Virtual Conference 
Thank You To Our 2020 Sponsors
Host Sponsor
Gold Sponsor
Silver Sponsors
4
Spotlight Sessions
5
Roundtable Discussions
1
Transformational Day
The theme this year speaks to so much changing in a short period of time including the way we work and what Canadians expect from government services.
Our esteemed faculty of speakers will share how they have adapted and continue to do so, from the way they promote productivity to the way they mitigate the risks associated with accelerated projects. You will learn what strategies were a success and lessons that were learned in the process of advancing IT/IM goals.
What sets this forum apart is our virtual interactive roundtable topics, giving attendees the ability to drive the conversation and problem solve with their counterparts on curated topics. GovConnect Canada will leverage a digital platform to enable the lively, constructive dialogue that you have come to expect in person from the comfort of your home office.
This forum is exclusively for senior-level decision makers in public sector innovation and information technology management. If you meet these criteria, apply today to take advantage of the best available rate.
COLLABORATE WITH TRANSFORMATIONAL THOUGHT LEADERS
Saad Bashir
Chief Technology Officer
City of Seattle
Irwin Bess
Director General
Service Innovation Directorate
Transport Canada / Government of Canada
Christiana Cavazzoni
Associate Deputy Minister, Deputy CIO
National Defense
Christine Cederberg
Senior Manager, Intelligent Cloud & Infrastructure Consulting
Accenture
Emily Coffin
User Experience Analyst
Veterans Affairs Canada
Lauren Hunter
Director
GC Talent Cloud
Dimitrije Jankovic
Senior Manager, Technology Strategy & Advisory
Accenture
Mike Krygier
CTO for Public Sector Canada
Google Cloud
Jean-Charles Laplante
Senior Technical Security Analyst
Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada
Bob Osborn
CTO, Global Government Sector
ServiceNow
Sonia Powell
Director General, Workplace Solutions
Public Services and Procurement Canada
Elizabeth Rhodenizer
Chief Information Officer
Public Service Commission of Canada
Kashif Siddiqui
Strategic Technology Advisor
City of Ottawa
Denis Skinner
Executive Director, Digital Change, CIO Branch
Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat
Shari Smith
Director, Corporate Innovation and Change Management
Alberta Agriculture and Forestry
Government of Alberta
Jessica Stronghill
Director, Public Sector
Bridgeable
Frank Vermaeten
Assistant Commissioner, Assessment, Benefit and Service Branch
Canada Revenue Agency
8:30 amOpening Remarks from the Chair
Irwin Bess
Director General, Service Innovation
Transport Canada
8:45 amWorkflow Strategies to Set Dispersed, Digital Teams up for Success
- Shifting how you collaborate internally and externally with business partners to deliver services
- Avoiding digital burnout: guidance on setting clear priorities to balance workloads
- Reevaluating how you respond to challenges as a team as well as an organization
- Best practices for mobilizing teams in an emergency
Elizabeth Rhodenizer
Chief Information Officer
Public Service Commission of Canada
9:15 amIn the Fastlane with CERB: Managing Risk While Accelerating Your Digital Journey
- Adjusting to the ‘new normal’ while working differently and harder than ever before
- Developing partnerships inside and outside the Agency to deliver a better service
- Identifying and mitigating risks while constantly moving forward
- Applying lessons learned along the way to future projects
Frank Vermaeten
Assistant Commissioner, Assessment, Benefit and Service Branch
Canada Revenue Agency
10:00 amVirtual Break
10:20 amInteractive Roundtable Discussions | Round 1
11:00 amInteractive Roundtable Discussions | Round 2
11:40 amSecuring the Right Talent: An Experiment in Building Solutions for Different HR Environments
- Built to model the GC Digital Standards, the Talent Cloud team has been collecting three years of data and insights on topics critical to the future of work. Come hear about the team’s findings on reducing time to staff, attracting top talent that is a fit to team culture, and encouraging managers to make jobs remote-work accessible. The team is also developing an exciting new bias reduction model that has attracted international attention. See how an experimental team is set up, and how these research findings could potentially accelerate progress across a number of priorities if scaled across the system.
Lauren Hunter
Director
GC Talent Cloud
12:10 pmVirtual Break and 1:1 Networking
1:10 pmPanelBringing Digital to Scale by Fine Tuning the Fundamentals
This panel will explore how to prioritize IT/IM projects and build the foundations for digital success within government. If you could create a digital shop from the ground up what would you keep, bolster or eliminate? What would that mean for the mandate of the team, their processes and the technology itself? Prepare for discussion examining cross government functionality– how internal support functions can be strengthened across departments that ultimately all contribute to the successful delivery of services.
Saad Bashir
Chief Technology Officer
City of Seattle
Christiana Cavazzoni
Associate Deputy Minister, Deputy CIO
National Defense
Denis Skinner
Executive Director, Digital Change, CIO Branch
Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat
Moderator:
Bob Osborn
CTO, Global Government Sector
ServiceNow
2:10 pmInteractive Roundtable Discussions | Round 3
2:50 pmInteractive Roundtable Discussions | Round 4
3:30 pmVirtual Break
3:45 pmCase StudyAssessing Your Organization’s Innovation Culture
- Identifying the key elements of organizational innovation capacity
- Examining how people, supports and environmental factors impact innovation
- Leveraging the innovation culture maturity model allowing participants to pinpoint their own organization’s strengths and weaknesses
Shari Smith
Director, Corporate Innovation and Change Management
Alberta Agriculture and ForestryGovernment of Alberta
4:15 pmInteractive Roundtable Discussions | Round 5
4:55 pmClosing Remarks from the Chair
Topic #1Cyber Security: Strategies for Keeping Employees and Clients Safe
- Breaking-down usability barriers while ensuring protection
- Creating a security roadmap for remote work: What safety practices and tools should be implemented?
