Julie Leese is the Chief Information Officer and Director General, Digital Services at Transport Canada. Julie has been with Transport Canada since May 2016 and has been leading the modernization and renewal of the department’s national IM/IT program as well as facilitating the co-design of Transport Canada’s Digital Strategy in collaboration with her colleagues across the department. As part of the transformation of the IM/IT program at Transport Canada, Julie has engaged her team using design thinking practices to redefine how they work, how they engage, and how they will embed ‘digital’ into the business of the department and for its clients. Working with her colleagues, Julie is helping to drive oversight modernization at Transport Canada in key areas such as online services delivery, mobilizing the inspectorate, building capacity in BI and advanced data analytics and publishing the department’s open data, as well as the renewal and rationalization of the department’s portfolio of safety and security IT systems and data.

Julie’s started her career with the federal public service as a cartographer with the Department of National Defence. Her career spans close to 33 years and eight different departments in a number of different areas including geomatics, program delivery, service excellence, change management and of course, IM/IT. Julie is an active member of the Government of Canada’s CIO community and has also established a Women CIO forum to advance dialogue and action in promoting women in technology.