We have this running joke in digital government work: “We’re not saving lives here.” It’s what we say when stakeholders get too worked up about a button color or when a project feels overwhelming. It keeps things in perspective.
This winter, I worked on a project in Canada’s Yukon Territory where that joke suddenly wasn’t funny anymore. Because when you’re designing emergency communications systems, you actually might be saving lives.
Meeting People Where They Actually Are
During emergencies, digital solutions alone simply don’t work. The internet goes down. Power cuts out. People are evacuating and dispersed. Cell towers fail. You need to reach everyone, not just the tech-savvy users with perfect connectivity.
Three months of research across Canadian provinces taught me that innovation isn’t about choosing between high-tech and traditional methods. It’s about thoughtfully combining both to meet people where they are.
What I found across every province was this: they all balance digital innovation with traditional methods, but each has adapted to their specific context. In the Northwest Territories, Facebook works well on slower networks, so it’s a key digital channel. In British Columbia, they’ve built sophisticated integrated dashboards. In Alberta, they focus on disciplined alerting protocols.
But every single province also uses radio, works closely with local media, deploys door-to-door communications when needed, and builds relationships with community leaders. The innovation isn’t choosing between traditional and digital, it’s thoughtfully combining both to serve your specific population.
What You Can’t Learn from Websites
These practitioners weren’t just users of systems - they were experts with deep knowledge about their communities, their challenges, and what actually works on the ground. Their insights came from living through multiple emergency seasons, seeing what works and what fails when people’s safety is on the line.
A GIS analyst in Nova Scotia told me why they deliberately release static maps at scheduled intervals instead of real-time updates to avoid confusing people during rapidly changing situations. An Alberta emergency alert team lead explained their “loudspeaker not bulletin board” philosophy and why they run a 24/7 support desk for local authorities crafting alerts.
I could have spent weeks analyzing emergency management websites and reading policy documents. And I did plenty of that. But the real insights only came from talking to the people actually doing this work. These weren’t insights I could have googled. They were hard-won lessons that live inside people and communities, not in documentation.
The Gift of Natural Iteration Cycles
Most of our digital projects launch and then… what? We track some analytics, maybe run a survey. When do we ever get such clear feedback cycles in government work? When do we get to genuinely test and learn with such obvious success metrics?
Unlike most digital services, emergency communications have seasons. Yukon’s runs March through August, followed by months of planning and improvements. Every wildfire season becomes a real-world stress test.
This gave me serious project envy. These teams get visceral feedback: “Your alert saved my house” or “I couldn’t find the information I needed and almost missed the evacuation.” Then they spend the off-season systematically improving based on what they learned.
What Changed for Me
With the G7 recently announcing new wildfire commitments as fires become more frequent, it’s worth noting that Canadian provinces and territories are already doing incredible work in this space.
I’ve been doing service design for years, always talking about “user needs” and “meeting people where they are.” But there’s something different when the stakes are real. Every conversation I had was grounded in a simple question: “Will this help people stay safe?”
It made me think about all our work differently. When I think about what it means to be safe, this applies to a whole bunch of other government services too. Someone fleeing domestic abuse who needs documents but can’t return home to get their birth certificate. A minor seeking support who gets trapped in circular processes that require parental consent. Even routine services like welfare applications or passport renewals, these often happen during people’s most stressful moments.
There’s a growing movement around “design is care” that recognizes this. Every design decision we make either supports people’s wellbeing or creates additional barriers when they’re already vulnerable.
Even when we’re not literally saving lives, we’re serving people during some of the most stressful moments of their interaction with government. Maybe we should take our work as seriously as the emergency management folks take theirs.
The stakes focused everyone’s attention in a way I’ve never experienced (other than working on COVID-19 initiatives). It’s further solidified how I think about all the work we do in digital government; we might joke about not saving lives, but we’re always serving them.
Interested in learning more? Read the full case study to see the detailed approach and outcomes from this project.
Working on similar challenges? Get in touch if you’d like to collaborate.