What It Really Takes to Build AI for Government

Galen Low: If your firm is looking to land projects with government agencies because it thinks government teams are hapless bureaucrats waiting to be hoodwinked out of their budgets, don't even bother. In modern governments, a new paradigm has arrived where some of the most talented and savvy innovators have made the move from the private sector to drive visionary mission-led initiatives that improve the lives of their fellow citizens.

In this new paradigm, accountability and transparency are paramount, auditability and traceability are mandatory, and tolerance for cronyism is zero. To unpack how to be a successful government collaborator in the AI era, I've brought in an agile delivery specialist who started out in government, made the move to big consulting, and then shifted back to government to implement intelligent supply chains that save lives.

Together, we'll be dispelling myths about government teams and consultants, discussing the impact of AI and AI-powered professional services on government procurement processes, and breaking down the behaviors and mindsets that project teams need to embody to be good government collaborators. Hope you enjoy the episode.

Welcome to the Digital Project Manager Podcast—the show that helps delivery leaders work smarter, deliver smoother, and lead their teams with confidence in the age of AI. I'm Galen, and every week we dive into real-world strategies, emerging trends, proven frameworks, and the occasional war story from the project front lines.

Whether you're steering massive transformation projects, wrangling AI workflows, or just trying to keep the chaos under control, you're in the right place. Oh, and if you've been liking what you've been hearing from us lately, please consider following us wherever you're listening or watching, and maybe even leaving us a review. All right, let's get into it.

With me today is William Moroz, a digital delivery leader with more than twenty-five years of experience leading complex mission-critical technology initiatives across government, telecommunications, and financial services. Regular listeners may remember William from our conversation about the intelligent supply chain his team helped build to support Canada's COVID-19 vaccine rollout.

That initiative brought government teams, technology partners, logistics providers, and public health stakeholders together to move life-saving supplies across the country with greater visibility, integrity, and control. Today, William is helping apply that mission-driven AI-powered delivery model to other parts of the Canadian federal government through collaboration with other international governments and with the help of some of the top consulting firms in the world.

William, welcome back to the show.

William Moroz: Glad to be here, Galen.

Galen Low: I am so glad you're back because I always love having you on the show, mostly because we get to dive into all sorts of different areas. We can dive into tech, we can dive into business, we can dive into project leadership. We both come from the consulting world, and we can always dive into procurement and sales.

I think we can have a really multifaceted conversation all in one punchy chat, and I do think that we can probably go wherever the wind takes us. But I did create this little roadmap for us to try and stick to or maybe not stick to, just depending on where we want to go. First, I just wanted to explore the process that a large-scale government project takes to go from an idea to a priority, especially now that AI is involved in the solutions that are being proposed.

Then I'd like to just talk about how private sector organizations can become trusted strategic partners for government clients, what behaviors and misconceptions they need to shed, and what ethical and governance considerations they need to shore up. And lastly, I'd really love to talk about what the future could look like for government and private sector collaboration and whether we'll ever find the right balance between speed and cautious consideration.

How does that sound ?

William Moroz: That sounds great. It's all good because that's exactly what's happening. It's a multifaceted paradigm changing. Every day is a different day. So, you know, you talk about pivoting, agility. I no longer book meetings in my calendar anymore 'cause it's like, it's either... It'll always be blue, right?

It's like- ... so you gotta take it as it comes.

Galen Low: Things are changing too fast for Outlook .

William Moroz: Way, way too fast. You know, I'm gonna start by saying there's a lot of AI hallucination. How do we know that AI is actually giving us the right information? Is it auditable, right? Now, I'm talking about auditable, I'm talking about audit-able to get us to what we want as not only, you know, being, I guess, getting away from the perception of just being lazy, right?

You should already know. But actually giving us that extra layer and that extra confidence to being able to make, you know, the right decisions, right, based on the data that we're looking at to drive us to that point So I'll start off by saying that because what we are doing at the government of Canada is of I am, I am there as a senior advisor.

We have a lot of very, very smart people. That paradigm perceptions that, I guess, stereotypical perception of the government worker is completely false. That is not at all what, We have a lot of very, very smart people, right? They're very well educated. They... It, it's looking at... They're on the boots on the ground, as they say, and it's looking at, you know, we got some very, very real issues here that need attention and need to be addressed in the proper way, right?

