The Functional Government Podcast

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Embrase Business Consulting Inc.

10 episodes

1 week ago

If you spend more than five minutes talking to governments about modernization, someone will inevitably mention Estonia. The country's vast sprawl and relatively small population made it a natural fit for digital government, because it was prohibitively expensive to deliver services to tiny towns and far-off citizens. Now you can complete virtually any government task, from paying taxes to registering a business to filing for divorce, via an app or a website. Estonians trust their government'...

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Episodes (10/10)

The Functional Government Podcast

Is it Canada's Estonia moment?

1 day ago

44 minutes

The Functional Government Podcast

Canada tried to fix passports a decade ago. Here's what happened.

Canada's been trying to fix the passport system for a long time. Back in 2013, a small team of designers, developers, and policy experts got together to modernize the application process. They took a lean, iterative approach, focusing on the simplest fixes to the biggest problems first. This meant addressing boring things that offered huge improvements: they spent six months tweaking and testing the application form—which is where most applicants got stuck. And then the government shut down t...

1 week ago

45 minutes

The Functional Government Podcast

How Ireland reformed passport applications

A decade ago, Ireland's passport service was in the same place as Canada: long queues, paper processes, and spiking delays. And then they decided to fix it. The country started small: a reservation tool to book time in the office freed up workers, letting them tackle the backlog. Then online renewals for adults, then children. Eventually, online applications with your identity certified by your local police station. It wasn't easy. It took political support, a willingness to experiment, caref...

2 weeks ago

42 minutes

The Functional Government Podcast

The problem with passports

Before 1970, if you asked for a passport, the government just believed you. But after 9/11, Passport Canada—a small, self-funding department that printed little blue booklets—found itself at the forefront of international security. After multiple failed attempts at modernization, and two entirely predictable backlogs that delayed hundreds of thousands of passports, Canada is finally launching a limited trial of online passport renewals. Passports are a perfect lens through which to analyze a ...

4 weeks ago

10 minutes

The Functional Government Podcast

Breaking our own rules with Senator Colin Deacon

In Canada, there are 134 ways to apply for federal grants and loans. They aren't connected, so a Canadian has to try them all, like whack-a-mole. If you don't qualify for one, you have no idea why another might be perfect. Using a service like this isn't easy, either. The Federal government has 270 separate online services, which you sign into with 60 unique usernames and passwords you have to keep track of, administered by 33 federal departments. When we decided to launch Functional, t...

1 month ago

44 minutes

The Functional Government Podcast

We can have nice things: Coding Canada's Services with Dorothy Eng

If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire—Code for Canada? Launched in 2017, this nonprofit works alongside government to build better services. We sit down with CEO Dorothy Eng to understand the structural and cultural challenges that stop government from delivering. Despite antiquated systems, "that's not how we do it" attitudes, and the challenges of hiring and retaining talent, Dorothy still believes that we can have nice things. All it t...

1 month ago

35 minutes

The Functional Government Podcast

How the rest of the world does its taxes with Dr. Fabrizio Santoro

After learning about Canada's attempts to modernize the tax system, it was time to see how the rest of the world does it. In this episode, we sit down with Dr. Fabrizio Santoro, an expert on taxation who helps countries around the world design and implement taxation. We dive into a number of countries' systems, including Uganda's complete overhaul of registration, data collection, and filing. The conclusion? Nobody would do it the way Canada does. You can learn more about Fabrizio’s work at: ...

1 month ago

36 minutes

The Functional Government Podcast

Why Canadian Income Tax is complicated with Alex MacEachern and Paul Craig

There's no government service that touches every citizen the way taxes do. Every April, millions of Canadians lose a weekend preparing their taxes, often with the help of paid software tools. Yet elsewhere in the world, there's no tax season—or you simply approve the pre-filled return the government sends you. There are plenty of reasons why it is this way. Taxes are the easiest way for the government to turn policy into outcomes through credits and fees. The tax code is complex, and confeder...

1 month ago

48 minutes

The Functional Government Podcast

Making Digital Functional with Ryan Androsoff

It's easy to criticize government, but making public services functional is hard. Nobody set out to build cumbersome, confusing processes. Bureaucracy happened for what were, at the time, good reasons. But they became gradually, inexorably complex. Why haven't other countries fallen into this trap? To help me understand how we got here—and how to move forward—I sit down with Ryan Androsoff. His Think Digital podcast has chronicled Canada's service modernization for years. A founding member of...

2 months ago

44 minutes

The Functional Government Podcast

Welcome to the Functional Government Podcast!

Your host, Alistair Croll kicks off what promises to be a deep dive into the rabbit hole of government inefficiency in the hopes of getting to the bottom of how we can make Canadian government functional again.

2 months ago

2 minutes