- Examining the implications of new threats that emerged during the pandemic
Moderator:
Jean-Charles Laplante
Senior Technical Security Analyst
Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada
Topic #2Empowering the Remote Workforce: Syncing the Teams with Technology to Foster Collaboration and Innovation
- Identifying what collaborative tools have proven successful
- Troubleshooting common pitfalls associated with distributed teams
- Strategies for creating a culture that is open to working in a new way
- Establishing clear policies and process about when to use what channel — a guide to how teams operate and make decisions
- Sharing best practices for productivity and new ideas for the future of work
Sonia Powell
Director General, Workplace Solutions
Public Services and Procurement Canada
Bob Osborn
CTO, Global Government Sector
ServiceNow
Topic #3Applying Human-Centred Design Principals to Digital Services
- Gathering firsthand insight into your citizens’ experiences to understand their behaviours, needs, and goals
- Co-creating with broad stakeholder groups
- Finding a rhythm: designing, prototyping, testing, and building
- Mapping the end-to-end service experience, identifying opportunities to drive value and impact
- Integrating the front and back ends of services, ensuring the right internal processes, capabilities, and policies are in place to support the delivery of your services
Emily Coffin
User Experience Analyst
Veterans Affairs Canada
Jessica Stronghill
Director
Bridgeable
Topic #4Enabling Cloud: Managing Migration and Application Modernization for Efficient, Secure Workflows
- Aligning business operations with the right cloud model
- Overcoming migration pitfalls
- Establishing policies and controls that mitigate privacy and security risks
- Finding opportunities to break down public sector siloes through increased data flows
- Integrating strategies to drive application modernization to take advantage of the future of cloud
Kashif Siddiqui
Strategic Technology Advisor
City of Ottawa
Co-Moderators:
Christine Cederberg
Senior Manager, Intelligent Cloud & Infrastructure Consulting
Accenture
Dimitrije Jankovic
Senior Manager, Technology Strategy & Advisory
Accenture
Topic #5Cyber Security Best Practices for Defending the Network
- Learning about internal and external threats
- Identifying best practices that can be applied in the event of a breach
- Predicting infrastructure pain points and working through them
- Top considerations for establishing safe cloud environment
- Leveraging opportunity to use AI to identify threats
Mike Krygier
CTO for Public Sector Canada
Google Cloud
How This Virtual Format Works
GovConnect uses a unique approach to learning, where Canada’s leaders and influencers come to learn about best practices and the latest technologies in digital business. Our format provides unparalleled opportunities for delegates to directly engage with leading technology companies for in-depth and more meaningful discussions.
The interactive roundtable format enables participants to partake in peer-to-peer discussions as they move from table to table in our virtual platform. Each table features a different topic and is hosted by a subject matter expert and co-moderator.
How it Works
- Delegates are strategically divided into designated groups before the forum
- Each group visits 5 tables throughout the day
- Each table is moderated by a subject matter expert and will feature a different discussion topic
- After every 40-minute discussion, each group rotates to the next roundtable and has a new conversation on a new topic
Why You’ll Love this Format
- Interact with leading subject-matter experts in government
- Escape ‘death’ by PowerPoint
- Participate in an intimate group setting to stimulate high-level strategic discussions
- Learn with peers to solve similar challenges and issues
OVER 150 DECISION MAKERS FROM ACROSS CANADA’S PUBLIC SECTOR ATTENDED THE 2019 FORUM FROM:
- Canada Border Agency Services
- Canada Revenue Agency
- Canada School of Public Service
- Canada’s Free Agents
- City of Ottawa
- Correctional Service Canada
- Employment and Social Development Canada
- Government CIO Office
- Health Canada
- International Development Research Centre
- Justice Canada
- National Cybercrime Coordination Unit RCMP
- National Defense Government of Canada
- Natural Resources Canada
- Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
- Ontario Pension Board
- Ontario Provincial Police
- Public Services & Procurement Canada
- RCMP
- Service Canada
- Shared Services Canada
- Transport Canada
- Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat
Testimonials
It was a wonderful format! The roundtable discussions being the primary vehicle, helps support my position of advocacy and helped convince several people to change their views on cloud adoption and working in the open.
I found this event very interesting, as I do every year. It’s an excellent opportunity to consider topics in a way that our busy work schedules often don’t allow. I always look forward to the presentations and conversations at these events.
Why Attend?
Apply today to be part of these critical public sector discussions.
- SHARE innovative initiatives directly with your peers from different departments in a dynamic roundtable setting
- PROBLEM-SOLVE collectively with the facilitation of expert thought-leaders
- IDENTIFY unexplored solutions for your organization
- STRENGTHEN your digital government strategies by exploring best practices
Public Sector Only
$195 (Early Bird) until October 7
$295 Regular Price
Supported By
