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Leadership Toolkit

This toolkit was developed to help Defence Team (DT) Supervisors prepare for the transition towards business resumption as per the Joint CDS/DM Directive for the Resumption of Activities, and to provide support in building their local level resumption plan, in response to COVID-19.

The success of this business resumption exercise is largely dependent on you, as leaders, to prepare ahead of time and ensure consistency for open communications with DT members.

As outlined in the Deputy Minster’s message published May 22, a one-size-fits-all approach to business resumption will not be possible. Managing business resumption will be challenging given that there will be a range of impacts to staff through all levels and across the organization.

Your role as a Supervisor is critical for ensuring transparency and open communication with your staff throughout each step of the process. This toolkit aims to provide you with resources and tools to be able to properly communicate with staff on the changes and next steps of returning to work (whether that means in the workplace or continuing telework). You are encouraged to engage with your Public Affairs and communications teams as well as HR Civ, CMP and your Occupational Health and Safety representatives for assistance. Be sure to also leverage national level information products captured in the toolkits found on the Defence Team COVID-19 web site and Department of National Defence (DND) and Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) social media accounts.

Leadership Toolkit Links

• About the Toolkit
• Departmental Communications Rollout
• Checklists
• Key Messages/Conversation pieces
• Resources
• Annexes
  • Annex A: Communication Templates (for use by supervisors to team-level staff)
  • Annex B: Speaking Points (for use by supervisors)
  • Annex C: Best Practices for Online Engagements
  • Annex D: Tips for Communicating with staff
  • Annex E: Building Credibility
  • Annex F: Tips for facilitating meetings
  • Annex G: Tools for Supporting Staff
  • Annex H: COVID-19 training and courses

Maximize Reuse

• Leverage and reuse existing solutions, components, and processes
  • The use of Open Source software can ensure that other Departments reuse components developed, and vice versa.
  • SaaS, PaaS and IaaS solutions can leverage sharing of configurations when no code is involved such as the GC Accelerators (AWS, Amazon)
  • Opening up Communication with other Departments to identify if they've already developed a solution can enable further reuse.
• Select enterprise and cluster solutions over department-specific solutions
  • Focus on solutions that enable sharing with other Departments, do not focus just on individual mandates.
  • Costs can be setup to be shared across multiple departments, agencies etc...
• Achieve simplification by minimizing duplication of components and adhering to relevant standards
  • Focus on Separation of Concern by the development of Microservices, and use and reuse of APIs.
  • Consume APIs from the Government of Canada API Store if it exists, if it does not add it to the API store.
  • Follow the Government of Canada Standards on APIs
• Inform the GC EARB about departmental investments and innovations
  • Communicate with the GC-EARB Team early and frequently, sharing innovations and lessons learned so we can assistance in broadcasting them to others.
• Share code publicly when appropriate, and when not, share within the Government of Canada
  • Code should be shared in Public Repositories as described here.
  • When not able to, instead Code should be shared on GCCode.

Enable Interoperability

• Expose all functionality as services
  • Do not hide services under assumptions that someone would not find value in a service - often innovation can be bred from exposed services beyond it's original plan.
  • Follow the 'eat your own dogfood' mantra - in that all functionality should be a service that you consume.
• Use microservices built around business capabilities. Scope each service to a single purpose
  • Focus on smallest unit of purpose, and developing a single function.
• Run each IT service in its own process and have it communicate with other services through a well-defined interface, such as a HTTPS-based application programming interface (API)à
  • Ensure that services are accessible via common methodologies, and follow the Government of Canada Standards on APIs
• Run applications in containers
  • Ensure containers contain a single application, and build the smallest image possible.
  • Ensure containers are properly versioned and tagged.
• Leverage the GC Digital Exchange Platform for components such as the API Store, Messaging, and the GC Service Bus
  • Ensure APIs are discoverable on the API Store.