Having spent a few years earlier in my career in Accenture's London office, I returned to Canada with a love for bad pub food, a deep admiration for the country's passion for “football”, and an abiding appreciation for the UK's enterprising spirt. As a result, I've continued to keep an eye on the happenings across the pond.The launch of the UK Government Digital Service a decade ago helped turn the United Kingdom's public service into an international digital powerhouse. The UK has continually ranked near the top of the world – most recently ranking second in a study of digital government released in October 2020 by the OECD.Given the UK's international reputation it was with recent interest that I read last month's call to action on the UK's digital governance by the highly respected UK's Commission for Smart Government report.Noting several recent IT challenges encountered by UK government and the essential role that digital government needs to play in a post-Brexit, post-COVID-19 environment; the commission laid out 56 recommendations.I read through the report with my Canadian thinking toque on – contemplating what recommendations could be applied to our own public sector.Canada is no slouch in the realm of digital government –- placing 6th in the same OECD study and 9th in Accenture's global study of public service innovation drivers. However, it struck me that if the UK sees significant room for improvement, maybe there is something we can take away from their thinking.Effective and efficient government is essential to countries competing in the global market whether it is about growing trade, generating ideas, and attracting talent and investment. Competitiveness relies on our ability to innovate so standing still is not an option - so governments, business and civil society must work together to create a culture that empowers digital innovators to imagine, develop and implement the solutions of tomorrow.Innovative governments are flexible and leverage technology to rapidly evolve with economic and social change. Flexibility is the key theme of the UK report along with its call to fund and scale digital initiatives quickly as circumstances or priorities change.Cloud is today's core technology enabler. Noting its importance, the Commission recommends a target to move all government services to the cloud by 2023 with departmental and individual rewards for early adoption.Cloud represents an excellent opportunity that Canada can better leverage. We know that Canadian public services are not alone; many around the world are still finding it challenging to pivot to the cloud, relying on legacy systems or deferring the move all together.  We estimate that less than 10% of Federal operations have made the switch to cloud – so clearly this will need to be improved. Many of the Government of Canada's rapid COVID-19 programmatic responses were in part or entirely supported by cloud, so there is some momentum. Canada would benefit from a UK-style target as well. As old the adage goes “you get what you measure.”The main idea behind the report recommendations is to make digital government an urgent central priority of the entire UK government and allow the government to plan, develop, track, and measure its digital efforts. While Canada may not need to go as far as the report calls for in the UK, there are several areas within the recommendations that would be worth evaluating for Canada. Such areas that I felt might be applicable and add value for Canada include:Governance: Canada has already made some moves in the direction suggested by the report. For example, the report suggests a new 'Department of Digital, Innovation and Technology' would include the different digital, innovation and science competencies. Canada has put in place a Department of Digital Government lead by the Minister Joyce Murray, which includes some of – but not all – of the mandate.Targets and Commitments: Much like the cloud target mentioned earlier, the paper recommends other targets and measures designed to drive the underlying change. One that I thought was particularly interesting was the idea of identifying and committing to a digital spending target to ensure that sufficient resources are dedicated to digitally enabling services. Canada would benefit from prioritizing digitalization in key areas and budgeting for them each year.Leadership: the report recommends the establishment of a Chief Data Officer. In Canada, many of the federal departments are implementing a CDO role, but more and more citizen services will cross departments so the importance of enterprise-wide data analytics will only increase. As a result, there will be an increased need for a CDO that is empowered to implement a data strategy across the Federal Government.Skills: The report also makes several recommendations to attract, retain and train digital skills. As it points out, no system, however well-structured, can deliver without the right people being given the right powers, tools, funds and goals. This challenge is not to be underestimated. Canada's IT still has a significant dependency on legacy IT and associated skills. To really move the needle on emerging digital opportunities will require a significant amount of talent development, up-skilling and re-skilling.Digital Identity: The report calls for the speedy adoption of a digital identity program as a key capability to enable citizen access to digital services. There appears to be broad recognition in Canada that this is a key piece of enabling digital technology as several initiatives underway in this space – both provincially and federally.And finally, the report calls for a better model of public-private cooperation.  Noting that the most important technology transformations in our world have not been deliberately initiated by governments but have in the main happened to governments.The report from the UK is worth a read and I believe should be inspiring and instructional for Canada's public sector and private sector leaders. With so many similarities in the priority both nations put on better serving citizens and businesses, Canada should carefully weigh for its own benefit the guidance and recommendations highlighted in the report.By Mark Lambert, Canadian Federal practice lead, Accenture