“Christensen gets it.”

I'm a Guelph resident for the last five years, having moved here from Mississauga. I'm in love with the city.

I try not to get involved in politics - particularly local politics.

And yet I want to give a shout out to my friend and candidate for Guelph City Council, Jon Christensen. We've shared a few rounds of golf together over the years.

And then I found out he's running for Council - and I want to endorse him.

I don't say that casually.

I've spent a significant part of my career working with governments and public-sector leaders around the world. I served on the Government of Canada's Government On-Line Advisory Panel, advising senior federal leadership on digital service transformation. I've worked with the U.S. Department of Defense, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Government Finance Officers Association, Ontario Cabinet Office, provincial ministries, municipal governments, public works organizations and city leadership teams.

Heck, even the Prime Minister's Office of the United Arab Emirates has booked me twice for events to share my insight on how government can work, including at the high profile World Government Summit in Dubai.

Much of that work has revolved around a deceptively simple question:

Why are we doing it this way?

That's why I found Jon Christensen's investigation into a long-running City of Guelph software project particularly interesting.

Christensen started with something remarkably ordinary: a broken sidewalk.

Then he kept asking questions.

His published account traces those questions into a municipal technology project that, according to records and City responses he obtained, has consumed millions of dollars, included software that was purchased but not put into use, saw an implementation contract terminated before completion, and now has a replacement timeline extending years into the future. He has published the underlying trail and his methodology so people can examine it themselves.

What caught my attention wasn't simply the dollar figure.

It was the process.

Ask the question.

Follow the evidence.

Ask the next question.

Check the numbers.

Correct them if necessary.

Keep going until you understand the system behind the symptom.

That is exactly the sort of discipline I've spent decades discussing with government executives: breaking down silos, modernizing systems, challenging legacy processes, improving accountability and making government work better for the people it serves.

Christensen gets it. I'm not in his ward, but he would have my vote. He should get yours too. Because sometimes local government works best with someone looking at a broken sidewalk and asking:

“Why?”