New blog post! 👨💻 “I hoped the system would have had more capacity for institutional reform than it has.” (on the launch of Digital Transformation Canada) https://sboots.ca/2026/10/14/hoped-the-system-would-have-had-more-capacity-for-institutional-reform/ #GCdigital
“…the federal internal accountability regime in a nutshell: a dense web of rules, sign-offs and reporting that slows the public service down far more than it holds it to account for results. Government never measures the effort spent complying with processes against the effort spent doing the actual work.” Profs. Amanda Clarke & Étienne Charbonneau: https://irpp.org/research-studies/functioning-federal-accountability-regime/ #GCdigital
“On how proximity to power reshapes behaviour, relationships, and identity inside large institutions” This piece from Honey Dacanay is a must-read for anyone working on digital government: https://honeydacanay.ca/writing/inner-circles.html
New work publication! 📊 Tabular data format standards: https://guide.yukon.ca/en/content-and-design/creating-content/data-visualization-and-presentation/tabular-data-format (Feedback and thoughts welcome!) #opendata
“I originally got into computing because of the beauty of ideas, the joy of creating, and the possibility of building tools to help people and foster human relationships. I still believe in those things, even though it seems like most of the industry does not.” @byorgey http://ozark.hendrix.edu/~yorgey/forest/00FD/index.xml
“When the work the state is being asked to do produces harm at the point of contact — wrongful denials, administrative burden as deterrence, surveillance of the poor as eligibility verification — making the inside operationally cleaner scales the harm.” @ronbronson https://blog.ronbronson.com/better-technology-for-cruelty-or-administrative-burden-as-a-service
“The deskilling occurs at the level of the community, not only the individual.” @aworkinglibrary https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/ten-times
“Generative AI is harmful enough when we understand it as a conventional technology, but if we confuse fluency at generating text with consciousness or moral agency, we’re at risk of assigning responsibility to entirely the wrong parties whenever anyone uses a chatbot.” Ted Chiang: https://www.theatlantic.com/philosophy/2026/06/no-artificial-intelligence-is-not-conscious/687378/?gift=R2zbWGNBDp_xHqoa7Q8ZRp-EV6jGaHiamQBxQQlMJqI
“These measures are common practice in adjacent industries. They are not novel. Their absence reflects a regulatory choice rather than a technical constraint.” Daniel Morgan: https://www.thespacereview.com/article/5234/1 via @sundogplanets
“A filter would easily solve this. All we need is an “AI” checkbox to toggle.” Jess Weatherbed: https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/942909/let-us-filter-ai-slop-google-youtube-meta-instagram-tiktok
Yesterday Olwyn and Nigel from the Yukon government’s Environment department launched the human-wildlife conflict data dashboard. 🐻📈 https://human-wildlife-conflict.service.yukon.ca/
Really awesome work (with CSV open data coming next week!). #dataviz #opendata #wildlife
“I will never surrender my creativity to a machine, and neither should you.” Hallie Bateman: https://halmail.substack.com/p/on-demis-feeble-ai-statement
“What is less remarked upon is the same dynamic playing out inside organizations: time wasted using AI on tasks that did not need it, on artifacts no one will read, on processes that exist only because the tool made it cheap to construct them.” On output-competence decoupling: https://nooneshappy.com/article/appearing-productive-in-the-workplace/
“the national subsidy for data centers exceeded $2 million in costs per permanent job … companies received nearly $77 million in tax breaks for a facility that created exactly one permanent position.” Abigail Bassett: https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/928963/data-center-rural-america-jobs-jay-maine
“Yukon’s system, which allows donations from outside the jurisdiction, is as a result also a recipe for foreign interference” Duff Conacher: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/notorious-north-yukon-political-party-financing-9.7202004 #Yukon
“This year, reporters were identifiable by red or pink stripes on our badges, literal scarlet letters warning attendees about our presence. Hundreds of millions of dollars were on the line. No one wanted to get caught talking out of turn.” Gaby Del Valle: https://www.theverge.com/report/928726/border-security-expo-cbp-ice-dhs-surveillance
“It just makes me want to dig my heels into a career where I never have to use AI, even if that’s a career that isn’t going to pay as well” https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/920401/gen-z-ai
“I’ve reviewed a lot of tech products over the past decade and a half, and all I can tell you is that it is a failure when you ask people to adapt to computers. Computers should adapt to people.
Asking people to make themselves more legible to software — to turn themselves into a database — is a doomed idea.” Nilay Patel: https://www.theverge.com/podcast/917029/software-brain-ai-backlash-databases-automation
“Whether that dynamic is reassuring or alarming depends on your view of where the responsibility for protecting citizens from their own governments should ultimately rest.” https://thenextweb.com/news/whatsapp-italian-spyware-fake-app-sio
“An actual economics response to food price inflation would involve indexation of income supports, a wage floor that keeps pace with the cost of living, a competition authority with teeth, and a provincial fiscal framework that does not leave households absorbing every swing in oil royalties.” Dr. Lindsay Tedds: https://deadfortaxreasons.wordpress.com/2026/04/21/its-not-me-its-them-a-breakup-letter-to-the-calgary-school/ #cdnpoli