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The 311 Podcast, hosted by Paul Bellows, is dedicated to exploring and sharing stories of the people behind digital transformation and organizational change management in Public Service organizations.
20 Episodes
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Historically, we've relied on government and the public sector to regulate the development of society-altering technologies, radio, telephone, automobiles, air travel, broadcast, internet have all come under the slow but steady oversight of the public sector. Even social media is being scrutinized and regions like Australia are beginning to legislate age limits for access. Artificial intelligence is a different animal and it's moving at an exponential rate of development. It also promises ra...
The Heart of Public Service with Pearl Amanfu Today my guest is Pearl Amanfu. Pearl is the Digital Inclusion Officer for Metro Nashville. Although Pearl and I just met, she's the model for the type of person I started this podcast to amplify: the humans who believe deeply in community, human thriving and progress, and are willing to do the hard organizational work to create real change through digital enablement. Borrowing her words, Pearl has a helper heart, and she genuinely wants a...
Today, my guest is Stephanie Deitrick, who is the Enterprise GIS [Geographic Information System] and Open Data Program Manager for the city of Tempe, Arizona. She's also a program director for the Master's of Advanced Study in GIS program at Arizona State University. Stephanie has her PhD in geography from Arizona State and has spent her career building the next generation of data experts with a focus on GIS, but a broader lens on public data. As someone who consults with municipalities...
Transforming the Department of Defence with Savan Kong. Today my guest is Savan Kong. Savan has a unique resume and set of experiences. He was most recently the first ever Customer Experience Officer for the United States Department of Defense. One of the largest organizations of any kind in the world. When the CIO of the DOD tapped Savan to pioneer the new CXO role, Savan brought a design mindset to the job in every way. And in this episode, he's going to share his mindset and m...
Today my guest is Tim Bouma. Tim is Canada's public sector digital identity expert. He's held key roles in the federal government for years and was a key player in the Pan-Canadian Trust Framework, which brought together regional and federal government players to define standards and best practices for digital identity. Tim now sits as a special advisor to Canada's Digital Governance Council, Conseil de Gouvernance Numérique, a member driven nonprofit working on responsible design, arc...
Today, my guest is Tom Henheffer. Tom is the CEO of the Arctic Research Foundation, a non profit organization that facilitates data collection in Canada's Arctic region. The Arctic Research Foundation is an essential ingredient in Canada's civil society, working alongside universities, government, indigenous communities, and industry to build our understanding of this critical global region through research and data collection. The work that Tom and the Arctic Research Foundation does...
Nicole Janssen on Bridging AI Innovation and Government Solutions Nicole is co-CEO of one of Canada's AI powerhouse organizations, AltaML. She's a national business leader and one of our experts in AI. Her firm is also behind the Alberta government's innovative AI research lab, operating as an R&D hub for the big, complex problems that the government hopes AI can help address. If you're not from Canada, and maybe even if you are, you may not know that Canada is an AI pioneer. Some ...
What Digital Transformation for Government Means in 2025 Today, my guest is Vijay Luthra. Vijay is the managing partner of CEVA Global in the UK, and he works to help government organizations in the UK and UAE to develop digital transformation strategies. Given the pace of change, particularly in the US, it's hard to say how long our conversation will remain relevant. It's hard to talk about the political side of government without taking sides, but we did our best to avoid that Vijay i...
Why government organizations must build digital trust. Today, my guest is Kate Burns. Kate is the Executive Director of MetroLab Network, a Washington, DC-based nonprofit that connects local government organizations with universities to bring the latest in scientific research and innovation to the living lab of communities. MetroLab is a partnership ecosystem and runs projects to discover, implement, and scale innovative solutions for local government. Kate has a background in municipal gove...
From Ashes to Solutions: The Phoenix Project Revisited Today, my guest is Alex Benay. Alex has recently returned to the federal service of Canada to lead the modernization of Canada's federal payroll system. Starting in 2009 and launching in 2015. The Phoenix project was meant to replace a 40 year old technology stack and save millions of taxpayer dollars each year. However, after launch it quickly became apparent that there were major inconsistencies and gaps in paying Can...
