Country: Canada

Canadians have kicked off a ‘caremongering’ trend, using localised Facebook groups in which people can post #ISO posts (‘in search of’ help requests), or #offer posts, enabling people to acquire important medical or household goods that they may not have been able to find for health or mobility reasons.

Combining Design Thinking and Rapid Impact Evaluation methodologies allows for a user-centered counterfactual to measure the impact of the current program design, while simultaneously identifying programmatic design flaws and generating solutions for improvement. The participative process for co-developing the counterfactual triangulates multiple user perspectives and data sets to provide new lines of evidence to pursue innovative solutions and offer a more iterative approach to evaluation.

The Heating Assistance Rebate Program (HARP) helps over 42,000 low income Nova Scotians with the high cost of heating their homes in the winter. In 2016 Service Nova Scotia used an innovative approach to modernize HARP from a paper-based application to an online system to improve user experience and government processes. The modernization of this program was uniquely user-driven with significant user-testing leading the transition process and continuous user-testing for ongoing improvement.

In 2016 the NEB launched the Data Visualization Initiative to face the challenge of producing usable and useful data to go beyond using new technologies to deliver better service to citizens. It created multiple products from the same information to expand public participation in the energy dialogue and enable evidence-based decision-making. These products include interactive data visualizations and other materials, such as high school lesson plans, as a new way to engage experts and nonexperts.

Community Connects is a pilot project that came out of the Transportation Innovation Lab. Problem/Opportunity: Cape Breton Regional Municipality (CBRM) is a region with high levels of poverty and unemployment. Innovation: Taxi service, doorstep pick-up, defined drop-off points, flat rate: $7 seat. Why innovative? In short, the approach (social innovation lab) and those that were engaged (first-voice participants).

As part of the engagement process on the redesign of Canada’s homelessness program, Employment and Social Development Canada engaged directly with people with lived experience of homelessness. Dedicated tools and mechanisms were developed to ensure the meaningful participation of people with lived experience, the removal and mitigation of financial barriers to engagement and recognition of the unique expertise and knowledge of people with lived experience.

In 2016, British Columbia (B.C.) had the second highest poverty rate in Canada but was the only province without a poverty reduction strategy. To inform its first strategy, a new government completed the most extensive poverty engagement to date in Canada, focusing on people with lived experience of poverty. To address barriers, B.C. used a range of innovative engagement approaches including direct supports for participants, dedicated Indigenous engagement and funding grants to non-profits.

Canada has an obligation to protect and inform migrant workers of their rights while in Canada and to support employer compliance with the conditions of its Temporary Foreign Worker Program. To this end, it launched the Migrant Worker Support Network pilot initiative. The Network is a collaborative and migrant worker-informed platform for migrant workers, employers, governments, and civil society to develop and implement solutions to better protection and support of migrant workers in Canada.

There is a significant gap in Labour Market Information for people living on reserves in Canada.  This Pilot project will improve the detail and timeliness of labour force information for on-reserve First Nations (FN) communities towards reducing the skills and employment gaps between First Nations and non-indigenous Canadians, through co-development. The components to the Innovation are: 1.Annual survey of the entire on-reserve population 15 years or older 2.Skills inventory to support skills…

Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) led the design and implementation of a national poverty reduction strategy public engagement process. We offered Canadians multiple ways to share their views, from public town hall events to online discussions, to a youth contest, to an in-depth research project. The engagement process successfully reached thousands of Canadians in a short time frame on a low budget. The plan is now used as a Government of Canada model for effective civic…