It’s been a year since the COVID-19 pandemic forced the federal government to make the sudden shift to working from home and to expand its online service offerings. What difference, if any, did this make for ongoing efforts to renew the federal government for the digital age?

I asked this question to a group of federal public servants and reported on what they told me in a brief analysis published today in Policy Options (and subsequently in The Ottawa Citizen). The short answer: the pandemic hasn’t fundamentally changed how the federal government operates and digital government reform remains an exhausting uphill battle.

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