CSPS Digital Academy/CSPS Digital Accelerator

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Overview Build your team Choose your problem Intake Accelerator History Partners Meet our team


Welcome

The CSPS Digital Accelerator is a transformative learning experience designed for product teams, including their leaders, who want to experiment with more collaborative, open, human-centered and iterative ways of defining problems and developing solutions in a modern government era. It combines hands-on workshops, peer learning, coaching and mentoring in support of teams as they explore real business problems and prototype and test solutions with users.


The Accelerator builds on the success of the first two cohorts of the CSPS Digital Academy’s Premium program. We launched in Spring 2021, recruiting whole and pre-established teams. We are currently planning the second Accelerator cohort for Winter 2022.


Goals

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Learning by doing

Teams get hands-on opportunities to apply new skills by designing, prototyping, and testing solutions to a real business problem relevant to their department.

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Breaking boundaries
We aim to break down boundaries - in the way we work, collaborate, learn, and innovate. The Accelerator is constantly exploring, producing, and trying out different tools, resources, workshops, and activities in order to help create more digitally capable teams in the public service.


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Changing with confidence
Modernizing requires change, and we recognize the importance of changing with confidence. If folks are first instilled with confidence, they may be more willing to embrace change and be more actively a part of creating change.


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Collaborating to succeed
Collaboration is key to successfully finding and prototyping solutions during the Accelerator. We are always exploring and testing different tools, activities, and workshops that to help facilitate collaboration.

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Designing an empowering experience

Great products and services are human-centred and designed for and with users. This applies to the Accelerator too. We design experiences with our participants in mind and support them every step of the way with coaching and mentoring, so they can have an enriching, empowering experience. We give teams the skills and tools they need to help them shift in the way they work, create, and share.




Overview of the program

Digital accelerator overview of winter 2022 program


Onboarding and Skill building (2 weeks)

  • Team building
  • Skill sessions
  • Introduction to new tools


Design Discovery (3 weeks)

  • Problem framing
  • Ideation
  • Design thinking and user research


Deeper Learning (2 weeks)

  • Focused learning opportunities
  • Prototype planning
  • Preparation for first pitch


Prototyping (3 weeks)

  • Developing and testing working prototypes with users


Aftercare (3-6 months)

  • Products progress towards beta or production
  • Access to coaches and mentors
  • Access to continuous learning



How to build your accelerator team

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Product Team

  • 5-10 people
  • Diverse & multidisciplinary
  • Product teams work on their problems full time during the Accelerator and ideally stay together once it is over
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Steering Team

  • 1 executive champion who participates part time in accelerator activities and fully supports the work of the product team
  • 2-4 other executive supporters who form a governance body and help support the work of the team through: approvals, guidance, unblocking, feedback, upward briefing, and funding.
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Corporate Partners

  • Enablers and partners who can support the product team in delivering their solution
  • Could include: corporate services, security, legal, policy, communications or other forms of expertise

The right problems for the Accelerator

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An actual problem – process, service, issue, or challenge – to be improved
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Doesn’t have an obvious, simple solution
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Has room for exploration, space to pivot, and flexible timelines
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Has a team that will continue to work on a solution once the accelerator ends
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Is related to the core work of your organization – internal or external
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Has a business owner open to solution ideas that go beyond the usual
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Has usable and accessible data to inform exploration and solutions
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Has the potential to change how people think about and do work
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Has organizational support and buy-in
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Has access to users to co-design, explore, and gather insights from
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Can be explored and shared publicly, with a team who can work in the open
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Has a manageable scope


What's not the right problem?

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A pre-determined solution
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A large-scale complex problem with many dependent pieces
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A pre-existing project with fixed timelines and requirements
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A team that will not continue working on their solution post-Accelerator
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No access to users to collaborate with or be informed by
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Is classified and/or cannot be shared openly with other teams or the broader public service

Intake Process


Accelerator History


In Spring 2021, CSPS welcomed its first cohort of Accelerator teams for a 13-week, completely virtual hands-on learning experience. Five teams participated, from four departments:  

  • Canada Revenue Agency
  • Department of Fisheries and Oceans
  • Department of National Defence
  • Canada School of Public Service


In this cohort, teams focused on internal-facing challenges and solutions, including new employee onboarding, simplifying procurement processes, improving internal access to data, supporting employee training and learning, and making operational decisions using data and insights.


As a team, they worked together to pinpoint their users’ needs, improve their digital skills, explore their problems from multiple angles, identify different solution options, develop prototypes and test with users. At the end of the program, the teams pitched their solutions to more than 400 public servants from across the country who participated in Demo Day.  


Interested in learning more about the teams’ solutions and experiences? Click on the links below.  


Team DND-Army – Canadian Army Digital Transformation

Team CRA – CRA Learning Zone

Team CSPS – Procurement Portal

Team DFO – Improving the Onboarding Experience  


Partners


Thanks to our current partners for their support. If your team is interested in joining the Accelerator, please reach out to us to discuss. Participation in the Accelerator begins with a partnership. We look forward to working with you!


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Canada Revenue Agency logo




Transport Canada logo



Fisheries and Oceans Canada logo




Meet the CSPS Digital Accelerator Team

Nick Scott avatar
Nick Scott
Executive Lead
Zoe Langevin avatar
Zoe Langevin
(position title)
Robyn Paton avatar
Robyn Paton
(position title)
Val Gaudreault avatar
Val Gaudreault
(position title)
Christina Bondi avatar
Christina Bondi
(position title)
Khalid Egeh avatar
Khalid Egeh
(position title)



For general inquires contact the CSPS Digital Accelerator mailbox.




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