Digital Government Excellence. Siim Sikkut

time to find more people who are not afraid to speak. I would also ask them for feedback more often. We were delivering home runs and home runs, but it was killing people in the process.

      I had been conscious about my own mental health from the start, but the job still had an effect. I gained a lot of weight, and my state was not always the best during the job. I was open about it and a deputy minister told me that I should not be showing cracks like that. It did not sit true with who I am as a person. I am very honest, am emotional and transparent as a person. I believe it is OK for people to see the leadership struggle because it is not easy all the time and nobody wants to work for robots anymore. They will not believe you then when you speak because you are not genuine. It would be like senior officials having people write their social media for them. Other people will know it and not buy it.

So, I should have made sure that my health and mental health came first. I did prioritize longer days over family at times, and that is no good. An evening eight o'clock call could have frankly just been a meeting the next morning, not happen immediately. The thing is that once you leave office at the end of your run, you are just a person. I should have realized that I was always first a person, while also in the position.

Was This the Reason You Moved On or What Was behind Your Decision to Leave Office?

      It was a few things together.

      I did not want to go over my three-year limit that I had set for myself at the beginning. Either the government could move me to another job, or I would just find my own job. I do not think that governments are used to people taking their future in their own hands and asking to be moved or to leave on their own timing. I got questions and comments back from people like, “You cannot leave, what are you doing?”

      We had done so much change in three years, it was going to be more operational now. I was not interested in that. So, even if nobody wanted to move to another portfolio and thought I was doing a good job, I was ready to move on. Elections were coming, too. Scott and Yaprak had left, new people were coming in. Even if they were great, it was not the same relationship anymore that we had had with the minister or the secretary before.

      It was also a time for me for reasons of health and family. My then wife was working in tech and some doors were closed to her because of who I was and where I worked. So, I had to put myself and my family first. I find that people who have not worked inside the machine and have scars to prove it do not understand the level of stress and damage that it does to your body and to everything else.

What Are the Remaining Challenges on the Table for GC and Your Former Team?

      First, it is still necessary to do a better job of integrating all the new policies into the department. Also, to the other departments. I think it is necessary to move digital conversations all the way up to cabinet decisions more regularly and with more discipline.

      The GCIO unit also needs to coordinate better with other departments that are involved in the digital economy. I have always been a believer that most governments around the world are still applying Industrial Age thinking to the digital world. But looking at places like Estonia and its e-Residency program triggered a thought that in the digital world it does not apply that government has a monopoly over the citizens' lives. What if Canadians could choose whom they get their services from because they could choose to launch a business in Estonia now and even never set foot in the country? This has impact beyond the government, on the whole economy, and we could intentionally work on that.

      These would have been my next steps, at least.

How Did You Ensure Your Initiatives and Changes Would Be Sustained?

As changing policy and legislation in the Government of Canada is so darn hard, and I knew this, then I knew these things were not going to change any time soon. Because of our legislation and policy, GC now is doing AI, is using the cloud, all these things. The boring stuff and the stuff you do not announce publicly because nobody cares are the stuff that will stay the longest. The governance stuff.

      The GCIO team also has got levers now. Say, another Phoenix happens—they cannot blame the fact that they did not have the authority to stop it. It could still happen because of a lack of leadership, but not because there is a lack of technical tools or legislation or policy or architecture or direction.

      The strength of the machinery can be seen from the fact that it took so long to find a formal replacement for me—the new GCIO started in the fall of 2021. Two of my former deputies had a shot at acting government CIO for a year, and everything continued to work. Even despite COVID-19; it is unreal the work they did to adjust to the pandemic. They had the governance and the right technology and their own leadership to keep things going.

Would You Do the Same Job Ever Again, Being Wiser Now, Too?

      I have talked to a number of CIOs for other countries, including G7 and more. At the end of the day, the jobs are the same. I would definitely consider a job on the business side and citizen service side, not the technical side, and do it the way I think it should be done. So, I am never going to say that I will never take another public sector job. But I have done the government CIO job already.

What Are the Core Necessary Skills to Do This Kind of Job Well?

      I think you need to definitely be able to have a public presence. Whether it is presentations, social media, media interviews, parliamentary committees—you need to be able to articulate your vision and the reasons why you are doing the things you are doing.

      Listening is another big skill. I should have listened even more.

      You have to be able to break things down into micro adjustments and keep at doing them. You need to do it this way in order not to fail big and to have a shot at changing the system.

      You absolutely need to understand work-life balance in these jobs. These jobs can be all-encompassing. So, you definitely need some internal discipline on how to manage the balance in these cases.

What Are Your Bottom-Line Takeaways or Recommendations on How to Do the GCIO Type of Job Well?

      My number one rule would be: remember that it is about the people, not the deliverables. It is about the memories you are going to have with those people, not what you will have delivered necessarily.

      Number two: it is still just a job. A job like any other job. Do not lose sight of who you are, your hobbies, your family, whatever makes you really you.

      Third thing: make sure you leave things in a better place than you when you inherited it. I think that you have to take a job like ours with the intention of leaving the place a better place than you started off with. If you do not do it, or if you cannot afterwards look back and say it, you should try harder or leave.

CHAPTER 3 Anna-Maija Karjalainen: Finland

      Anna-Maija Karjalainen was the Director General in the Ministry of Finance of Finland for over seven years. Her responsibility area was the public sector ICT and digitalization, including the digital security.

      Before joining the Ministry of Finance, she worked for five years as the divisional director in the State Treasury of Finland, leading the shared service center for state ICT services.

      Prior to these governmental tasks she worked more than twenty years in the private sector leading ICT in international companies in the metal and paper industries.

      She holds a master of science degree in engineering.