Todd's Old Blog

Tag: Government of Canada

  • It’s Your Job to Edit GCPEDIA: Add It to Your PLA

    I consider editing (and administrating) GCPEDIA a part of my job, and I always have.  If you read the wording of your job description, there’s probably some significant wiggle room for creative interpretation, provided that your primary product or goal continues to be produced or achieved on time. For example, do your duties specify that…

  • GCPEDIA Peer Helpers – “Official” Rollout

    Back in September of last year, sometime after I was already entirely swept up by obsessive compulsive wikignoming—grafting and pruning the site in a way I hoped would make it prosper—it occurred to me that a similar role should exist to help users grow and prosper.  I created the Peer helper category on GCPEDIA, made…

  • On Parental Leave

    When my wife became pregnant with our third child, I’d just ‘officially’ graduated with my Master’s degree and was working on casual contract for the Government of Canada.  A few months later, I became a permanent (‘indeterminate’) and among the benefits I was eligible to receive was Parental Leave Without Pay.  Admittedly, this sounds like…

  • Should the Canadian Government Pull the Plug on WebEx?

    Last month I attended the O’Reilly Gov 2.0 Conference from the comfort of my desk. It brought together attendees from around the world using WebEx, a web conferencing technology that includes audio and video conferencing, desktop sharing, and other valuable communication and collaboration features. Later this week, I’ll be attending a meeting with colleagues in…

  • Open Formats and Open Source for Better Government

    The Government of Canada is currently reliant on proprietary file formats and proprietary software applications, which lock it into a licensing bind with a single software manufacturer — Microsoft.  There is not only a question of cost — as we pay a monopoly corporation for per-seat licenses to run software that already dominates the market…

  • On My Transformation from Social Worker to Public Servant

    I read somewhere that the (median) average age of entry into the Canadian federal public service is 34 years old.  That fits me reasonably well; this is my second career.  For my first 10 years of “professional” employment I was a social worker, and my speciality was child and adolescent mental health.  It was the…

  • Embracing Serendipity

    I came to work for the Government by accident, or so it would seem. Failure to earn a livable wage as a social worker with a growing family was what drove me from full-time employment and part-time Master’s courses (whenever I could balance them), and into full-time education and voluntary unemployment.  Leaving employment had obvious repercussions,…

  • Why Wiki Isn’t New to Government

    In government, where change is recurring and often stressful to the employees affected, Web 2.0 can be a tough sell. One of the biggest hurdles in implementing technology in the workplace is not resistance to technology per se, but the cultural shift that the new software represents.  But when a technology is introduced which replicates…