Keep capability in-house
When a supplier builds or runs your service, it is tempting to hand over everything and free your own people for other work. Keep something back.
What enough means
Hold on to enough understanding of how the service works that you could explain it, govern it, and, if you had to, move it to someone else. The same people-side picture is set out in team capability.
Enough does not mean you can do the supplier's job. It means you can stay in charge of it. You want people on your side who:
- can read what the supplier delivers and judge whether it is good;
- know where your data lives and how it moves;
- understand the main design decisions and why they were made;
- would not be lost if the supplier left tomorrow.
Why it matters
This is the insurance against lock-in. A team that kept enough in-house can ask the right questions, push back on a bad change, judge a renewal on its merits, and run an exit when the time comes. A team that handed over everything is at the supplier's mercy, and usually does not find out until it is late and expensive.
Keep it alive on purpose
Knowledge fades when no one uses it. Write down the decisions that matter, keep your documentation current, rotate people through the work rather than letting one person hold it all, and make sure what lives in the supplier's head also exists on your side.
Assumptions this page makes
You are already working to the Government of Canada Digital Standards, design with users, iterate and improve frequently, work in the open, use open standards, address security and privacy, build in accessibility, empower staff, be good data stewards, design ethical services, and collaborate widely, and to the law on privacy, security, official languages, and accessibility. The standards say how the government works in the digital world. The six Government of Canada digital competencies say what every public servant has to be able to do to work that way, and the team page covers them. This guide builds on those.