Sean Boots

For some spicier takes!

Update: On November 3, 2025, Yukoners voted YES to ranked voting. 🎉 More than 56% of plebiscite votes were in favour of the “yes” option, to switch to a ranked voting system as recommend by the Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform.

Later this year, alongside the next Yukon territorial election, we’re having a plebiscite on electoral reform in the Yukon.

In early April, the Yukon government announced that it would no longer be using X (formerly Twitter) in response to new US tariffs taking effect.

Back in March I wrote about the elimination of the United States government’s two leading digital government teams.

It’s hard to know where to start.

I’m really thrilled that our research article on government IT procurement was recently published in Canadian Public Administration.

On Wednesday, July 24, Prof.

These two videos are a small celebration of why people choose public service careers.

Back in March I gave a presentation at one of Civic Tech Toronto’s weekly hacknights.

To John Hannaford, your team, and colleagues across the federal public service: Below are a set of radical (but implementable) ideas that would make the public service better equipped to handle the challenges of today and tomorrow.

This morning I gave a keynote presentation at FWD50, Canada’s leading digital government conference.

It’s been almost a year since I stopped using Twitter on a regular basis.

Conversations around “state capacity” – can government organizations do big things?

This past week wildfires forced the full evacuation of Yellowknife, the capital of the Northwest Territories, as well as many other communities both nearby and across the territory.

This past week I started work with the Government of Yukon, wrapping up almost seven years since rejoining the federal government and the team that became the Canadian Digital Service.

Hybrid work is here to stay, which – for all of us as public servants – means a lot of hours in Teams meetings.

Deepika Grover is a strategist at Finance Canada, a member of the Free Agents program, and a long-time practitioner and advocate for equity, inclusion and anti-racism work in the federal public service.

Update: As of May 1, 2023, a tentative agreement was reached between PSAC and TBS.

Nick Wise is a long-time technology leader in the Canadian public service, most recently serving as the Chief Information Officer of Public Safety Canada.

Shannah Segal and Sheena Samuel lead the experience design and technology chapters, respectively, at the Ontario Digital Service (ODS).

Over the past few weeks I’ve gradually been migrating from Twitter to Mastodon, an open-source, federated social network.

Sameer Vasta is a founding member of the Ontario Digital Service and one of the kindest human beings I know.

Unfortunately, I won’t be able to present in-person at FWD50 next week.

Ryan Hum is the Chief Information Officer and VP of Data at the Canada Energy Regulator (CER), a federal agency based in Calgary, Alberta.

Dan Hon’s newsletter (which is excellent) had a great anecdote last week about the New York City Sanitation Department hiring McKinsey to study and design a procurement for trash containerization.

Christopher Scipio is a long-time champion for a more diverse, equitable, and anti-racist public service.

(The answer is: about $4.6 billion dollars in the most recent fiscal year.)

Aubrie McGibbon is a long-time open data and public sector innovation expert with the Nova Scotia government.

There’s been a lot of interest in adopting agile practices in the Canadian government over the past few years.

In the federal public service, so many of the building blocks of digital government and tech modernization are thanks to Chris Allison.

A few years back I remember reading about bike infrastructure improvements in Seville, Spain, where the city had built 80 kilometres of protected bicycle lanes in 18 months.

Public service departments’ “return to office” plans have been a hot topic over the past few weeks.

Madelaine Saginur and Melissa Toutloff work at the Privacy Management Division for Health Canada and PHAC.

Beth Fox is a service designer and digital strategy lead at the Nova Scotia Digital Service.

I wrote this piece in April, suggested by some friends who used to work as enterprise architects.

A couple of months ago I wrote a post on my hopes for the future of digital identity in Canada.

Honey Dacanay is a digital government legend in Canada – part of the founding team at the Ontario Digital Service, and an early leader of the CSPS Digital Academy.

A few weeks ago I was part of the second English-language episode of the FYN Unscripted podcast, organized and run by the Federal Youth Network.

I’m really thrilled to be kicking off this series of blog posts with Rumon Carter, a hero of mine for years since I first saw his work with the BC Dev Exchange.

It’s been more than two years now since I started blogging here.

Last week, Kathryn May published an article in Policy Options titled “Speaking truth to power discouraged in public service”.

It’s April, so like most Canadians, I spent a lot of time logging in to the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) and other government websites.

Update: Last week the prime minister announced new senior leadership at SSC.

Last week I was invited to be a panelist for the Canada School of Public Service’s Spring 2022 Digital Accelerator Demo Day, along with Manu Kabahizi, Nadine Davis, and Kathy Graham.

During my Public Servant-in-Residence term at Carleton University, I’ll be working with Prof.

This past week I officially joined Carleton University as a Public Servant-in-Residence (PSIR), working with Prof.

(More on my Public Servant-in-Residence work to come next week.)

Update: As of May 18, 2023, a tentative agreement was reached between CAPE and TBS.

Last week the FWD50 team launched their annual survey on the future of digital government.