DCD Blogs/State of the GCTools

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The State of the GCTools 2018

 Chris Allison / Former Director / July 20, 2018

It may look quiet on the surface, but it’s been a big year for the GCTools and there is a ton of activity going on in the background to really transform the way that we provide digital services to public servants.
It’s hard to explain where we are today without a bit of context on where we came from. I hope you’ll bear with us.

A long time ago...

First, let’s go back a few years. The GCTools (GCpedia) were originally started in 2008 at the Treasury Board Secretariat (TBS) as a side-of-desk initiative to see what social media could do in the Government of Canada. GCconnex was launched in 2009. These two platforms trucked along for several years, with early adopters and networkers joining and evolving the use of the (at that time) GC2.0 Tools. In April 2013, GCconnex had 13,000 registered users and several hundred groups.

Then came Blueprint 2020. Launched in the spring of 2013, Blueprint both used the GCTools to engage and gather ideas from employees and also put forward a totally different way of doing business using digital tools to collaborate and share information across the Government of Canada. Blueprint created an explosion of content and ideas on the GCTools. By mid-2014, GCconnex had almost 40,000 registered users and major groups and influencers were starting to form.

The team behind the GCTools in 2014 was relatively small, numbering three developers, a helpdesk officer, a few engagement officers, a few content managers and a two-person management team. All contributions to GCTools operations were (and continue to be) funded through voluntary contributions from GC Chief Information Officers.

Picking up steam: Career Marketplace

From this launch-point, however, things really started to pick up steam. In mid-2015, we started work on the now Career Marketplace with Health Canada and the National Research Council. Health Canada was exploring a commercial solution for their Career ConneXions project and had ear-marked $1.5M for 4,000 licenses over 3 years. Working with NRC and the GCTools team at TBS, we were able to launch the Career Marketplace in 9 months for $360,000 and, using open source software, we were able to do this for the whole public service.

In April 2016, TBS re-launched the newly branded GCTools at the 2016 Innovation Fair – showcasing simpler navigation, a totally revamped interface and integrated search between GCconnex, GCpedia and GCintranet.

A turning point: GCcollab

In May 2016, GCcollab was proposed to the TBS executive committee as one of four potential innovation projects out of the Deputy Minister Committee on Policy Innovation (they approved all four, btw). GCcollab was originally intended to create stronger bonds between the federal government and students and academics. A small-but mighty team (Sean Kibbee and Jeff Outram) was assembled in July, work started in August and GCcollab launched in the public cloud with three universities on September 1st, 2016.

We immediately saw interest beyond our starting schools and with the CIO, John Messina’s support, we expanded GCcollab to all post-secondary institutions across Canada in October and all provincial and territorial governments in November. With 1,000 users by December 2016 and hearing calls from multiple departments and agencies that they needed to collaborate and work with partners outside of government, we opened GCcollab to anyone by invitation in February, 2017 and to more than 1,800 municipalities across Canada shortly after that.

Today, GCcollab has almost 30,000 registered users and sees about 13,000 page views each day (GCconnex has about 60,000).

All of this work was still occurring and funded by GC CIOs, on a team with four indeterminate positions.

A need to change

In mid-2017, we started thinking about what needed to come next. The GCTools worked, but despite doing a lot of things, they didn’t do anything extremely well. The open source platform that GCconnex and GCcollab were based on, Elgg, was getting long in the tooth and the applications had grown so big that when we added a feature or fixed a bug in one location, we created two or three new ones someplace else. This slowed us down, frustrated users (and ourselves) and meant we spent more time fixing problems that doing more awesome things for you.

Even more important, despite putting a huge amount of effort into making GCconnex and GCcollab more accessible, the complexity of the applications meant that even though they technically meet WCAG usability requirements, the usability was practically nil.

As we were going through these lines of thought, we also reached out to our sister team in the Kingdom of the Netherlands (Pleio) and discovered that they were living the same experience. So we decided to figure out a solution together.

Exploration

We spent the summer of 2017 working with Pleio to explore new technology, programming languages and looking at international best practices in development and project management. We continued to explore and develop our team’s skills until we had the framework for something new: an open and accessible digital workspace. We kicked off the actual work for what we started to call an open digital workspace with Pleio, poutine and passion in autumn 2017.

A digital workspace

The concept of a digital workspace isn’t new. A team in TBS had done amazing work on developing the concept, requirements and storyline behind how and why it would help the Public Service to better serve Canadians back in 2015-16.

Actually launching the workspace proved to be difficult, however. It was hard to tell who had the mandate, who would provide the resources and, probably most important, the idea was so… big. It was hard to tell where to start.

The concept behind our open and accessible digital workspace wasn’t like previous ideas of what a digital workspace would be. It wasn’t an attempt to spend years on a massive procurement project. It also wasn’t about finding a hole in the ground and building everything alone.

This workspace was about building an ecosystem and framework that would allow other people to shine.

It was about setting a foundation based on:

• a single sign-in and credential;
• a single user profile;
• a set of open communication standards; and
• a suite of separate, modular services that each does one thing: elegantly, beautifully, simply and accessibly.

It was also about making smart links to our existing system and investments.

It IS about allowing partners, inside and outside government to participate in building, shaping and using the workspace to make our world a better place.

Digital collaboration today - beyond GCTools

In February, 2018, we brought the Open & Accessible Digital Workspace concept to the GC Enterprise Architecture Review Board, where it was unanimously approved.

In April, 2018, we brought the idea to the Chief Information Officer Council, where GC CIOs where given several options and where they demonstrated the vision to fully support the workspace and provided a three year runway to make it happen.

And us? We’ve already been building.

Foundations

If you haven’t checked out GCcollab, you really (really) should. GCcollab isn’t just collab anymore. It’s the foundation to the workspace and the launch point for imagining how government can work better with partners across sectors and borders to really make the world a better place.

We don’t have all the answers in the federal government. We don’t even know all the questions. It’s only when we step outside of our walls, meet people with diverse perspectives and different opinions that we can hope to develop the solutions that our citizens (and other citizens around the world) need.

So, this is GCcollab today:

• Aurora design system - comprehensive design guide that will be the base for all future applications
• Account Service – single sign-on solution with two-factor authentication
• GCcollab – legacy platform and hub
• Message – an instant messaging and team chat service (open source Slack)
• Wiki – a Government of Canada wiki, open to the public
• There is also a (sweet) mobile GCcollab app on the Google Play and Apple App Store.

• GCcollab Group Stats – a statistics dashboard that provides data on GCcollab groups