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In a session with an Immigrant and Refugee-serving organization yesterday I shared a couple of slides that I tend to share in many presentations. It's a summary of IRCC's priorities from December 2021. I realized that I've never shared the entire presentation, so here it is for you to access and review. With some of my thoughts, of course.

The next IRCC national call for proposals is coming. It might be later this year. It might be next year. Funding could roll out as soon as 2024. It might be in 2025. I'm starting to hear rumblings of sector consultations. This call for proposals is crucial. It will indicate how serious IRCC is about sector digital transformation and hybrid services. So what we can we learn from past consultations?

It's been a while since I posted a podcast episode. Editing this one reminded me how incredibly insightful, experienced, and committed you all are in the Immigrant and Refugee-serving sector.

Two years ago I moderated a panel focused on measuring virtual service delivery for the Peel Newcomer Strategy Group. We asked the question: How do I know my transition to virtual service delivery is effective? It was a great discussion with many resources shared. This year I'm happy to share a better answer.

In this post I'm providing some background information about how the evaluation toolkit was created and why you should connect with the WESO team soon to learn more about and implement it in your organization.

The YMCA of the National Capital Region’s project, Wired: Evaluating Settlement Online (WESO), is a research-based program that addresses the challenges/barriers that service providers and newcomer clients face in delivering/using remote and hybrid services. The project is uncovering evidence-based practices that Settlement Service Provider Organizations (SPOs) find promising in delivering remote/hybrid services and engaging clients, creating a toolkit/framework and resources for SPOs to evaluate the effectiveness of your service delivery and adapt your models accordingly to improve services, and creating a network of knowledge and promising practice sharing.

I was asked to contribute to a Future of Good article evaluating the recent federal budget. My high-level evaluation in is the article, but I thought about it a lot when I replied. I'm posting my entire response here.

As part of the two-year, national research project funded by the WES Mariam Assefa Fund entitled “Envisioning the Future of the Immigrant-Serving Sector,” ACS-Metropolis Institute, the Mhor Collective Scotland, and GEO Nova Scotia partnered together to pilot and tailor the delivery of the Digital Champions program for the Canadian settlement sector, a holistic “train the trainer” approach to delivering peer to peer support for newcomers to advance digital literacy.

Digital transformation is more than the tech or software used to deliver services: it’s approaching current models for service delivery in ways enabled by technology. This makes digital transformation a human process as well as a technical one, requiring human support to implement. A settlement sector organization in Nova Scotia, ISANS, is addressing the human element of digital transformation in their support of staff and clients.