Visit the Exchange Lab
The Exchange Lab (the Lab) is a creative space in Victoria, B.C. where people come together to experiment, learn and model new ways of working.
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What happens at the Lab
The Digital Office, within the Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO) in the Ministry of Citizens’ Services, operates the Lab.
The Digital Office is focused on digital modernization to help create a modern government that’s trusted to respond to change and meet public expectations for excellent service delivery. The lab space helps us achieve that.
We work to:
- Maximize the return on public funding to modernize the public service through technology investment, policy improvement, community building and organizational development
- Connect an ecosystem of public service oriented people and agencies, inside the government and beyond
- Remove systemic barriers to service delivery in the internet-era
What we do
The Digital Office is organized around important projects like:
- Attracting and retaining digital talent
- Training public service employees to succeed in a digital workplace
- Modernizing vendor procurement
- Creating policies and plain language guidance for digital modernization
- Making it easier to create a digital form
- Providing DevOps and cloud services
Our teams are multi-disciplinary and operate in agile scrum environments.
We hire for roles like:
- Full stack developers
- Service designers
- UX researchers and designers
- Content designers
- Product owners
- Scrum masters
Our location
The Lab supports our entire digital community. Experimentation and innovation is encouraged.
We operate from a collaborative place residing in the territory of the Lekwungen-speaking peoples at 808 Douglas Street in Victoria, B.C.
Come for a tour
If you’re a BC Public Service employee, we welcome you to tour the Lab.
- Register for a tour of the Lab
- Everything you need to know about visiting 808 Douglas (IDIR protected)
A modern office for a modern workforce
We also offer some drop-in work space and meeting rooms. We have plug and play workstations that allow for quick set-up. Email our community manager if you want to reserve a workspace.
- Meeting rooms are prioritized for groups working on Digital Office projects
- Hot desking is available, with controlled access protocols
Resident Partner Program
The Lab partners with organizations within government to help them accelerate their modernization efforts. We call this the Resident Partner Program.
- We prioritize organizations committed to the learning journey, like working in the open and taking an agile scrum approach
- Together, we develop an iterative partnership agreement. The agreement identifies what support we think is required and how the Lab will work with the organization to offer services that meet those needs
- For example, teams get priority access to Lab services like talent, recruitment, training, communications and space at 808 Douglas
- The partnership ends once a team is delivering services and reached sustainable operations. The team must commit to resourcing a sustainable model of continuous improvement
Program outcomes
Teams that excel in the Resident Partner Program achieve 6 key outcomes:
- Deliver a minimum viable product (MVP)
- Develop a multi-disciplinary team
- Use user needs to drive decision-making
- Embrace a culture of continuous learning and iteration
- Focus on outcomes not outputs
- Build organizational capacity to continue the work beyond the partnership
Partner with us
If you think your organization is ready for the Resident Partner Program, get in touch with the Modernization Advisory Services team.
They can assess your readiness and discuss next steps.
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