CSPS Digital Academy Events/Succeeding in a Digital World - Speaker Biographies

Date and time: March 16, 2021 | 12:15 pm to 3:30 pm (ET)

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Speaker Biographies

	Taki Sarantakis President, Canada School of Public Service Taki Sarantakis has been President of the Canada School of Public Service since July 2018, having previously served as Associate Secretary of the Treasury Board at the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat. Mr. Sarantakis spent most of his career at Infrastructure Canada, including as Assistant Deputy Minister of Policy and Communications. In 2011 Mr. Sarantakis was awarded Canada's Public Service Award of Excellence in Public Policy, and in 2013 he was a recipient of the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal. Prior to joining the federal government, Mr. Sarantakis was a doctoral candidate at the University of Toronto. He holds a B.A. and an M.A. from York University in Toronto, as well as an Executive Certificate in Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. He is a graduate of the Rotman School of Management's Institute of Corporate Directors Education Program, holding the ICD.D designation.
	Neil Bouwer Vice-President, Canada School of Public Service Neil Bouwer has also served as an Assistant Deputy Minister at the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat, Natural Resources Canada, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, and the Privy Council Office of Canada; and in executive positions at the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada, Human Resources and Social Development Canada and the Business Development Bank of Canada. He has also worked at the Department of Finance and Western Economic Diversification Canada, and has Economics degrees from McGill University and St. Thomas University. Neil actively supports the Government of Canada policy and data communities, the Advanced Policy Analyst Program and the Free Agent HR Program.
	Mélanie Robert Executive Director, Open Government and Portals, Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat Mélanie Robert is the Executive Director of Open Government at the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat (TBS). She leads the Government of Canada’s efforts to open data and information and to increase accountability and citizen participation, and manages Canada’s Open Government and Open Data Portal (open.canada.ca) as well as the Online Access to Information Request Service. With over 20 years of experience in the federal public service, Mélanie has lead business analysis, regulation and enforcement work and communications and consultations for a variety of technology and innovation files. You can follow Mélanie on Twitter @MelRobrt
	Marc Brouillard Acting Chief Information Officer, Government of Canada Marc Brouillard is the Chief Technology Officer for the Government of Canada, in the Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO) and is currently acting as the interim Chief Information Officer of Canada at the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat. Marc also served as deputy departmental CIO and acting departmental CIO at Treasury Board Secretariat. Prior to joining the Government of Canada, Marc was VP of Business Development for a local eCommerce Services start-up. Prior to that, he spent 13 years at MONTAGE IT Services, a division of MTS/Allstream, where he held numerous positions in technology consulting and business development. Marc provides government-wide vision and strategic leadership in pursuing world class excellence in digital integration, information management and technology, and cyber security. He has had a long and successful career as a senior public and private sector executive in information management and technology.
	Justin Reich Assistant Professor in Comparative Studies and Director, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Teaching Systems Lab Justin Reich is a learning scientist interested in learning at scale, practice-based teacher education, and the future of learning in a networked world. He is an Assistant Professor in the Comparative Media Studies/Writing department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the director of the MIT Teaching Systems Lab. The Teaching Systems Lab designs, implements, and researches the future of teacher learning. He is the instructor for five free, openly-licensed MOOCs about change leadership in education. He is the author of Failure to Disrupt: Why Technology Alone Can’t Transform Education, forthcoming from Harvard University Press. He is also the host of the TeachLab Podcast. He was previously the Richard L. Menschel HarvardX Research Fellow, where he led the initiative to study large-scale open online learning through HarvardX, and a lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He is an alumni and faculty associate of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society. His writings have appeared in Science, The Atlantic, Educational Researcher, the Washington Post, Inside Higher Ed, the Christian Science Monitor, and other publications. For several years, he wrote the EdTechResearcher blog at Education Week. Justin started his career teaching wilderness medicine, and later taught high school world history and history electives, and coached wrestling and outdoor activities.
	Nisa Malli Work Stream Manager, Brookfield Institute Nisa Malli is a research, writer, and policy wonk with 13 years of experience in public policy and program delivery, inside and outside government. As the manager of the Brookfield Institute for Innovation + Entrepreneurship’s Innovative and Inclusive Economy research program, she leads teams studying the intersection of technology, labour, economic growth, and inequality, including work on the digital divide. Previously, Nisa was part of the team that started the Privy Council Office’s Impact and Innovation Unit, a policy lab at the heart of the federal government, an advisor to the Deputy Ministers’ Committee on Policy Innovation, and a City of Toronto Urban Fellow, working on skills training and job-readiness programs for social assistance recipients and improving access to housing. Prior to joining the public service, she ran digital literacy programming for seniors, newcomers, and job seekers out of a community library. Her work on emerging technologies, government digital service design, and inclusion and equity in innovation is grounded in understanding and helping address the barriers people face in navigating online services and information or trying to maintain their skills under variable access situations.|-

