12 Months of COVID-19 Design and Digital Response with the British Columbia Government

Key Insights

• •

  The BC COVID response was treated as a design problem, requiring rapid, cross-ministry coordination involving government, federal agencies, and authorities like the Vancouver airport.

• •

  Using digital collaboration tools such as Miro replaced traditional in-person whiteboarding during pandemic lockdowns to map complex service journeys.

• •

  A pivotal insight was that self-isolation on farms was unfeasible; the province took responsibility to quarantine workers in hotels to prevent outbreaks.

• •

  By July 2020, BC had zero COVID cases on farms with temporary foreign workers, contrasting with outbreaks elsewhere in Canada.

• •

  The Digital Response Unit (DRU), later the Digital Delivery Network (DDN), was an informal network that met multiple times per week to coordinate COVID efforts across government silos.

• •

  The DDN embodied the features of networked organizations – flexibility, scalability, and survivability – enabling rapid adaptation to evolving pandemic challenges.

• •

  Over 750 government staff, about 1% of BC public service, participated in the DDN at its peak, accelerating initiatives from traveler attestations to vaccine administration.

• •

  The pandemic compressed years of government innovation into weeks, raising questions about sustaining these changes and realizing a lasting "COVID dividend."

• •

  Gord highlights the importance of shortening network distances between government staff to increase collaboration, trust, and shared situational awareness.

• •

  Sustaining emergency-era collaboration outside crises is difficult; dedicated programs like BC’s Digital Leadership Academy try to retain key lessons and practices.

Notable Quotes