CSPS Digital Academy/CSPS Digital Accelerator

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

CSPS Digital Accelerator Welcome The CSPS Digital Accelerator provides an opportunity for established teams to learn about and practice collaborative, open, human-centered, and iterative ways to define problems and develop solutions. Through a mix of online self-paced and facilitated workshops offered virtually, participants will address a business problem facing their organization and work together to explore and prototype a user-centred solution to resolve it. Overview of the program An updated version of the Digital Accelerator is currently in development with a pilot cohort planned to start in September 2023. Reach out if you are interested in collaborating, participating in our learning program or to signing up for early access to our learning products! Goals 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. Breaking boundaries We aim to break down boundaries - in the way we work, collaborate, learn, and innovate. The Digital Accelerator team 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. 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. Collaborating to succeed Collaboration is key to successfully finding and prototyping solutions during the Digital Accelerator. We are always exploring and testing different tools, activities, and workshops that to help facilitate collaboration. Designing an empowering experience Great products and services are human-centred and designed for and with users. This applies to the Digital 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. Learn more about the CSPS Digital Academy How to build your Accelerator team Product Team Diverse & multidisciplinary Product teams work on their problems during the Accelerator and ideally stay together once it is over Steering Team Executive champion who fully supports the work of the product team 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. 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 Digital Accelerator An actual problem – process, service, issue, or challenge – to be improved Doesn’t have an obvious, simple solution Has room for exploration, space to pivot, and flexible timelines Has a team that will continue to work on a solution once the program ends Be related to the core work of your organization – internal or external Has a business owner open to solution ideas that go beyond the usual Has usable (and accessible) data to inform exploration and solutions Has the potential to change how people think about and do work Has organizational support and buy-in Has access to users to co-design, explore, and gather insights from Can be explored and shared publicly, with a team who can work in the open Has a manageable scope What's not the right problem? A pre-determined solution A large-scale complex problem with many dependent pieces A pre-existing project with fixed timelines and requirements A team that will not continue working on their solution post-Accelerator No access to users to collaborate with or be informed by Is classified and/or cannot be shared openly with other teams or the broader public service Intake Process Contact us to arrange an information session about the Digital Accelerator for your team CSPS Digital Accelerator Information Deck (Bilingual) CSPS Digital Accelerator Cohort Experience Overview and Commitment Agreement (English) Info session deck (English) Info session deck (French) An updated version of the Digital Accelerator is currently in development with a pilot cohort planned to start in September 2023. Reach out if you are interested in collaborating, participating in our learning program or to signing up for early access to our learning products! History of the Digital Accelerator In Spring 2021, CSPS welcomed its first cohort of Digital 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   Testimonial video from our first cohort. Watch it here! In Winter 2022, CSPS had a second cohort of Digital Accelerator teams for an 11-week, completely virtual hands-on learning experience.   Eight teams participated, from seven different departments:   Canada Revenue Agency Department of Fisheries and Oceans Indigenous Services Canada Canada School of Public Service Transport Canada Employment and Social Development Canada Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada In this cohort, teams focused on improving a self-service portal, collecting clean and consistent data to report on engagement, adapting data science work to attract new talent, creating safer devices for employees purposes, redesigning a Web interface, improving data management process, centralizing a reporting product for Business Analysts to make data and insights accessible and reportable and the referral process for field auditors and technical advisors.   At the end of the program, teams were able to work with digital tools and new approaches, be more fluent public servants in the digital sphere and each teams presented demos of their proposed solutions to more than 600 public servants from across the country who participated in the CSPS Digital Accelerator’s Demo Day.   Watch the 2022 Demo Day video Here! *It is important to note that the recording of this session is only available in the language that was used during the event. Meet the CSPS Digital Accelerator Team For inquires about the Digital Accelerator contact us at CSPS Digital Accelerator mailbox.