Public-sector technology chiefs from across Canada told a Digital Journal panel that the technical challenges of adopting new systems, including artificial intelligence, are often the simplest part of the job. The real work, they said, is about people, communications and oversight.
Practical AI: built by the people who need it
Speakers highlighted projects that strip away vendor polish and put capability directly into the hands of users. At the Calgary Police Service, officers have been enabled to build their own AI agents to tackle casework — not because central IT can or should write every tool, but because the frontline staff best understand their problems.
“I cannot write agents for a police officer,”
The approach has already produced measurable benefits, the panel said. One agent used by officers extracts evidence from cell phone records, a task that formerly consumed investigators' time and stretched cases out over months. The result, participants argued, is faster investigations and, they contend, stronger public trust.
Democratising AI inside large institutions
Organisations beyond emergency services are following a similar path. The technology and innovation chief at the British Columbia Investment Management Corporation (BCI) told the panel the organisation gave every employee an AI licence as a way of accelerating adoption and literacy across the business. BCI, which manages money for public sector clients and faces competition from global investment firms, also runs an internal team to teach staff the basics of prompts and early prompt engineering.
| Organisation | Detail |
|---|---|
| BCI | Manage $313.7 billion in gross assets as of 31 March 2026 for 33 public sector clients |
Giving every employee access to AI, the panel suggested, helps reduce bottlenecks and keeps the organisation competitive with private counterparts that already use similar tools to speed decision-making.
Technology is a minority of the job
For municipal IT leaders, the barrier is often political and linguistic rather than technical. The City of Burnaby’s chief of technology estimated that roughly 80% of the role is communication — translating complex technological concerns into language that elected mayors and councillors can act upon.
- Calgary Police: frontline officers building AI agents to automate evidence extraction.
- BCI: broad employee AI licences and an internal training team to accelerate prompt literacy.
- City of Burnaby: AI cameras deployed to monitor the mountainside for smoke.
The panel’s pattern is instructive for public bodies elsewhere: technical solutions are necessary but insufficient. Leadership must create governance, training and change-management frameworks so technology becomes a tool rather than a risk.
Governance, trust and pace
Public organisations face an unusual set of constraints: duty of care to citizens, procurement rules, and heightened scrutiny over privacy and fairness. These factors mean many public-sector teams must move carefully while delivering at the speed of their private-sector counterparts. Several panellists described pragmatic approaches: decentralised capability, basic training for broad adoption, and quick wins that demonstrate value to stakeholders.
This mix of bottom-up empowerment and top-down communication and governance is how the CIOs hope to square speed with accountability. In practice, that requires time, leadership and a willingness to accept imperfect early deployments so staff learn and improve tools in real-world use.
For national technology watchers, the takeaway is simple: expect continued experimentation in public services where frontline staff shape solutions and central teams translate technical risk into decisions that elected officials can understand and act upon.
