There are some meetings worth attending across the organization. They are open for anyone to attend. These meetings are great for giving you line of sight over work happening across CDS.
Mandatory All Staff
Managed by: CDS Chief of Staff
What: A regular, CDS-wide gathering where we all meet to discuss organizational matters.
Who: All of CDS
Purpose: To share updates. The first half of the meeting is dedicated to management updates and shout-outs, the second half is a Town Hall discussion.
How it works: Shout-outs can be planned or spontaneous. CDSers can submit questions for the town hall portion.
Show The Thing (STT)
Managed by: Internal Communications Lead
What: A time to showcase work that is done or being done — there is one host and five presentations.
Who: Any person or team can sign up to present at STT. STT are sometimes themed, for example, Product Takeovers — where all the presentations are by product teams.
Purpose: To encourage people at CDS to talk about work in progress by actually showing the work in progress (ex. a live demonstration or screenshots).
How it works: Teams or individuals sign up before STT.
Link to sign up form 🔒 ↗️ Video Recordings 🔒 ↗️
Ask Me Anything (AMA)
Managed by: Internal Communications Lead
What: A popular questions and answer format inspired by Reddit.
Who: There is a host and a guest (or group of guests, for example, a product team). Anyone can sign up to be a guest.
Purpose: CDS team members can ask questions that matter to them.
How it works: CDSers submit questions online through sli.do. The team then votes on which questions are the most relevant. AMAs are live — with the host asking and the guest answering in real-time.
Link to sign up form 🔒 ↗️ AMA instructions 🔒 ↗️
Committees at CDS
There are three core committees at CDS: Senior Management Committee (SMC), Operations Management Committee (OMC), and Product Council. The purpose of these bodies is to allow us to understand our risk posture, make good decisions, and do so in a responsive and effective way.
These committees are all tied very closely to our strategic vision, and will help us deliver on our priorities while remaining the lean organization we all expect, one where you can still quickly send a Slack message to anyone in the organization, irrespective of level.
Senior Management Committee
Purpose: SMC provides strategic oversight and guidance for CDS. It ensures effective information sharing, direction-setting, and cross-directorate collaboration.
Scope: The Committee’s focus is on:
- Fostering leadership, information sharing, consultation and collaboration at the senior executive level;
- Advising the CEO on risk management and mitigation strategies, and fostering horizontal alignment across CDS’ directorates;
- Establishing priorities and a strategic forward agenda, leveraging other CDS internal governance as necessary.
Other key information: SMC meets every two weeks and is chaired by the CEO, with secretarial support provided by O/CEO and CDS Strategic Policy.
Operations Management Committee
Purpose: OMC provides CDS strategic advice to inform the leadership and oversight over the management of its workforce and resources. OMC complements CDS HR and financial review and approval processes to contribute to a strategic and overall approach to resource management of current and future requirements of the organization.
Scope: The Committee’s focus is on:
- current financial situation, organizational priorities, talent management, performance management, organizational structure and classification, employment equity, diversity and official languages.
Other key information: OMC meets every month and is chaired by the CEO, with secretarial support provided by O/CEO and O/COO (Mel Tremblay as coordinator).
Product Council
Purpose: The Product Council provides strategic oversight and guidance for all CDS products and product-related services. Its primary objectives are to enable the success of individual products and the CDS product portfolio as a whole, by:
- Fostering coordination and strategic alignment, within and between CDS product families and between CDS products and CDS’s organizational mandate;
- Providing a dedicated venue for CDS senior leadership to deep-dive into significant product-related topics that require their input/endorsement/decision, with the support and guidance of technical experts;
- Where relevant, creating consistent, clear, and well-documented processes for making significant product decisions that require DG input/approval.
Scope: The Committee’s focus is on: Significant technical challenges, opportunities, and decisions that impact one or more products, where coordinated efforts and/or early management intervention is needed;
- Significant product-related strategic or communications challenges, opportunities, and decisions that have service and/or reputational implications across CDS, Service Canada, ESDC, and/or GC;
- Decisions related to developing new product prototypes/pilots, scaling a prototype/pilot into a full product, and sunsetting a product.
Other key information: Product Council meets every month and is chaired by the CEO, with secretarial support provided by Business Enablement & Services.
Recordings
The default settings for video recordings on Google Meet are set to capture the speakers and their shared screen. Do note that attendees are not captured in the video recording. Chat logs are also deleted immediately after the event ends. All video recordings and minutes are made exclusively available to CDS employees.
If you wish not to be recorded as a presenter, please let the Internal Comms Lead know 24 hours in advance to accommodate video editing.