The Canadian Sunday

Photo by Ali Tawfiq on Unsplash

Amidst a burgeoning digital era, governments worldwide are striving to harness the potential of technology to enhance administrative efficiency and engage with citizens. However, recent insanity with Canada’s ArriveCAN app is far removed from this ideal, exposing instead a government drowning in technological ineptitude, bureaucratic excesses and now possibly illegal actions.

The ArriveCAN app is a tale of governmental technical incompetence. The federal government’s handling of a whopping $54 million project meant to mitigate COVID-19 impacts stands again accused of overpayment and lack of transparency. When a tech company claimed the recreation of the app within just 48 hours, it spotlighted not just potential financial mismanagement but also a glaring lack of technical competence within governmental ranks.

This fiasco is emblematic of a deeper malaise — a pronounced ‘brain drain’ where the creme de la creme of Canada’s technical talent often finds greener pastures in private sectors or beyond borders. The government’s failure to retain or attract top-tier technical talent manifests in its ill-equipped handling of tech-centric projects that should be fully developed and deployed in-house with ease. Despite rhetoric championing innovation, the reality, as critics argue, is an oppressive bureaucratic environment where innovation is more a buzzword than a practiced ethos.

The ArriveCAN saga unveils a bureaucratic operating structure that, instead of fostering innovation, often throttles it. Innovators within the system find themselves trapped in a tangle of red tape, facing a figurative climb of Mount Everest to bring fresh ideas to fruition. This oppressive atmosphere is further exacerbated by a culture that, critics argue, champions loyalty over skillset, promoting a cooperative demeanour over capability. The penchant for creating echo chambers of agreement over fostering diverse, capable teams leads to a milieu where ‘yes people’ are propelled to the pinnacles of power, often to the detriment of the working class, further empowered to stifle further.

This culture of compliance over capability creates a governance model laden with excess layers, draining taxpayer resources while yielding sub-par outcomes. The ArriveCAN app fiasco sheds light on a bloated bureaucracy where the government, employing an army of personnel, still needs to deliver efficient and effective solutions. The cumbersome governance model is an aversion to the lean, agile frameworks that modern technological projects require and necessitate.

The ArriveCAN app debacle in Canada heralds an eerie similarity to a tale spun in the depths of international arms dealing, as depicted in the film “War Dogs.” This cinematic portrayal, encapsulating the real-life exploits of David Packouz and Efraim Diveroli, shows the murky waters of government contracts navigated by unqualified private entities, a theme that resonates profoundly here.