Let's Chat with Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat: Modernizing the Policy on Service and Digital

The Government of Canada is undergoing a significant shift in how it designs, delivers, and evaluates digital services. At the center of this transformation is the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat (TBS), which has launched the Enterprise Health Approach and is now leading the reset of the Policy on Service and Digital. We spoke with TBS about how these initiatives are modernizing oversight, fostering cross-departmental collaboration, and enabling a culture of continuous improvement. This Q&A highlights their vision for a more agile, user-centred digital government.

Q1: What inspired Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat to rethink how the government monitors service health—and how did that evolve into the Enterprise Health Approach?

In 2022, Canadians experienced widespread breakdowns in some of the most visible federal services—long lines for passports, backlogs in immigration processing, airport congestion, and overwhelmed call centres. These challenges put pressure on government to act quickly and transparently, and revealed that existing oversight models weren’t built to respond with the necessary speed or scale.

In response, TBS launched the Enterprise Health Approach (EHA)—a pilot designed to test a more agile way of monitoring service health. EHA integrates datasets across government, prioritizes high-impact, high-risk services, and enables earlier intervention through structured collaboration with departments. What began as a prototype quickly evolved, shaped by continuous feedback and iteration.

At the same time, Canada’s global digital government rating has declined, with the United Nations’ E-Government Development Index ranking Canada 47th in 2024, down from 3rd in 2010. That broader challenge is being addressed through the reset of the Policy on Service and Digital (PSD)—a modernization of government’s digital and service policy framework. Lessons from EHA are directly informing this reset, which focuses on treating digital as shared public infrastructure, clarifying roles and accountabilities, calibrating oversight to delivery risk and organizational maturity, and measuring real-world impact rather than just compliance.

Q2: How does this new approach help the government move from reactive problem-solving to proactively designing services that better meet citizen needs—especially in a digital context?

Traditionally, federal service oversight relied on compliance-driven reporting. Departments were asked to track application volumes or set service standards, but these backward-looking metrics, often only available over a year later, didn’t reveal emerging risks or the lived experience of users.

The EHA changes that. By combining quarterly data with structured dialogue, it surfaces risks earlier—whether sudden demand spikes, usability issues, IT bottlenecks, or resource shortfalls—and creates space for collaborative solutions before issues escalate.

This proactive, agile approach is essential in the digital era, where Canadians expect government services to be seamless, responsive, and resilient. The EHA showed how oversight could move beyond static reporting into continuous improvement. These lessons are feeding directly into the PSD reset, which is reorienting Canada’s digital and service policy framework around proactive, user-centred design.

Q3: In what ways does the Enterprise Health Approach align with broader government efforts to improve digital engagement and rebuild public trust? 

Public trust depends on services that are reliable, responsive, and accessible. The EHA contributes by highlighting bottlenecks earlier and enabling faster interventions.

More broadly, Canada’s digital government efforts are being reset to meet international standards and citizen expectations. The PSD reset positions digital as shared public infrastructure, not just IT projects. That requires clear roles and accountabilities: departments are responsible for delivering services, while TBS calibrates oversight to delivery risk, organizational maturity, and performance.

Together, the EHA and PSD reset demonstrate a shift in culture: from compliance and lagging indicators to real-world impact—measuring outcomes for people, departments, and society. This shift is critical to restoring trust and improving Canada’s global digital standing.

Q4: The project mentioned working with real-time data and moving away from static reports. What kind of digital insights or citizen-facing data are helping departments respond more effectively to changing needs?

The first EHA dashboards drew on existing sources like the Government of Canada Service Inventory, focusing on indicators such as application volumes, processing times, backlog levels, and client satisfaction across the 25 highest-impact services. Over time, the framework expanded to include contextual data on IT system health, staffing, and resourcing.

What makes EHA unique is how these metrics are paired with quarterly, structured discussions with departments. Numbers alone don’t explain why performance is changing. By combining quantitative signals with qualitative context, EHA turned reporting into a platform for problem-solving—helping departments explain pressures, identify risks, and share solutions.

This collaborative, insight-driven model has informed the PSD reset, which is embedding the principle that performance measurement must go beyond compliance to focus on outcomes and impact in the real world.

Q5: How did you balance the need for oversight with avoiding added burden on departments—especially those managing high-volume digital services like passports or immigration? 

From day one, the EHA was co-designed with departments, not imposed on them. Early prototypes leveraged data that departments were already collecting, and quarterly reporting was phased in gradually, refined based on feedback. Indicators were chosen for their ability to surface meaningful risks without adding unnecessary complexity.

Oversight also became dialogue. Each reporting cycle gave departments a chance to explain capacity constraints, operational risks, or system pressures, ensuring data was understood in context.

This approach illustrates a broader lesson that’s now embedded in the PSD reset: oversight must be calibrated to risk, maturity, and performance, not one-size-fits-all.

Q6: What lessons have emerged from this project that would resonate with public servants delivering digital services directly to citizens? 

• Learn by doing, iterate as you go
  The 2022 service crisis showed that static reports don’t prepare us for dynamic problems. EHA proved the value of shorter feedback loops, learning in action, and continuous adaptation across departments.
• Use data to enable insight, not just audit
  Oversight should foster constructive, cross-government dialogue. Metrics are most valuable when they drive learning and change, not just compliance.
• Clarify roles and cultivate trust
  Departments are responsible for delivery; central agencies like TBS provide calibrated oversight, aligned to risk and maturity. This partnership approach builds resilience and trust.
• Focus on real-world impact, not just process
  The ultimate measure of success is whether services meet people’s needs. The PSD reset embeds this principle, ensuring digital government performance is assessed on its impact for citizens, departments, and society—not just on whether compliance requirements were met.

The Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat is leading the reset of the Policy on Service and Digital (PSD)—a modernization of the rules that guide how government designs, delivers, and oversees digital services. This reset is about reducing administrative burden, strengthening accountability, and ensuring digital government delivers real impact for Canadians.

Engagement is already underway, and your input matters. Share your ideas, follow the Modernizing the Policy on Service and Digital page, and take part in shaping the next generation of Canada’s digital government.

We're thrilled to announce that Honey Dacanay, Director-General, Digital Policy, Data and Digital Policy Sector, Treasury Board Secretariat, Government of Canada is speaking at our upcoming Government Innovation Showcase Federal 2026. Register to hear more insights from Honey on this project.