Demos/Showcase

	Major Kim Jones Data Literacy and Culture Lead, Data and Analytics Community of Practice, Canadian Armed Forces Major Kim Jones is a Training Development Officer in the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF). She has been a military member for the past 16 years and is presently the Data Literacy and Culture Lead at the Department of National Defence’s ADM (Data, Innovation and Analytics- DIA). After completing post graduate degrees in the areas of adult education and distance education, Major Jones completed her Doctor of Education (EdD) degree in 2020 with her research titled, “Satisfaction of Canadian Armed Forces Regular Force Members with their Distance Learning Experiences.” She is enthusiastic about raising the levels of data literacy and encouraging a data culture in the CAF/DND, all while exploring innovative approaches.
	David Maybury Senior Systems Analyst – Head Data Scientist, Public Services and Procurement Canada Dr. David Maybury received his BSc in Applied Mathematics from the University of Western Ontario and his PhD in High Energy Physics from the University of Alberta. He was a postdoctoral fellow with the Rudolf Peierls Centre for Theoretical Physics, University of Oxford, before joining the Government of Canada, first as a senior operations research scientist with National Defence and currently as the head scientist of the Centre for Operations Research and Data Science at Public Services and Procurement Canada. David specializes in modelling stochastic processes for support to decision making. Under his leadership as the international chairman of the NATO System Analysis and Studies Task Group on military economics his research team won NATO’s 2016 Scientific and Technology Achievement Award. In his current role at PSPC, David provides mathematical and computational oversight of all operational research and data science initiatives. He has numerous peer-reviewed publications in physics, economics, and operational research. Abstract I am the head data scientist of Public Services and Procurement Canada’s new data science team — the Centre for Operational Research and Data Science (CORDS). We provide service to PSPC branches, dedicated to innovation with data, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and its application to better decision making. More than ever, Canadians and our governments expect that we reach our conclusions using reproducible, evidence based methods to improve the public good. Whether it’s understanding the demographics of our workforce, the effects of our decisions on the economically disadvantaged, or the performance of our services to other departments, we can only make progress with insight from our data. In this short talk, I will discuss how we have supported PSPC’s HR-to-Pay Program Office (HRPPO) for locating Phoenix pay system bottlenecks and performance issues along GBA+ dimensions. I will also discuss some of our recent work on COVID-19 during our partnership with the Public Health Agency of Canada. We contributed to the literature on seroprevalence of COVID-19 antibodies in the general population, and we recently published a stochastic propagation model in the Journal of Theoretical Biology on how the virus begins to spread during an outbreak with applications to federal workplaces.
	Tristan Rikhi Senior Data Analyst, Strategic and Service Policy Branch, Employment and Social Development Canada Tristan Rikhi is a Senior Data Analyst and holds a Master's degree in Economics from McMaster University. Tristan has been working with the methodology team for 4 years where he applied econometric and statistical analysis, including machine learning, to the evaluation of multiple labour programs such as the Youth Employment Strategy, Labour Market Development Agreements, and Opportunities Fund for Persons with Disabilities.
