Sean Boots

I’m not quite sure how to start this piece.

Another year has gone by, and it’s been a weird one.

If you’re working in government communications, you’ve probably come across “vanity URLs” before.

Paul Craig (one of the best developers I know) recently wrote a blog post on the massive amount of compliance documentation his team produced to launch a small public website in a Canadian government department.

This year’s FWD50 conference was a couple weeks ago.

“Shadow IT” is one of those terms that you hear tossed around by government IT executives on a regular basis.

Years ago, I interviewed for a policy internship with one of Canada’s intelligence agencies.

Update: In December 2021, I updated the methodology used in the end-to-end services analysis.

Matthew Cain in the UK published a great blog post recently titled “Leadership in a digital age”.

Monday is election day – don’t forget to vote if you haven’t already!

Our team often uses Jekyll and GitHub Pages to build micro-sites for project documentation.

One of the themes of this blog is that access to modern tools has a huge impact on public servants’ productivity and effectiveness.

People who know me know that I’m not a big fan of rules.

Heather and I moved to the Yukon about a year and a half ago.

“Enterprise” is a fascinating term, in that it’s widely (and aspirationally) used in government and organizational IT, and also made fun of frequently by digital transformation advocates.

Jump to the screenshots Online advertising is a fascinating thing.

Lee Berthiaume from the Canadian Press wrote a fascinating article last week, based on an internal Department of National Defence report on IT support.

Update: This is the 2020 “Is this blocked in my department” year in review.

Cyd Harrell posted a great Twitter thread last week, that friends of mine will know is definitely my kind of content: Archived tweet from Cyd Harrell The article that accompanies that thread – Is innovation really making cities better?

A couple weeks ago, I was able to tune in to FWD50, a Canadian digital government conference now in its fourth year.

A few months ago I wrote about how busy the summer ended up being.

Back in January, I wrote a post about bridging the technology-policy gap.

A few weeks ago, there was a great profile in Maclean’s of the person behind the CAFinUS Twitter account.

We’ve all been there, fellow public servants.

One of the long-held norms of government IT is the perceived benefit of COTS solutions: “commercial, off the shelf” software.

One of GDS’s early design principles was “Make things open: it makes things better.”

Since the start of the year, one of my goals was to write a new blog post here every few weeks.

Back in March, some friends from the Ottawa civic tech community reached out.

The past couple weeks have seen an outpouring of grief, protests, and calls for change following the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers.

Also published on Apolitical As many of you will know, something I’m very interested in is the value of public servants’ time.

Delivering good services to the public, in the internet era, depends on designing and developing good software.

It’s been two months and a bit since the COVID-19 pandemic dramatically adjusted life in Canada.

One of my all-time favourite blog posts is from Leah Lockhart, titled ‘I don’t know how to use a computer!’

It’s been about a month now since federal government employees have been asked to work from home, to reduce the potential spread of the COVID-19 pandemic.

As governments and organizations around the world have grappled with the COVID-19 pandemic, their efforts to reuse and remix others’ work have stood out as a bright spot: Archived tweet from John Michael McGrath Seeing this take place has been really enco…

One of the most persistent myths in Canadian government IT is that storing your data in Canada protects it against eavesdropping or interception by foreign governments.

It’s been a strange, unfamiliar, and in a lot of ways distressing past few weeks for people.

I read a great post this week from Robin Rendle, Systems, Mistakes, and the Sea.

My last post talks about how government services aren’t working.

The government’s legacy IT systems have been in the news recently.

If you work in government IT, you’ve probably heard this before.

Working in technology in government, the word “agile” comes up a lot.

If you’re a public servant who is thinking about blogging about your work, you should do it!

If you’re creating documents (which, as a public servant, you …probably do often), one of the most important things you can do is to use real headings.

One of the terms that comes up often in digital government work is “shipping”.

Nicole Wong wrote a great piece last month titled, “Building a Tech Policy Movement”.

With a new Minister and new Mandate Letters, it’s an exciting time to be working in digital government in the federal government.

In mid-October, Heather and I moved to Whitehorse.

Let’s just say, it’s been a long time coming.