Rebooting Digital Government Transformation in Canada

Dorothy Eng

CEO, Code for Canada

Dorothy Eng is the CEO of Code for Canada, a national non-profit that works with governments to create equitable digital services. Dorothy has spent years working with governments to address challenges like attracting and retaining digital talent, departmental silos, and a lack of digital capacity. She has built effective digital solutions in the face of them.

Honey Dacanay

Director General, Digital Policy, Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat

Honey Dacanay is a digital transformation leader with significant experience leading public sector renewal and reform initiatives in the Governments of Canada and Ontario. In 2019, she was named one of Apolitical’s “World’s 100 Most Influential People in Digital Government.”

In addition to co-teaching Digital Transformation in the Public Sector at McMaster University, Honey is a Director-General, Digital Policy with the Government of Canada and a member of Public Digital’s global network of experts. Some of her projects include: advancing implementation of Canada’s digital standards and Policy on Service and Digital; designing and overseeing Canada’s first agile governance pilot; developing a data-driven approach to modernizing Canada’s income security programs; leading development of an introductory digital curriculum for 289,000+ Government of Canada public servants; leading teams that developed and enshrined Ontario’s digital service standards in landmark legislation, the Simpler, Faster, Better Services Act, 2019.

Ima Okonny

Assistant Deputy Minister and Chief Data Officer, Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC)

Ima Okony, Assistant Deputy Minister and Chief Data Officer at Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) has over 23 years of experience in the field of data.
As Chief Data Officer of ESDC, she works to enhance and advance Data Science, Data Management and Data Sharing to support ESDC’s policies, service delivery and results reporting.
In addition to ground-breaking enhancement of the evidence base to support policy analysis and results reporting during the pandemic, Ima led the renewal of ESDC’s Enterprise Data Strategy and Enterprise Data and Analytics Policies. This involved promoting integration of data in the Departmental Policy on Information and Data Management and developing the Artificial Intelligence and Data Ethics Framework. She also led the establishment of the Data Literacy Program, the refreshed Data Inventory as well as its core instruments to better assess and manage data-related risks.

Prior to ESDC, Ima held an executive role at the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions, where she led a team to ensure the effective collection, governance, and management of federally regulated financial institution and pension plan data collected by the Office.
Ima has also worked at Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, where she led the development and delivery of analytical data, research databases, data products and tools that supported performance measurement, policy development, program monitoring, results/outcome reporting and research and evaluation. Ima’s previous experience has also included positions with the Canada Revenue Agency, and Statistics Canada.

She has an educational background in Mathematics, Computer Programming and Public Management and during her time with the Government of Canada, she has received several nominations and awards for her leadership and results. The Women’s Executive Network (WXN) recently announced Ima as a winner of Canada’s Most Powerful Women: Top 100™ Award. Ima also won the Insight 250 award, a global recognition of her work in data-driven insights and impactful leadership.

Mohammad Qureshi

Corporate Chief Information Officer and Associate Deputy Minister, Ministry of Public and Business Service Delivery (MPBSD)

Mohammad Qureshi is the Corporate Chief Information Officer and Associate Deputy Minister within the Ministry of Public and Business Service Delivery (MPBSD), leading the Government Information Technology Ontario (GovTechON) organization.

GovTechON is home to professionals who work in partnership with ministries across the Government of Ontario to develop, deploy and maintain technology to deliver enhanced services and business outcomes for Ontarians. GovTechON maintains a large portfolio of complex, enterprise-grade technologies, at a scale reflecting Ontario’s position as Canada’s largest province, serving a population of 15 million and a public service of 60,000+.

With more than 20 years in public service, Mohammad’s mission has remained the same: enable the public sector to harness the benefits of transformative technology and deliver better outcomes for people. Before Mohammad’s appointment as CCIO, he was named Ontario’s first Chief Information Security Officer, later moving to Chief Information Officer of the Infrastructure Technology Services division. In May of 2022, Mohammad was recognized as the CIO of the Year within the public sector category, by IT World Canada.