So, we get together business, technology, and we look at, okay, what are the issues, right? How is this of value? What's the benefit value statement here? And of course, it's about service. It's about getting the job done. There's no ROI, there's no return on investment from a dollar perspective.

Again, I'm generalizing these terms, but it's return on investment from a level of service and a level of public service to all Canadians.

And you know, what used to be, well, let's go out, let's do an RFP, let's, you know, put some banks from requirements together, get work with our, our procurement friends and get something out, and then get a firm to deliver a solution in sort of a turnkey fashion, is now actually shifting more to we need more hands, we need more legs, we need more feet on the ground and then, you know, we will be the project management element to that guiding right?

Because we know what to do, how to do it. Again, a lot of intelligent people, a lot of passion trying to get the job done, but we just need more hands and more feet. And that, you know, in a defined manner that we just can't be hiring full-time resources, right, for, you know, what I would consider short midterm programs Once the program is in place, you know, again, the government's public service, public servants have an obligation, right, to ensure that every dollar spent is a taxpayer's dollar that's being spent in the right way, right, for the right reasons.

And that has you know, certainly contributed to that paradigm shift where let's certainly leverage, you know, the intelligence of the resources that we have in place to then be able to guide and direct a consulting firm or a services provider through a procurement process that will enable us and help us get the job done through our direction, knowing that we are guiding this to be successful with control of timelines, with control of you know, priorities, with control of, of method of approach, earn value, you know, recognition, right?

You know, all the right elements to burn down and, and of course, the agile way to development and to release and also communication, right? You know, at the end of the day, it's getting the job done with the right people with the right, I'll say collaborators. I, I can't use the word partners 'cause we don't...

Government of Canada does not partner with anybody. We have a lot of collaborators that we select through a fair bidding process for all the right reasons. And that is, it's not just about price, it's about who can get the job done and how well they can get it done, and what quality of expertise are they bringing to the table to help us make a difference, right, for all Canadians.

Galen Low: I love that. I think that's a really good summary. I wonder if we could like zoom out. I just wanted to ask you maybe a bit of a spicy question, a bit of, you know, a controversial question, you know. And I think, you know, we're talking about stereotypes. So governments have a reputation for being slow and bureaucratic and outdated and uninformed.

And meanwhile, on the other side, large consulting firms have a reputation for being expensive, for locking in their clients, and for being more adept at presenting in PowerPoint than actually making an impact. You yourself, you've worked in both contexts, and you've also seen these both sides work together.

So my question is this: Are government collaborations with large consulting firms just a circular culture clash designed to waste taxpayer dollars? Or are these just like the stereotypes that are masking some of the successes that these collaborations have led to?

William Moroz: Oh, I'm gonna take a deep breath on that one, Galen.

You know, before I was talking about the paradigm shift. So right now, the old-fashioned way, the old school, the pork barrel type stuff, there have been many examples that have come to public forum where this isn't acceptable anymore, right? I'm not gonna name any names, but it is public. Everybody can do a search where you know, hundreds of millions of dollars have been awarded to certain firms, and people are just asking questions on why right, and what was the benefit value coming out of those relationships.

And you know, as that's more and more publicly exposed because those questions now are being more surgically rooted to understand you know, the drive for the benefit, that's bringing to light you know, the change of that paradigm, where it's making us smarter in our decisions. It's pushing us to be more intelligent in terms of our programs and our upcoming projects and you know, I'll say more innovative in the way that we're setting procurement relationships with suppliers, particularly, you know, consulting suppliers, where it's a professional services engagement, right?

You know, and I'll separate it from the tangible versus the intangible. You buy a widget, it's tangible. You see it, you spec it, you buy it. You know, recently, submarine.

Galen Low: Very, yeah.

William Moroz: Or, you know, recently, you know, could be jet fighters, right? The tangibility element is there. You know, from a, a product management perspective, I'm looking for, you know, these 10 requirements, and that tangible product meets these 10 requirements.

Intangible, when you're actually buying professional services, you're buying... well, you're buying, you know, foreground IP, right? You're buying creativity, right? That creativity has a very broad definition, right? Creativity for me might mean something else for somebody else, and hence, you know, the focus on my bringing to light an idea or an innovation through my creativity or my team's creativity because it is the solution that we have validated as, you know, the correct direction, then needs to be supported with arms and legs to make it generally available, right?

Again, for all the right reasons in all the right directions. And, and that is where the paradigm shift has has taken, whereas, you know, you just get an RFU together and say, "Okay, turnkey, give me the solution, deliver, do it," and, you know, r- with right now it's the, "Well, wait a minute. We're not gonna be just..."

