DCD/Newsletter

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The DCD Newsletter

Updates to the GCTools, featured groups, events, and more.

July 6, 2018

24^th Edition

5 minute read

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 In This Issue:

• The Open, Accessible Digital Workspace (OADW)
• Canada-Indigenous Relations on GCcollab

• New DCD Blog

• We're Hiring!

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 What's New?

The Open, Accessible Digital Workspace (OADW)

The Digital Collaboration Division (DCD, formerly known as the GCTools) will develop an integrated network of accessible digital services that enable government and partners to share information and work together to create a better future for the people we serve. This transition will make it easier for employees, teams, organizations and partners to work together and reach their goals by providing the best access to the people, data, information and tools they need to do their jobs with excellence. Note that we are rebranding! Watch for a new look and feel, as we phase out Project Meerkat and GCTools branding.

OADW Updates

• The DCD has been on the road, visiting key partners in Canada and around the world. Thanks to our hosts in Washington, London, Oxford, Paris, Edmonton and Vancouver - and our friends at the Canadian Digital Services for helping connect us! Here is a blog about some experiences from our trip to the UK and France to connect with future overseas partners and our trip to Washington. This week, the head of our Strategic Partnerships team is in Alberta, consulting with interested partners on how to work towards our mutual goals.
• Message is the GC's new instant-messaging platform, and it has gone international! Join the #Gov-as-a-platform conversation to chat live about the OADW and related projects (including your own - we want to hear from you).
• Shout out to Michael Karlin from Canada’s AI Team for testing Message with us. First impression? “It had all the functionality my team needed right away … it’s a really good messenger app. Awesome job, team!”
• In the last month, 3000 members joined GCcollab. Check out the user stats.
• The DCD team is testing WeKan, an open source Kanban board application for project management. Learn more on our wiki. If you are testing project management tools, let us know in the #Gov_as_a_platform chat on Message.
• Our latest UX session was at the GC's Innovation Fair, testing out icons for the future workspace. Read about the UX team's experience and learn more about the team.
• We are looking for a new name! If you want to work with us on rebranding the open and accessible digital workspace (which is no longer called Project Meerkat), please contact Heather.Laird@tbs-sct.gc.ca or @hslaird.

The New DCD Blog

Launched this month, the DCD has a new blog to share stories of success, failure, and what we're working on right now. Read our latest blogs on user experience (UX) icon testing at the 2018 Innovation Fair and lessons learned when leading a design project.

All blogs are hosted on the GCcollab Wiki, and are available for all to read and share.

 Featured Initiative: Canada-Indigenous Relations on GCcollab

Creating Awareness, Fostering Reconciliation and Contributing to a Shared Future

The Canada-Indigenous Relations group is a space for sharing stories and highlighting opportunities to learn more about Indigenous governance, policy, and nation-to-nation relationships. More recently, as part of the 2018 Innovation Fair, a live digital brainstorming session took place on GCcollab on Indigenous approaches to policy and evaluation, an Indigenous GBA+ lens, and digital transformation in the way that federal departments and agencies use online platforms to work for and with Indigenous peoples. The brainstorming collected as many considerations and solutions as possible to employ a decolonizing strategy for conducting research and co-creating knowledge.

The ideas generated from the brainstorming session will feed into the wider transformation engagements taking place at Indigenous Services Canada (ISC) & Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs (CIRNA) and advance the development of a CIRNA Indigenous evaluation framework and approach. The findings from these sessions will also inform a department-wide Indigenous Co-Creation Framework for delivering respectful, meaningful and culturally sensitive collaboration with Indigenous partners and clients developed by the 2018 Audit and Evaluation Summer Internship Team.

June was Indigenous History Month - a special month to celebrate the unique heritage, diverse cultures and outstanding achievements of First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples in Canada. Learn more and join the Canada-Indigenous Relations group on GCcollab.

Learn more at the Canada-Indigenous Relations group and the Blueprint 2020 Live Digital Transformation group.

 Work With Us

Get involved in a social enterprise hosted by the Government of Canada and the Centre for Social Innovation.

The Mission?

With partners in Canada and around the world, the DCD is here to help governments and their partners work together, in the open, to create a better world. How? By developing an accessible digital workspace – with open source solutions, open standards, and light-weight partnerships to help us get it right. The world is networked, but in many ways, governments are still working in silos. And that’s an barrier for many groups who want to solve the tough challenges that affect us all.

GCTools Client Support Officer (AS-01 or equivalent)

Within the DCD, we’re responsible for developing, enhancing, maintaining and promoting the GCTools (GCcollab, GCconnex, GCpedia and more!). Our vision is to create a single collaborative public service and to encourage new ways of working in an open, transparent, digital environment. The client service operations are part of the user experience (UX) and design team within DCD. The team guides and informs the work towards designing and building better collaboration tools and user experiences using a variety of research and design methods. We work with a multidisciplinary team to incorporate people-centric thinking from problem definition to post-launch iteration. Our priority is to have an in-depth understanding of our users. We ask thoughtful research questions, synthesize insights, develop and evaluate concepts or prototypes, and assist with launches and releases.

For more details, check out the opportunity on GCcollab's Career Marketplace.

So Many Opportunities Coming Soon!

Our team is actually a network of many teams – at the Government of Canada, the Government of the Netherlands, the Centre for Social Innovation, and more. The core stewardship team is hosted by the Government of Canada. Currently, the core stewardship team is hiring:

• Storytellers
• Technical developers
• Facilitators / Project managers
  

More details will be shared on GCcollab's Career Marketplace very soon!

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