Scaling Success in Healthcare IT for Alberta Health Services Today, my guest is Penny Rae. Penny is the Chief Information Officer for Alberta Health Services. AHS is the health delivery organization for the province of Alberta in Canada. AHS is the largest health care delivery organization in North America. And with nearly 150,000 employees and contractors, it's one of the top five employers in all of Canada. The IT department alone is 2,500 people. So the scale of Pen...
I am really excited today to be talking to Sophia Hoosein and Jessica McQueen, who are two people that I know and respect and who have agreed to come and talk to us about government organizations trying to make digital change. We're going to talk about power and how you get things done, and I'm just really excited. Thanks to Sophia and Jessica for the open and honest conversation about the actual experience of working in government. -- This is a show about the people that make digital go...
This is The 311 podcast. I'm your host, Paul Bellows. This is a show about the people that make digital government work. If you'd like to find out more, visit yellowpencil.com. Today, my guest is Miki Stricker-Talbot. Miki is responsible for intrepreneurship and strategic design in the citizen services branch at the city of Edmonton. You may ask what intrepreneurship is and my answer is keep listening. That's what we'll be talking about. In addition to organizational design, kindness, priv...
Today my guest is Lawrence Eta, Chief Technology Officer at the City of Toronto. Toronto is the fourth largest municipality in North America, behind Mexico city, New York city, and Los Angeles. Toronto is one of the most multicultural cities in the world. And it's the home of much of Canada's media and cultural community, as well as the headquarters of Canada's five largest banks. Toronto's population is about as diverse as it gets both culturally and economically, and the city faces unique,...
Today, my guest is one of Canada's most influential government technologists. Dominique Bohn is the chief officer and assistant deputy minister at the digital innovation office at the government of Alberta. Dominic has held various executive leadership roles in the government of British Columbia, as well as a director role at global IT leader CGI. Alberta's digital innovation office is a relatively new department at the government of Alberta. It reports to executive council and has been give...
Today, my guest is one of my favorite people in gov tech. Jay Nath is the co-CEO of City Innovate. They're based in San Francisco, where Jay was the former Chief Innovation Officer for the City of San Francisco. City Innovate is a program that Jay founded during his tenure with the city, and it was time to move on, he took the program with him, and he and his colleague Comran Siddique now run cohorts of cities through their matchmaking and procurement platform. They helped cities conne...
Sean Boots, technical advisor at the Canadian Digital Service, joins Paul to share his experience with digital government and bringing modern tools to government workers. Sean Boots: https://sboots.ca/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/seanboots/ This is a show about the people that make digital public service work. If you'd like to find out more, visit the311podcast.com We're going to keep having conversations like this. If you've got ideas of guests we should speak to, send us an email to in...
Norman Mendoza, manager of business and technology innovation at the City of Edmonton, joins Paul to share his experience with open source and open data, and how to make practical use of them within the context of a municipal government. Norman Mendoza on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/normanmendoza/ Norman Mendoza on Twitter: http://twitter.com/normanmendoza This is a show about the people that make digital public service work. If you'd like to find out more, visit the311podcast.co...
Bianca Tomazeli, senior advisor for architecture, security and innovation at Ville du Montreal, joins Paul to share her experience building an open source practice and talks about collaboration, cost management, and long term support. Find out more about Montreal's open source work at: https://github.com/opensourcecities/montreal This is a show about the people that make digital public service work. If you'd like to find out more, visit the311podcast.com We're going to keep having conversa...
Ashley Casovan, AI Global's Executive Director and former Director of Data and Digital for the Government of Canada, joins host Paul Bellows for a frank discussion on the ethics and responsibilities of governments using Artificial Intelligence technology, and the many uses to which A.I. can be put. Government of Canada's Algorithmic Impact Assesment https://open.canada.ca/aia-eia-js/?lang=en Ashley Casovan on Twitter: @ashleycasovan AI Global https://ai-global.org/ This is a show about the...
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