Again, I'm generalizing, but the, you know, the, the paradigm shift is shifting to the fact that this is d- you know, much more controllable, much more maintainable and then much more, I guess, risk adverse to mitigate that we will actually be, you know, successfully able to deliver the solution that responds to the challenge or the problem at hand, right?

The problem statement at hand in that Accountability. It's about accountability, and it's about, again, wanting to make a difference. But that accountability comes back to, you know, not necessarily the firm that has been awarded the contract. The accountability is now on the individual that has allowed for that contract to to happen, and that, again, comes back on the public service, to which I am a public servant with the government of Canada.

Galen Low: There you go. I, I, I like that word paradigm shift. I also like the word foreground IP, and I think you raise a really good point. A, I think there are some intangibles right now, especially with AI projects, like the knowledge around how to build AI infrastructure, you know, AI-powered systems you know, develop solutions.

There's a lot there that is creativity, innovation, knowledge, and skill, and sometimes it will produce a tangible output, and sometimes it will not. But what I really like is that notion of this paradigm shift where that's becoming known. And for any, you know, all my taxpayers listening out there, some comfort for them to understand that, you know, the Canadian government, and arguably other governments as well, you know, are really needing to shore up the accountability and the traceability of value within the collaborations that they're doing with the private sector so that, you know, you can draw that line between taxpayer dollars invested and value realized, not just hours spent or PowerPoints delivered or what have you.

And yeah, it's not as easy as going, "Did we get the submarines or not?" But there is sort of scrutiny internally in the government as well to make sure that money is being spent well to realize the value that was intended and guarding against, I guess, what could be seen as, you know, cronyism or just favoritism within the sort of vendor ecosystem.

And I think a lot of people will be comforted to hear that, especially as we move into, you know, the world of AI-powered solutions where, gosh, you know, like, how do you even know enough to purchase the services that you need to develop a solution that, you know, maybe you don't even know what it is yet. So, there's a lot of sort of trust and intangible there.

But I agree with you. I think it's like now there's a transformation happening in terms of, like, how those engagements are looked at. And so it's not just, you know, this black box taxpayer dollars, you know, coming in one end and maybe nothing visible coming out the other.

William Moroz: You know, again, people join the public service for all the right reasons, and that's to make a difference and also to serve all Canadians, assuring the, you know, the, th- in, in as much as, of course, you can control that right decisions are being made for the right reasons and prioritizations are being made for the right reasons.

The optics, of course, from the, the outside looking in, there's always opinions, there's always criticisms, there's always, you know, I'd say different, different agenda items, right that are, that, that, that may or may not influence that. But there is, within our space, there is, is certainly a whole bunch of checks and balances, and it's not bureaucracy.

It's just assuring that the right things are happening for the right reasons and that you know, it's above reproach, right? And that if you know, it comes to a point where a bid is awarded, right, to a firm, to a consulting firm, that it is for the right reasons, and that, again, it is above reproach.

You know, those, I'll say those days of I have friends that I know and we're close and we grew up together and that, and that, that, that in a professional services environment, certainly there are different layers there that will allow for that to a s- also to a certain contract value, right? Called sole source.

But I will also say that that sole source perspective is also goes through have you looked at three or four different, right? And that's not a direct relationship to, you know, somebody that you are close to or that you grew up with. But the... And those stories again come to light, right? They're very much in the public figure and that, you know- Right

that causes embarrassment for people or for different individuals to then go back and explain why, right? And you know, certainly that's not the quadrant that you wanna be in, right? Because it... I'll say that the way that the I think industry and culture is not allowing for that anymore.

Galen Low: Yeah, tolerance is much lower there.

I do want to get into some of the procurement stuff, but I wanted to kind of flip that lens around too because, you know, I found myself saying earlier my original question was kind of around okay, yeah, government has this stereotypical perception that they are sort of crusty and you know, behind the times.

I said something earlier about yeah, you know, it's hard to know even what you're trying to buy. But you touched on something earlier that I want to come back to, which is that, you know, the people who are joining the government to make a difference, they are not that stereotype of people who are sort of behind the times, pushing paper around, waiting for their pension to mature so they can, you know, retire and do not so much.

