Government trends 2023

The nine trends reshaping governments in 2023

In an age of discontinuity, governments are moving from hierarchies to networks to enable intragovernmental collaboration and nurturing collaborative public-private ecosystems to achieve shared outcomes. We invite you to explore nine transformational trends that illustrate governments “bringing down walls” to deliver solutions.

Cross-cutting trends

Governments are eliminating silos in areas such as data, funding, and the workforce to pool resources and capabilities.

1. Fluid government workforce models
   
   To tackle changing citizen preferences, employee needs, and talent shortages, governments are exploring new workforce models and prioritizing flexibility
   
   Trend in action: Canada’s Free Agents offers qualified public employees the flexibility to take on work that matches their interests with agency projects demanding specific skill sets.
   
   
2. Bridging the data-sharing chasm
   
   Although public sector data-sharing has increased, there’s more to do to balance its upside with challenges
   
   Trend in action: As AI technology has improved organizations’ ability to process volumes of information, many agencies have moved toward storing and presenting data in formats that are FAIR: findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable.
   
   
3. Tackling funding silos
   
   Fostering greater collaboration and shared problem-solving to create greater public value
   
   Trend in action: Canada’s horizontal Initiative to Take Action Against Gun and Gang Violence allocates over $300 million to provinces and territories to combat violence in their communities.
   
   
4. Tailored public services
   
   Digital technology is enabling greater personalization by government; these tailored services can be more effective and equitable
   
   Trend in action: Laval, Quebec launched a smartphone app to help citizens with special needs, such as autism or intellectual disabilities, use public transportation. The app aims to reduce travellers’ anxiety, increase their independence, and improve their overall public transit experience.
   
   
5. Back-office innovations improving mission performance
   
   Government back-office functions and processes are moving beyond automation and internal efficiency
   
   Trend in action: Transport Canada, the department responsible for regulating transportation, receives nearly one million preload air cargo records a year. It hoped to identify other potentially dangerous cargo early. An AI tool came to the rescue. Using previous air cargo records and the results of manual risk assessments, Transport Canada trained an AI model to rank cargos by likely level of risk
   

Domain-focused trends

Governments are nurturing collaborative public-private ecosystems to take advantage of shared knowledge and unique strengths to drive solutions in key government domains.

6. Regulation that enables innovation

To catalyze innovation, government regulatory agencies can encourage investment, streamline regulation, and set standards to promote industry best practices

Trend in action: In 2016, the Canadian Transportation Agency (CTA)—a quasi-judicial tribunal and independent regulator—launched a regulatory modernization initiative that involved a comprehensive review of all regulations made and administered by the organization.

7. Teaming up to deliver whole health

Governments are exploring an approach that centres on wellness and prevention, not just treatment of disease

Trend in action: The pandemic forged a number of relationships between health agencies and non-health sectors. Some countries created new infrastructure to enable data-sharing and communication between health agencies and health care entities.

8. End-to-end justice

Creating a more just society calls for collaboration and resource-sharing across the justice system and beyond with businesses, nonprofits, and communities

Trend in action: One transitional public-private cybersecurity collaboration took down Emotet, the world’s largest botnet. Europol, the European Union’s law enforcement agency, led a coalition of law enforcement agencies from eight countries, including Canada, and private security researchers to eradicate Emotet’s infrastructure.

9. Security by network

Aligning business and government interests for national security

Trend in action: The Canadian Global Affairs Institute has been working to prompt conversations on improving industry and government linkages. Its recent conference assessing defence procurement challenges, including rebuilding the industrial base and overcoming labour shortages, is one such example.