	Andy Handouyahia Manager, Strategic and Service Policy Branch, Employment and Social Development Canada Andy Handouyahia is a manager within the Evaluation Directorate at the Strategic and Service Policy Branch in Employment and Social Development Canada. Andy leads a multidisciplinary team of economists, statisticians and data analysts to conduct net impact analysis of the Departments labour market programs for the unemployed, youth, Indigenous peoples, and persons with disabilities. Andy holds a Master of Science from University of Sherbrooke, Quebec. Andy joined the Public Service in 1997 and, in that time has worked at various departments and agencies including Statistics Canada and Treasury Board Secretariat. Andy also teaches part time at the Université de Québec en Outaouais, l’UQO. Andy has more than 25 years of experience applying innovative techniques in data modeling and development, econometrics and statistical analysis, machine learning, business intelligence and data mining.
	Janie Filiatrault Director, Transformation Management Branch, Employment and Social Development Canada Waiting on bio
	Clayton Kotzer Director, Transformation Management Branch, Employment and Social Development Canada Clayton began his RCAF career in 1996 as an Aeronautical Engineering Officer. Possessing diverse experience, Clayton has lead large-scale aircraft maintenance operations for the CH146 Griffon and CC130 Hercules fleets, both in domestic and deployed operations, managed multi-disciplinary operational planning teams in complex and undefined environments, taught and researched as an Assistant Professor at the Royal Military College of Canada and providing guidance and oversight for all technical training within the RCAF. Clayton moved to Service Canada as an Area Director for Winnipeg and Southeast Manitoba in January 2018. Within this role, he provided direct leadership in-person operations and outreach activities. As a futurist, he has supported the implementation and piloting of innovative service offerings such as Digital Assist and an increased use of technology to improve the client experience. Clayton transitioned to Transformation Management Branch supporting the Benefit Management Programme in 2020, leading the operationalization of selected emergency benefits, developing the Workload management system of the future and implementing a first-of-its-kind data analytics integrated platform. Through his service career, Clayton has been a recipient of the Canadian Peacekeeping Service Medal, Non-Article 5 NATO Medal for Operations in the Balkans and the Canadian Forces’ Decoration. Clayton is a published author within the Journal of Engineering for Gas Turbines and Power and a dedicated supporter of minor hockey. Additionally, as a proud Manitoban, Clayton was fortunate to have served as an Aide-de-Camps to the Lieutenant Governor of Manitoba from 2014 to 2018. Clayton holds a Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering and a Masters of Applied Science in Mechanical Engineering from the Royal Military College of Canada in Kingston, Ontario. Additionally, Clayton has completed the Joint Command Staff Programme from the Canadian Forces College.
	Yuan Stevens Policy Lead on Technology, Cybersecurity and Democracy, Ryerson Leadership Lab and the Cybersecure Policy Exchange at Ryerson University Yuan (rhymes with Suzanne) Stevens works at the intersections of law, policy, and technology with a focus on privacy and cybersecurity. She holds the position of Policy Lead on Technology, Cybersecurity and Democracy at the Ryerson Leadership Lab and Cybersecure Policy Exchange at Ryerson University. Her work equips society with the ability to understand and patch up harmful vulnerabilities in sociotechnical and legal systems. Based in Montréal, she is a research fellow at McGill University’s Centre for Media, Technology & Democracy and research affiliate at Data & Society Research Institute. She received her BCL/JD from McGill University in 2017. She serves on the board of directors for Open Privacy Research Institute, Head & Hands in Montréal, and previously worked at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University.
	John Kost Distinguished Vice President, Gartner As a Distinguished Vice President in Government research, John Kost focuses on the ability of government to execute transformation by engaging senior government political and executive leaders in understanding and improving the role of the government CIO, IT governance models, citizen experience management, critical success factors for shared services and centralization, and, for IT executives, in mastering the politics of IT leadership in government. Mr. Kost is internationally renowned for his work in IT governance, government transformation, information technology management and procurement reform.