But actually, you know, the stories you tell me and as we were prepping for this, like the Canadian federal government is full of just like really, really bright talent, really passionate, innovative individuals who are, you know, moving the ball forward in many ways, not just in terms of like scrutiny and accountability on the sort of procurement side, but also with the technology, with the innovation.

And you said something earlier, you know, at the beginning about, you know, the, the fact that, you know, the vision is there in terms of, you know, what a government needs to do with their initiatives and the help that they need is not creating the vision, it's actually executing it, you know, with the government sort of team being, you know, in some ways the project or program manager role overseeing a team of, you know, just extra capacity of other talented individuals to realize that vision.

William Moroz: We very much drive the vision, and we look at innovative ways to be able to assure execution for the right reasons in the benefit of Canada. And that's it. We drive the vision, but we're also accountable for the success or for the delivery of that vision. And that to me, in my experience over the last number of years, is the paradigm shift that is you know, as you, you used the word tolerance, right?

The tolerance is much tighter on that to assure that the right firms are being selected for the right reasons against a process that enforces or that, I should say, reinforces success for the projected outcome.

Galen Low: I wonder if we could dive into that process. Maybe just into procurement process, and then after that I want to talk about sort of like what makes a good government partner in this day and age because I do think you're right.

I do think there's a paradigm shift, and I think that organizations trying to work with the government that, you know, have some of these misconceptions and stereotypes, you know, in their head probably won't be successful . So I want to get into that in a little bit. But I thought maybe we could dive into that procurement process because last time you were on the show you were winding down a government program that created an intelligent supply chain that was spun up, you know, in a matter of months and saved lives by orchestrating the delivery of vaccines during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Today, you're spinning up new projects with the Canadian government that are equally transformative but with a different kind of pressure than working within the framework of like the Emergency Response Act. I'm just wondering, you know, what does the process look like today for getting a mega project out of someone's head into the federal government's list of top priorities and out to tender to prospective private sector collaborators?

And is this process any different now that, you know, AI is involved?

William Moroz: Well, I am not with what's called PSPC. I'm not a procurement officer. I'm certainly not at all qualified to be able to talk to you about government procurement processes or such like that. But what I can say is it's about collaboration.

It's about involving, you know, many of the things that we do, we involve industry, right? It's request for information, right? I have this vision. I'm thinking of doing XYZ, and I reach out to industry to validate, right, if we're looking at this in the right way. So it's sort of that building in factor right from the outset on getting opinions, right?

And everybody has an opinion. I understand that. Everybody has a, you know, everybody wants to be successful in what they feel their dimension should be in, and, you know, you gotta respect that as well. But that collaboration from the start, right, also validates the direction, you know, whether it's the right direction or whether adjustment needs to be made, tweaking needs to be made, or, you know, in certain cases of course, the extreme to that is whether it's completely wrong and not at all the right directions, which you, you then of course, have to pivot, right?

So getting that information up front certainly greatly assists with, you know, either with the validation, the adjustment, or the pivot to taking this further.

Galen Low: I like that you used the word collaboration, and I think it is a misconception. As someone who came out of sales, who did a lot of work in the public sector, I think the Request for Information, the RFI process, I think in some ways it started out as a mystery to us.

It's like, why would we invest the time to submit information to a process where no bid will be awarded, and like, how is that going to, how is that going to benefit us as a business? But as you said, it's the collaboration bit. It's the bit where the vision is shared, you know, out to industry, where industry can comment and have their opinion and share their vision for how they would solve that problem.

And for that collaboration to take place, to be like, "Okay, either yes, that's nice, but that doesn't really fit the requirement. We're gonna keep, you know, stay, stay the course," or, "Hey, this information is really useful. We should shape it around this idea before we take it out to tender." And I think for the folks listening who, like me, have trauma of, you know, responding to RFPs that just feel like they were, you know, thrown together at the last minute with, you know, a dream wish list of things and a tiny budget, much more goes into it actually, right?

Especially from the government side of creating that RFP, having gone through this process to collaborate with industry, to shape a vision, to prioritize that program, you know, over other initiatives, to get to the point where it becomes a request for proposal. At that point, so much work has been done, actually.

And so if you enter from stage left, right at that moment, you're like, "Oh gosh, this RFP is garbage." You know, it's like, "It doesn't make any sense. What are they even thinking? They just made this up." Probably is not the case. Like a lot of rigor has gone, a lot of collaboration has already taken place. A lot of conversations have already taken place within the government.

