The Functional Government Podcast

Avsnitt

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  Unsticking half a trillion dollars in property transactions 29.06.2026 40min

  Alberta's Fouad Jallouli on dragging title transfer into the digital age. In Alberta, $340 million in real estate every day moves through a system that, until recently, was built on paper, fax machines, and processes so old that some of them weren’t even documented anymore. When COVID hit, the province’s land titles system collapsed. By December 2022, a straightforward title transfer that should have taken a week was taking 84 days. Surveys took nearly three months. Sales couldn’t close. Dev...
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  When a democratic process becomes a spam target 15.06.2026 43min

  Regulations.gov is a public feedback platform where citizens can comment on how laws affect them. It's democracy in action. But it's also drinking from a firehose, which Aaron Meyers was asked to fix. In the US, there’s a platform for public comment. Canada has one too: the Canada Gazette, “the official newspaper of the Government of Canada.” These platforms are how the government tells citizens how laws are turning into regulations. But they’re also online, which means they’re a target for ...
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  Why do I have so many government logins? 01.06.2026 39min

  There are hundreds of different ways to log into the government of Canada. A citizen has to use different systems for benefits claims, taxes, passport renewal, business registration, title transfer, and so on. How can it be so hard to just have one login we use to interact with government? Turns out, very hard. Canada's tried to fix this. There's even a system called GCKey that works across 30 departments, but the CRA—arguably the most important department for citizens—refuses to use it...
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  Ukraine built a digital government app, from scratch, in 5 years, during a war 18.05.2026 34min

  When Ukranian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy ran for office, one of his campaign promises was "a simple government app." In 2019, the country launched a really simple first app: your driver's license and registration on your smartphone. At the time, Ukranian citizens had dozens of different versions of the same information scattered across many departments. But Diia, as the new app was called, served as a simple front end: It talked to all the departments for you, knew which to use for what da...
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  Digital ID, single-sign-on, and what government knows about you 04.05.2026 11min

  Digital ID is a spicy topic. Some view it as a slippery slope to the surveillance state, invoking images of Big Brother. Others claim that digital identity will magically unlock government services. The truth, as is often the case, is more nuanced. The government already knows plenty about you, and much of that information is outdated or wrong. Signing into government services is inconsistent and messy. And finding out what data the government has is complex, time-consuming, and often imposs...
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  Quand la paperasse fait craquer le système 27.04.2026 55min

  On tient parfois le transport pour acquis. Quand on peut toucher un écran et recevoir, une semaine plus tard, un produit venant de l’autre bout du monde, c’est facile d’oublier l’incroyable logistique qui se trouve entre les deux. Transports Canada est au cœur du transport aérien, terrestre et maritime, et bon nombre de ses services permettent à ces livraisons de continuer à circuler. L’une des responsabilités de Transports Canada est d’assurer la sécurité et la sûreté maritimes, ce qu...
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  When the paperwork breaks down the building 27.04.2026 46min

  We sometimes take transportation for granted. When you can tap a screen and have something from around the world show up a week later, it’s easy to overlook the incredible stack of logistics that’s in the middle. Transport Canada is at the center of air, land, and sea travel, and many of its services keep those deliveries coming. One of the tasks that Transport Canada handles is marine safety and security, which includes things like boat registration, seafarer certification, and health check...
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  The wisdom to know the difference 13.04.2026 50min

  Michael Wernick worked as a public servant for decades. His career culminated in a term as the Clerk of the Privvy Council—the most senior public servant in Canada. But before that, he had a front-row seat to Canada’s constitutional negotiations, and the crisis that almost tore the country apart. So when he says you have to accept what won’t change, and work with what will, he speaks from experience. We’ve long wanted to talk with Michael about his time in office, and now that he’s retired—...
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  Is it Canada's Estonia moment? 22.12.2025 44min

  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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  Canada tried to fix passports a decade ago. Here's what happened. 15.12.2025 45min

  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...
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  How Ireland reformed passport applications 08.12.2025 42min

  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...
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  The problem with passports 24.11.2025 10min

  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 ...
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  Breaking our own rules with Senator Colin Deacon 17.11.2025 44min

  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...
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  We can have nice things: Coding Canada's Services with Dorothy Eng 10.11.2025 35min

  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...
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  How the rest of the world does its taxes with Dr. Fabrizio Santoro 31.10.2025 36min

  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: ...
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  Why Canadian Income Tax is complicated with Alex MacEachern and Paul Craig 27.10.2025 48min

  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...
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  Making Digital Functional with Ryan Androsoff 24.10.2025 44min

  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...
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  Welcome to the Functional Government Podcast! 23.10.2025 2min

  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.