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Agenda 2025

The Digital Summit addresses some of the biggest challenges facing public sector heads of digital around the world

(timings subject to change)

 

Tuesday, December 9th 

All times provided are local (Ottawa, EST)

18:00 – 18:30

Reception

Co-hosted by the Government of Canada and Global Government Forum

18:30 – 18:45

Welcome

Dominic Rochon, Deputy Minister and Chief Information Officer of Canada

18:45 – 19:00

Keynote Address

Speakers:

Lisa Carroll, Partner, Deloitte

Supported by:

19:00 – 21:30

 

HOW TO BUILD A DIGITAL CENTRE OF GOVERNMENT  

The Canadian government has pledged to create a dedicated Office of Digital Transformation at the centre of government with a mission to “proactively identify, implement, and scale technology solutions and eliminate duplicative and redundant red tape”.

This session will explore how to build – or energise – government digital agencies. The discussion will explore how central agencies can be empowered to enhance public service through cross-departmental collaboration, the role for mandatory policies, and how an agency can be inspired to proactively identify, implement and eliminate red tape.

Presentations, followed by group discussion over dinner

Speaker:

Dr Louise Maynard-Atem, Deputy Director, Data & Insight, Government Digital Service, United Kingdom

Warren Roy, CEO & Founder, Global Relay

Supported by:

Wednesday, December 10th

All times provided are local (Ottawa, EST)

09:00 – 10:30

BUILDING SOVEREIGN DIGITAL PUBLIC INFRASTRUCTURE FOR MODERN GOVERNMENT

Digital government requires more than apps and services – it requires the infrastructure to deliver.

This session will explore what it takes to build the secure, resilient, and sovereign digital foundations that underpin modern service delivery. It will look at how governments are building the bedrock infrastructure in areas such as cloud, data governance, and AI computing infrastructure.

The session will also examine the best investments for governments to make, and how governments are focusing on boosting national sovereignty around vital national infrastructure to ensure that critical data, legal frameworks and procurement processes match national priorities and improve government resilience.

Including presentations and discussion

Speakers:

Luc Gagnon, Chief Technology Officer for the Government of Canada, Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat

Cristina CaballéVice President and Senior Partner, IBM Global Public Sector

Alessandro Moricca, CEO, Pago.PA, Italy

Supported by:

11:00 – 12:30

THE POTENTIAL FOR AGENTIC AI TO SOLVE GOVERNMENT PROBLEMS

The rapid advancement of AI is creating opportunities to improve the efficiency of how government works and deliver better services.

Artificial intelligence can be used to streamline services – for both public servants and citizens – but governments need to work out how to apply generative AI technologies to existing processes.

Agentic AI is being developed as a potential solution to this challenge. While generative AI is being used in pockets in governments across the world, AI agents can take this deployment one step further by introducing systems that can not only generate and analyse data, but also perceive, reason, and act with minimal human intervention.

These so-called agentic systems can manage end-to-end processes, learn, self-optimise, and collaborate with humans and other agents.

This session will share insight on how governments can deploy AI agents to help drive improvements across different areas of government – from policymaking, service delivery and crisis response, to administrative uses, data use and leadership.

We will share actionable insights on how governments are deploying AI – or looking to do so – as well as how agentic AI systems can help overcome some of the barriers that previous rounds of digital transformation have faced in government.

Including presentations and discussion

Speakers:

Kara Beckles, Executive Director, Privacy and Responsible Data, Office of the Chief Information Officer, Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat

Luukas Ilves, Former Chief Information Officer, Government of Estonia 

Stephen Harrington, Partner, Workforce Strategies & National Future of Work Advisory Leader, Deloitte Canada

Supported by:

12:30 – 13:30

Lunch

13:30 – 15:00

HOW THE QUEST FOR EFFICIENCY CAN HELP DRIVE TRANSFORMATION

Governments face growing pressure to do more with less — but this challenge can be a catalyst for transformation.

This session will explore how governments’ pursuit of efficiency can be turned into an opportunity for redesigning services and digital transformation. This session will explore how adopting digital tools can make government work smarter, and will allow leaders to discuss how they can use the demand for efficiency – and processes around government spending reviews – to spark innovations across government.

It will also look at how government can improve government funding processes to adopt a test and learn approach that better matches agile best practice for digital transformation.

Including presentations and discussion

Speakers:

Dominic Rochon, Deputy Minister and Chief Information Officer of Canada

Robert Walls, Vice President, Head of Products & Digital Solutions, Visa

Sota Mizushima, Chief Product Officer, Digital Agency of Japan

Supported by:

15:30 – 17:00

FROM INNOVATION LABS TO INCUBATOR UNITS: CREATING SPACE FOR EXPERIMENTATION IN GOVERNMENT

Innovation doesn’t happen in the abstract in government. Often, it needs space, funding – and freedom to fail. This session explores how governments can build internal capacity for experimentation through labs, incubators, and cross-functional teams. Participants will share models that foster creative problem-solving, agile design, and rapid prototyping within public institutions.

Including presentations and discussion

Speakers:

Phillip Bland, Global Government Advisor, Qualtrics

Liam Wilkinson, Head of AI Incubation, Government Digital Service, United Kingdom

Supported by:

17:00 – 17:05

Summary and thanks

Summit concludes 17:05