia elaborated more on this by adding, “Because the CDS team works across various time zones, we kept the event to just half a day. This time was enough for everyone to learn about the AI technologies we presented. We advertised the event beforehand, brought in mentors for advice, and gave a presentation suggesting AI tools. Then, we organized participants into groups based on their job fields to look into AI tools relevant to their work. At the end of the hackathon, each group shared a brief presentation about the AI tool they explored and how it could be applied in their work setting. The event concluded with all participants voting for the team that showcased the most compelling AI tool and its innovative application, deciding the winner.”

Before the event, Sylvia and Jumana coordinated with the policy and security teams at CDS to ensure compliance measures were met. “We prepared a statement to all participants, cautioning them not to share private information and to follow existing AI policies. Also, at the beginning of the hackathon, a policy advisor gave a short talk explaining what is allowed and what isn’t. This helped guide the participants in using AI tools safely and responsibly, ensuring they didn’t risk any private or secure information.”

Jumana added that there was support from leadership in putting this together. “I found the organization was very supportive of us running with the hackathon idea, most of the challenges stemmed from getting individuals to participate as folks were hesitant on what to expect.”

In a situation where approvals might be tricky to get for such an initiative (especially within a government context), we were curious about ways to convince management teams of participation. Sylvia shed some light on this, “To get support for a hackathon, highlight how it can increase innovation and teamwork, make sure it matches the organization’s goals, and offer a detailed plan that covers any potential concerns.”

A collaborative opportunity

The hackathon created an opportunity for collaborative work within the CDS team and offered opportunities for folks to explore and test AI tools in a safe environment. “It sparked interest in AI, particularly among those who had not previously considered its potential,” Sylvia said. Check out the GC guide for using generative AI if you’re curious about incorporating AI into your team’s workflow.

The event was ultimately a success.

Jumana noted that many people (including non-participants) found it extremely enjoyable and took away some tools that they might use in their daily work.

“I had a ton of folks message me about how it was a really fun and informative event. People really liked that there were mentors they could lean on and how they were encouraged to approach any problem with an AI tool.”

When asked if they would recommend hackathons to GC teams, both responded with great enthusiasm. “Absolutely! It is such a low risk for high reward. You might come away with new products/ tools that might be a game changer for your organization,” Jumana shared.

Sylvia added, “Hackathons are excellent for promoting teamwork, innovation, and creativity. Therefore, I highly recommend them to other teams within the organization.”

Coding equality

Let’s circle back to International Women’s Day 2024. We asked Sylvia for her reflections, and here’s what she shared:

“For women in the tech industry, International Women’s Day is both a celebration of women’s achievements in technology and a reminder of the ongoing challenges in reaching gender equality in the field. It highlights women’s success in IT, encourages more women and girls to enter tech careers, and calls for a supportive and inclusive work environment where women can excel without facing discrimination or bias.”

Remember the stat shared earlier in the blog about the disparity in representation within the tech industry? Employers have a long way to go to bridge this gap and promote inclusive work spaces. The GC has an ongoing commitment to see this through with various initiatives such as Gender-based Analysis Plus, an analytical tool used to support the development of responsive and inclusive policies, programs, and other initiatives. We asked Sylvia for her thoughts on how the GC can better empower women and non-binary developers to explore and run IT initiatives.

“To support women and non-binary developers in IT, the Canadian government should prioritize policies that include everyone, offer mentorship, create educational programs tailored to their needs, and ensure diverse representation. It’s important to have work settings that accommodate different needs and to offer resources that encourage innovation. Keeping these efforts effective means regularly checking in and making necessary changes to meet the specific requirements of those less represented in the tech industry.”

Powering the future

Is your team exploring how AI can improve the delivery of public services? Check out these resources to learn more:

If your team is organizing a hackathon, or if you have other ideas for creating safe environments for creativity and innovation in the GC, please share your story with us!