A lot of conversations have been, you know, taking place with industry to make an informed sort of presentation of what this engagement actually is. I think that's something that I think people miss out on a lot. I mean, you, you mentioned, yeah, you're not a procurement officer, but even from like a program leader, project manager sort of standpoint, is there any sort of different considerations that you're thinking of now that AI is involved?

Whether that's like, "Oh my gosh, was this proposal that came in just generated with ChatGPT based on our RFP?" Or, you know, firms that have, you know, deep experience with AI or a certain reputation around AI. Like what are some of the things that are a little bit nuanced now that AI is in the frame?

William Moroz: Well, AI can certainly generate a response to an RFP.

That is out there. Again, I come back to, you know, there's AI hallucination. The response that you're getting, how do you know that that is the correct response? There's autonomous AI, right, to which you want to have assure that that AI is human-led and maybe validated through, you know, different AI platforms.

And certainly we do have access to, you know, many very powerful AI platforms. I cannot name them publicly, but th- there is that there. It is a reinforcing element to our intelligence and our research, right? Don't get that wrong, and it's a little bit more than just, you know, ChatGPT, so let's not be don't want anybody to be naive here.

And all that is validated in our approaches 'cause it, it's about auditability, right? Of, you know, collaboration and then, you know, working together to assure that, again, the right decisions are being made for the right reasons from a government perspective for all Canadians.

Galen Low: I like that framing, and maybe it, that's a good segue into just what that collaboration looks like.

You know, I've been framing this around AI. I think a lot of the work you've done in the past has been, whether AI related or not, is just technology and innovation for good. What I mean by that is for good causes to improve, you know, quality of life for citizens.

William Moroz: Quality of life, automation, work-life balance, workflow.

Galen Low: Saving lives. Right, yeah, saving lives. You've done a lot of that work. And I think, yeah, that's the thread of steel that's been coming up, right? Is that in a lot of cases, you know, you and your team and others who join the government want to do good and want these collaborations to make an impact that they can be proud of.

And, you know, you're someone who's lived on both sides of the fence, right? You've you started out in government, you went to consulting, you're back in government. And so, you know, I think you, you probably have a really good idea, and you might know better than most to you, what does being a good government collaborator look like during the procurement process, but also during the delivery process?

And maybe we can add the sort of AI factor into the equation as well. You know, what does a healthy partnership look like or a healthy collaboration, I guess you'd call them collaborations, with industry, with private sector, especially now that you know, AI is involved. We're using AI-powered platforms and tools.

We've got AI agents in the mix. You know, a lot of these consulting firms and, you know, private sector wants to go fast and, you know, we have the speed to our advantage. We can go and innovate and break stuff. Meanwhile, it's kind of like, yeah, we there's enough scrutiny on us that we shouldn't go and break stuff.

Yeah. What are some of the characteristics of a good government collaborator?

William Moroz: I mean, you know, open, honest transparency, right? Again, I'm using those words quite generally, but it's about, you know, we have a problem statement, and we're looking for a solution to the problem. We're being transparent about what the problem statement is, and then we're looking for collaboration to work together to be able to have a successful outcome on a sustainable, I'll say, you know, solution that ties back to the value benefit, right, of this.

You know, there's a word out there that is becoming... Or there's, there's an AI descriptor that is now becoming more and more prevalent. It's called AI slop. Right. Yes. To go back to, you know, data, right? I, I've been slicing and dicing data of more than 25 years now, right? And, you know, we... It used to be called data slop.

Well, now it's called AI slop. That's fine. You know, what is it? It's still slop. What does that mean? Bad data will give you bad data. You know, your filters, your, your... What is clean data is becoming, again, more and more questionable, right? You know, no longer is it, you know, different cells with points and comments and da-da-da.

And now it all comes down to the root of data literacy, right? And, you know, your degree of literacy to then be able to understand the data that you need, what data you have, and then how to certainly filter that through, you know, whatever algorithm or whatever formula that you're putting together in your query to then understand the, you know, how that is providing you with a driving decision, right?

And then the degree of accuracy for that decision, right, which also now tempers, you know, the, the direction of what you're trying to get going. Now just imagine... Now I'm gonna be bold here. I'm gonna say that upwards of about 20% of AI-generated queries are probably wrong. So you have a huge database, let's say, you know, the world data lake.

20% of what you're generating is wrong. And from what I've also come to surmount is, 'cause my question, you know, always being curious, where exactly is that 20% being wrong? At what data layer? Generalizing. I don't know, maybe somebody can provide me an answer here. Reaching out to the community.

