Let’s Innovate Together

Introduction

Technology and Business Innovation (TBI) under the Planning and Operations Directorate (POD) is responsible for leading the development of the Regulatory Operations and Enforcement Branch (ROEB) investment plan, improving business, and solving problems. Investing in innovation is a major pillar for TBI; it aims to position the Branch as a leader in compliance and enforcement excellence by using innovative approaches to improve regulatory operations.

There is a new Innovation group in TBI called “remic” with a focus on novel approaches, testing via experiments to assess new technologies to potentially modernize and transform ROEB inspection service delivery systems. Remic brings together regulators, researchers, social scientists, data scientists, business and industry experts to collaborate, share, and co-create solutions to support ROEB objectives.

To support capacity building and co-learning within ROEB, TBI planned and executed two workshop sessions with an emphasis on sharing and exploring. The goal was to:

• Promote mindset, skills and behaviours necessary for innovation and experimentation
• Highlight employee-led experimentation (innovation) initiative
• Build knowledge and capacity in ROEB and be leaders in the C&E Transformation
• Nurture ideas into future projects (Submit ideas to Solutions Fund)

During February 2020, TBI visited Toronto and Montreal to facilitate the ‘innovation workshop’ sessions. This report will provide the detailed summary of the workshops and the collected results.

Purpose

In June 2019, the Government of Canada launched a public consultation on a number of initiatives that focused on modernizing the Canadian regulatory system. The intent of the process was to address the regulatory issues by encouraging innovation and competitiveness. A 2016 directive to the Deputy Head of the Federal Departments also ensures that the Government of Canada is committed to devote a fixed percentage of program funds to experimentation that brings new approaches and creates an environment of measurement, evaluation and innovation in program and policy design and delivery. There is a shift in the approach government is taking when investing for the future.

In order to leverage these Government of Canada opportunities ROEB has laid out its 2019-2022 strategic plan that focuses on three key priorities including modernizing the program delivery system, transformation of compliance and enforcement, and achieving excellence in people and workplace. As a result, ROEB is investing in experimentation to advance business processes in the digital era.

Under this plan, ROEB is creating an environment that is conducive to culture shifts to support change and evolution. As well, connecting and sharing with our national Branch partners with a purpose of co-learning and co-creating through experimentation is one of the first steps. The original intent was to visit six cities (Burnaby, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Toronto, Montreal, and Halifax); only Toronto and Montreal was visited – with a plan to visit the other cities in the future.

The purpose of the workshops were the following:

1. Share ROEB learnings on experimentation to date, along with information from our corporate partners regarding innovation and experimentation relating to regulatory excellence;
2. Expose participants to experimentation methodology, problem framing and design approaches to problem solving; and
3. Leverage the workshop as a “launch pad” to co-create with our national partners to solve wicked problems through continuous learning, support, and partnerships.