Agenda

Join co-hosts Alistair Croll and Hillary Hartley as they kick off FWD50 2024! See More.

Join The Unaccountability Machine author, Daniel Davies, as he explores the relationship between accountability and information. See More.

Join FWD50 Chair Alistair Croll as he welcomes Invisible Rulers author, Renée DiResta for a conversation on how the machinery that powered the Big Lie works to create bespoke realities revolutionizing politics, culture, and society. See More.

Now is your chance to meet some new faces and catch up with old friends. Click the "Networking" icon on the left-hand-side of your screen to join in! See More.

How facade control and accountability undermines the public sector's ability to deliver. See More.

The stories of two cities. See More.

Now is your chance to meet some new faces and catch up with old friends. Click the "Networking" icon on the left-hand-side of your screen to join in! See More.

Globally, procurement is a critical yet under-leveraged area of public policy, governance, transparency, and accountability. It's simultaneously one of the largest global marketplaces with an estimated US$ 13 trillion spent by governments each year, and "governments' number one corruption risk area because it’s where money, opacity, and discretion collide" (Gavin Hayman, Executive Director, Open Contracting Partnership). See More.

What do citizens' assemblies, government procurement, fighting disinformation, and AI policy have in common? They're all parts of a coalescing global movement to reinvent how democracy, governance, and government work in the 21st century. Former WIRED editor-in-chief Gideon Lichfield is on a quest to map it out and tell its stories. See More.

Digital public services are only as good as the policies enabling them. Yet, outdated legislative processes often hinder the seamless implementation of modern, citizen-centric digital services. Legislation and service design are still seen as two divisions, loosely intertwined at best. See More.

Now is your chance to meet some new faces and catch up with old friends. Click the "Networking" icon on the left-hand-side of your screen to join in! See More.

How the communications team at one UN agency works alongside technical experts to be prepared for emergencies, including ones that are unexpected. See More.

Everyone agrees that investing time in learning and development is critical for public servants. But there’s less clarity about how best to do it. See More.

Procurement amounted to 14.6% of Canada’s GDP in 2021; this is hundreds of billions of dollars, and a meaningful force that shapes our economy. See More.

There’s a quiet revolution happening in government services. See More.

The world is evolving, and people’s day to day lives now often revolve around technology. The Government of Canada (GC) is no different. In order to provide easy to use, high quality, accessible, and efficient services to Canadians, the GC is evolving and embracing a digital mindset through its new vision for digital acceleration. See More.

That's a wrap on day 1 of FWD50 2024! Tune in to hear what's in store when we reconvene Nov 4-6! See More.

Welcome back to day two of FWD50! Join your hosts Alistair Croll and Hillary Hartley as they take the stage live from the Aberdeen Pavillion! See More.

In the last century, humanity has achieved remarkable progress through automation and mechanization. We've reduced global poverty, doubled human lifespan, and put the power of the internet into billions of pockets. Yet the journey from physical assembly lines to complex, worldwide information processes has created new challenges alongside its triumphs. See More.

In this digital space, as the world continues to evolve, so do the government’s priorities, opportunities, and challenges. Technologies like quantum computing and artificial intelligence are quickly transforming society in many ways. Governments must continue to lead throughout this evolution by embracing a digital-first mindset so that they stay relevant and trusted. See More.

In conversation with Estonia's Minister of Justice and Digital Affairs, Liisa-Ly Pakosta. See More.

Transforming services and organisations, starting small and learning, being led by users needs and making data driven decisions - that’s what so many of us want to be doing. But how often have you heard someone say “yeah that all sounds great in theory, but we can’t do that”? Anna Hirschfeld will talk about her experience of successfully delivering benefits modernisation in the UK in a truly radical way, and how the team overcame challenges everyone said they couldn't. See More.

Transparency used to be a strong value of the civic technology movement, but if it isn’t dead, it’s at least resting. See More.

Government spending on artificial intelligence (AI) has reached unprecedented levels. In fiscal year 2022, the United States government awarded over $2 billion in contracts to private companies that provide services that rely on AI, and total spending on AI has increased nearly 2.5 times since 2017. See More.

One of the largest IT shared services organizations in the world, Shared Services Canada (SSC) provides modern, reliable and secure technology services that enable Government of Canada organizations to deliver services to Canadians. See More.

Hear about all of the amaing things we have planned for your afternoon! See More.

