Government technology projects have a reputation for failure. Multi-million dollar systems that never launch, platforms that nobody uses, modernization efforts that end up more complex than what they replaced.
After 15 years working inside these organizations — from crown corporations in Saskatchewan to provincial agencies in British Columbia — the patterns are predictable.
The Procurement Trap
Most government technology failures start in procurement. The RFP process, designed to ensure fairness and accountability, often produces the opposite outcome. Requirements are written so broadly that any vendor can claim compliance, or so narrowly that only the incumbent can respond.
The fix isn’t to abandon procurement discipline. It’s to invest in the pre-procurement phase: clear business outcomes, well-defined evaluation criteria, and realistic expectations about what technology can and cannot solve.
The Stakeholder Alignment Gap
Public sector projects typically involve more stakeholders than their private sector equivalents. Ministry leadership, union representatives, privacy officers, accessibility specialists, Treasury Board analysts — each with legitimate but sometimes conflicting requirements.
The organizations that succeed at digital transformation invest heavily in stakeholder alignment before writing a single line of code. This means facilitated workshops, shared documentation, and explicit decision-making frameworks.
The Integration Blind Spot
Legacy systems in government aren’t just technical debt — they’re operational infrastructure that thousands of people depend on daily. Any transformation effort that treats integration as an afterthought will fail.
Successful transformation requires mapping every data flow, every interface, and every manual workaround that exists in the current system. Only then can you design a migration path that doesn’t break the services citizens depend on.
Moving Forward
None of these problems are insurmountable. They just require a different approach than what most technology vendors bring to government engagements. An approach rooted in understanding how government actually works — not how we wish it worked.