
Overview	Build your team	Choose your problem	Intake	Accelerator History	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 real business problem facing their organization and work together to develop a concrete solution to resolve it.

Overview of the program

An updated version of the CSPS Digital Accelerator is currently in development. Registration for new courses and workshops is expected to open in early 2023.

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 Accelerator 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 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 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 participates in accelerator activities and 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 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 accelerator ends
	Is 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


Information sessions about the Accelerator Info session deck (English) Info session deck (French)

An updated version of the CSPS Digital Accelerator is currently in development. Registration for new courses and workshops is expected to open in early 2023.

Accelerator History

In Spring 2021, CSPS welcomed its first cohort of 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

We recently put together a testimonial video for 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 Demo Day Here! *It is important to note that the recording of this session is only available in the language that was used during the event *Il est important de noter que l'enregistrement de cette session n'est disponible que dans la langue qui a été utilisée lors de l'événement.

Partners

Thanks to our current partners for their support. If your team is interested in joining the Accelerator, please reach out to us to discuss. Participation in the Accelerator begins with a partnership. We look forward to working with you!