It's time for a break! Take this opportunity to grab some food and catch up with, or meet your fellow attendees! See More.

The concept of identity is both simple and complex. In the physical world, we recognize other humans. We trust them, interact with them, respect their rights, and hold them accountable. Even as we age and change, we are still ourselves. See More.

In this talk, we will share the story of our innovative pilot project focused on the data from the Metals and Minerals Exploration Survey. This journey began with Sarah Heath from NRCan, who identified the initial problem. We then recruited Jagoda Walny, who was working for the Canada Energy Regulator, for her expertise and leadership, and finally, the viewpoint of Dianna Miller who joined NRCan midway through the process and had to navigate the project to completion. See More.

This talk will explore the pioneering CX Spaces Program initiated by Abu Dhabi, which focuses on creating forward-looking CX spaces. See More.

AI is transforming how we work, but the productivity promise won’t happen organically. Leveraging the full potential of AI requires critical reflection on what this technology can and cannot do, and where AI tools can best be applied within our workflows. See More.

It's time for a break! Take this opportunity to catch up with, or meet your fellow attendees! For our online audience this is a chance to join our speed networking! See More.

In an increasingly polarized society, how might we engage in dialogue and create a shared vision of the future together? See More.

In a political climate marked by polarization and low trust in government institutions, the role of public servants becomes even more crucial. This is where LA-BORA! gov steps in, a learning and innovation lab in the Brazilian government that harnesses the power of behavioral science to improve the employee experience. See More.

The challenges with procurement and a better path forward. See More.

Digital policy is hard--and getting harder. The Internet, the Cloud, and Machine Learning affect almost everything governments (and each of us) do. But often agencies disagree about what we should (and should not) do with the power they provide. What happens when different agencies (or different constituencies) disagree? See More.

Join your hosts as they kick off another amazing day of content! See More.

Every five years, the technology industry goes through a Hype Cycle. See More.

Maryland's Governor Wes Moore has been leading a “Data-Driven, Heart Led” transformation of the state, directing his State’s agencies to use data to make Maryland safer, more affordable, and more competitive. See More.

In this talk, Cale will draw upon his experience in both the private and public sector working on enterprise/licensed products to share with attendees in similar spaces how to effectively balance competing interests among groups when their program is developing a service. See More.

Estonia, along with several other Nordic countries, are consistently ranked as no1 in delivering digital public services to its citizen with high public approval and trust. See More.

"Software" is a broad category. The calculator on your phone operates very differently from global, complex systems like online maps, cloud computing, or malware defense. If the calculator stops working, or gives a wrong result, it's unlikely to spell disaster or cost lives; yet many modern systems are not only complex, but central civilization as we know it. See More.

Berlin’s CDO Martina Klement announced the city’s “Digital Competence Check”, inspired by the European Union’s Digital Competence Framework. This underscores a pressing need: in the latest FWD50 Content Survey, it asked “should government employees be required to pass a digital literacy test?”. 71% of respondents checked “yes”. See More.

When it comes to championing famously complicated digital transformation projects at the federal level, there are few incentives for public service leaders to do things differently. See More.

It's time for a break! Take this opportunity to grab some food and catch up with, or meet your fellow attendees! See More.

Building off his morning keynote, join Andres Raieste as he pulls together an incredible panel discussion looking at best practices in building trust in public digital services in Estonia and Canada. See More.

“User needs first”, “Design with people”, “human-centred ways of working” - these are mantras we hear leaders repeat again and again, but do our organizations actually live up to this promise? Or are most of our “user needs” actually “stakeholder wants” in disguise? See More.

In today’s rapidly evolving digital landscape, user experience should be a driving force behind technology acquisitions. See More.

It's time for a break! Take this opportunity to catch up with, or meet your fellow attendees! For our online audience this is a chance to join our speed networking! Just click on the "Networking" icon on the left hand side of your screen. See More.

There's plenty written about cultivating an innovation mindset, building a culture of change, and becoming an Intrapreneur. But if you want to see real change, the answer's simple: Start. See More.

Last year, Public Digital wrote the Radical How, a guide for leaders who find themselves in environments that expect them to plan all aspects of delivery upfront but who know that this approach is the riskiest. See More.

FWD50 is in its seventh year. What started as a technology conference has transformed into a global community that tackles culture, transformation, and service delivery. See More.