Galen Low: Well, I think it's really interesting what you said because you know, before AI slop, there was data slop, and guess what AI's learning from?

William Moroz: We don't know. Now, is it 20%? Maybe it's more. You know, an acceptable, I'll say industry standard, I have... I've always gone by the 3% rule, right? Figure about 3% of what your query is is probably inaccurate or incorrect. I could live within a 3% margin, right? Could I live within a 20% margin? No.

Galen Low: The sort of tolerance on margin of error.

William Moroz: And particularly where I don't know where that 20% is in a, you know- in a generalized AI query.

Galen Low: To bring it back, I think, to the sort of collaboration layer, I really like what you're saying, and if I'm picking up what you're putting down, like transparency is paramount, right? It's like the government's gonna be transparent with industry, and they expect industry to be transparent with them.

And I think with the AI sort of complexities in the mix, knowing that there could be a margin of error, knowing that before there was AI slop, there was data slop, and, you know, we really need to understand what's going on. I think the other thing you said is literacy. And I take that literacy not just to mean understanding what's going on, sort of, you know, behind the scenes or within that black box that is, you know, an AI model or, you know, a platform or a formula or an algorithm, but also that literacy combining with transparency to provide explainability, right?

Or like traceability and like what you've been saying, audit ability. And I know a lot of people who've done a lot of work with public sector sort of agencies. I myself have... There's those moments, right, where the team is like, "Oh my gosh, like our government client, they're asking so many questions, and I, I don't think they trust us.

They don't think we're doing a good job. They're really annoying. You know, they're asking us to explain all this stuff, you know, and in some cases we can, but it's a pain. In some cases, we can't. That's just the, how it works in our tools." But you can flip it around and see it from the other side where, you know, the level of scrutiny that happens and the level of accountability on the government agencies to deliver value, you know, in exchange for taxpayer dollars that will improve lives, that will, you know, create benefits for citizens, arguably the world.

You can see why a government client might ask those things of their collaborators, because they're gonna get held to the fire too. And, you know, no one really wants to be, you know, in the newspaper in a bad way, so to speak, in the headlines, and that's why that scrutiny exists. That's why the questions come up.

That's why, you know, there's so much rigor involved, and that is something that if you're going in to work with a government agency, that A, you should expect, and B, you should appreciate also being somebody who likely pays taxes and likely wants the world to be a better place.

William Moroz: You know, again, the lessons learned, right?

You know, when you say that stereotype way back when, there are a lot of lessons learned that brings us to, to today and the application of all those lessons learned on how to do this. You know, in, in the way that we're doing this right now is what you see the I'll say the aggregation of of, of the data.

In those lessons learned brings us to, you know, certainly at least how I am managing the teams to be able to successfully deliver the programs that we need in this. You know, y- another element here is autonomous AI. What does that mean? That means that you're actually governing AI as the human element in AI is being governed in a way that you have in a utopia, we'll be able to get autonomous AI, right?

But then it comes back down to, so how do you audit that to assure that that is hitting the mark? And, you know, I, I mean, I do... holistically, I do have an answer to that. I think it's with the passage of time, right? That we will learn more and more. The humans will learn more and more on what the artificial intelligence is driving us to And from that, we will know what avenues to go down and then what avenues we don't go down, knowing that they might be dead ends.

And of course, Galen, as you know, I absolutely hate rework or throwaway work. That's not where I think anybody... Again, I'm generalizing. I should stop, go talk about myself. That's not where I wanna be, you know, spending my time in rework or in the-- in where there's no value, there's no gain in that. And from an AI perspective, my opinion is that the-- with the passage of time, we will have more best practices to learn from, right?

And we should have to take that into consideration, you know, create the learning over the learning.

Galen Low: Right.

William Moroz: And the, the reapplication of intelligence through you know, the more data you have, I mean, for me, I'm always data hungry. The more data I am able to ingest, you know, the certainty of the strength and the surety of the decisions that are being driven from a million data points, you know, just provides a, a higher level of confidence in the information that is being driven from that, right?

And the directional information, I should say, that are, And choices that are being made on that solid foundation.

Galen Low: I think that's a really good point, the fact that we're still learning how to work with one another in the context of AI, whether it's, you know, generative AI, whether it's agentic AI, whether it, you know, gets to a more general and autonomous AI.

