Steve Burtch

WorkBC Job portal is one of the most popular websites of the BC government. More than 40,000 jobs are listed daily, updated in real-time by integrating a particular API and by listings entered by employers across the province.

The purpose of the innovation pilot program was to promote a corporate culture of innovation within the ministry and to encourage employees to think inventively in identifying and characterizing problems and exploring solutions. I devised a unique set of innovation workshops to deliver on several critical objectives while collaborating with service design experts.

DELIVERABLES
• Encouraged employees to raise work-related problems and challenges for potential consideration.
• Enabled the participants to collaboratively decide on which problems to focus on.
• Participated in a series of design thinking exercises to understand the problems better and explore solutions.
• Led each group to build a business model canvas that outlined the problem-solving approach.
• Pitched the business model to a panel of innovation leaders across the BC government, where four projects were approved to go forward.
• Supported the chosen projects with expertise in Agile methods.
• Trained ministry staff to independently plan and facilitate design thinking workshops within their units.

The Ministry of Jobs, Tourism and Innovation wanted to promote trades as career options for youth in an engaging manner. My team and I proposed Build-a-Career, the smartphone app to provide a fun and gamified experience. The app featured hundreds of career profiles and quizzed the user to determine the best set of career matches. It also created a unique avatar for the user, dressed in the clothes typical of that career. Active engagement and profile browsing within the app resulted in more earned ‘coins’ to buy the avatar’s accouterments, including hats or hairdos.

The client wanted the app available in all app stores, including the Apple Store, Google Play, and Blackberry store. We used the Cordova platform to develop all versions and run most of the app on the server. This decision improved performance and provided us with finely detailed usage statistics.

The app was well used and downloaded thousands of times, while other government jurisdictions inquired us to share the source code for similar projects.

I applied for and received a $100,000 grant from the Filecoin Foundation to build a powerful yet easy-to-use bridge between Web2 and Web3: the Tumulus API. Tumulus enables secure, decentralized data storage and programmable, permissioned data sharing via smart contracts written to Polygon. I assembled and managed a design and development team that coded the proof-of-concept software in two months.

An Agile business transformation project spanning many ministry departments, including senior executives, finance branches, portfolio managers, and the Digital Investment Office.

I extracted user feedback from lean stakeholder workshops to develop a quality management plan that re-established accountability in the capital financial processes across the ministry. I also created the change management plan and managed the strategic communication efforts.