CDAP: We get mail
CDAP: We get mail
The government found everyone in Canada who wants to enhance digital commerce. Then it screwed them over.
Over at the petition website change.org, I see that as of Wednesday afternoon, 500 small businesses have signed a petition protesting the federal government’s decision to shut the largest component of the Canada Digital Adoption Program. My challenge today is to explain why these people are upset. But first…
Department of Previously Unanswered Questions
Twenty minutes after I hit SEND on yesterday’s plaintive post about questions to two federal departments that had gone unanswered, I received an answer to one of the questions.
This morning I received an answer, of sorts, to the other question.
So that’s two for two. ISED answered first, on the Canada Digital Adoption Program (CDAP). I’ll share their answer here, and give you some analysis. Tomorrow I’ll write about GAC’s answer on democracy promotion, because tomorrow will be an excellent day to discuss the state of democracy in the world in general.
I should emphasize that I don’t think my bit of theatre yesterday caused ISED and GAC to answer. Obviously ISED was about to send their answer when I published. But I maintain that it is far too hard to get information from this government, as it is from large organizations in general these days, and I think it’s fair to let people know I’m less patient than I used to be.
Now on to the substance of the government’s reply.
This post gets deep into the weeds of policy design. There’s nothing I can do to avoid that. Obviously, I think the complexity of these programs is a big part of their weakness. But when I wrote about CDAP before, here and here, you showed real interest in those details. So off we go into the weeds again.
ISED’s version
Recall that my question was, essentially: Hey, why did you shut down applications to the largest component of a $4-billion program, two years earlier than scheduled, on a day’s notice before a long weekend?
Here’s CDAP’s response, in its entirety. My questions in bold, followed by their replies in italics.