I think the underpinning is, I think, the thing that you said, right? Is that we are together accountable, that we need the traceability, we need the explainability, we need to ask these questions, and, you know, we need to have these conversations to make sure that we're making good decisions. Ultimately, that's where the accountability will lie.

And actually, you raise a good point because, you know, and maybe this is a good sort of wrap-up question, but you are an agile champion in my books. You know, like you said, you don't want there to be, you know, rework or running into dead ends or, you know, project artifacts that aren't needed. You don't like the busy work.

And we started this conversation out with the idea that, yeah, sometimes government seems, you know, slow, and industry wants to move fast, especially consulting firms. You know, they're like, "Go, go, go." "We can go so fast now, you're gonna love it." Talk to me about maybe the future of collaborations between government and with industry, especially, you know, some of the consulting firms out there, about maybe finding that balance.

Do you ever see us finding that balance between the sort of like almost reckless speed and innovation and the sort of caution that is required when you are accountable to basically all the people, you know, residing in a nation? And I don't know, where do we start and how do we get there?

William Moroz: Again, another very, very good question.

That balance is a, you know, I would say is a delicate balance that is Definable across different elements. It is for every problem statement, for every program that I don't think you can generalize a definition of a balance. It depends on what you want the outcome to be. Certainly it is, you know, the, the fundamental elements of transparency, of collaboration, of respect, of value, right?

Or contribution value, I would say are all elements that go into the formula that would define that balance. It's not about relationships. It is, it is about working together collaboratively to deliver on an outcome, on a positive, sustainable outcome that could be leveraged for future endeavors. So, you know, importance of enterprise-wide, right?

Scalability, right? Not just doing this for me, but you're doing this for all of us, right? The scalability aspect of that, the security, the strength, right? Talk a lot about, you know, supply chain strengthening right now, all the... Okay. You know, it, it's gotta be at an enterprise level. It's gotta be scalable.

It's gotta be leveraged, right? It certainly has to be secure, and you know, it come down to also, you know, celebration on the delivery, right? Once it is delivered. But every program has a start, and every program at a certain point has a transition. Programs don't end. Projects end, but programs transition into bigger and better things.

Galen Low: I like that. I especially like that answer because, you know, there is no formula. It's about understanding the mission and being transparent with one another about the risk to navigate towards success, which, you know, ideally is mutual success that leads to bigger and better things. That's the sort of collaborative spirit where there is transparency, where the methods, you know, can be tailored, you know, where speed sometimes is very important and sometimes, you know, moving really slow, you know, slow is smooth and, and smooth is fast mentality.

It's gonna be different depending on what the program or initiative is and what the goals are, and I think it's that flexibility, the willingness to kind of be able to do both that would make a valuable sort of government collaborator.

William Moroz: Very much so. And that's what drives success, right? And that's also what drives, if we had to do it all over again, would we?

And the answer should be yes.

Galen Low: I like that way of looking at it. And that way it is about relationships, right? Moving on to bigger and better things, moving that program forward by transitioning it into whatever value was begotten from the first thing, so you could do it all over again.

William Moroz: Again, with the fundamental elements that that I described before, all of those fundamental elements transcend into the foundation of the relationship with the mission-driven objective, right, of not only getting this right, but doing this right for the best outcomes for all Canadians, right?

Especially against the s- the taxpayer dollar spent.

Galen Low: Boom. I love that. William, thanks so much for spending the time with me today. This has been so much fun. For folks who are listening, who are interested, where can folks learn more about you?

William Moroz: Well, I guess I will share my LinkedIn. That would probably be the best avenue to reach out to me.

And certainly I'm open to, you know, certain collaborations, opinions, intelligent conversation. Very much respectful, please. Right? We are professionals here, and I wanna keep it professional. And you know, but again, I certainly encourage any intelligent conversations and look forward to that.

Galen Low: Boom. I love that.

I will include William's LinkedIn profile in the show notes for folks who wanna reach out. Please don't troll him, but intelligent conversations are welcome. William, again, it's always a pleasure having you on the show. Thank you so much for investing the time, sharing your insights. This has been a lot of fun.

William Moroz: Thank you very much.

Galen Low: All right, folks, that's it for today's episode of the Digital Project Manager Podcast. If you enjoyed this conversation, make sure to subscribe wherever you're listening. And if you want even more tactical insights, case studies, and playbooks, create a free account with us at thedigitalprojectmanager.com.

Until next time, thanks for listening.