Patrick Spencer
PhD Student
Research Summary
Patrick Spencer is a doctoral candidate in the School of Public Policy and Administration at Carleton University. His dissertation explains why early leadership in digital government and artificial intelligence (AI) policy does not reliably translate into durable institutional delivery capability, a pattern he describes as a digital capability trap. The dissertation follows a three-essay structure that moves from theory and historical grounding, to within-case and comparative mechanism testing, to a practical diagnostic tool for prospective institutional risk assessment.
The puzzle
Canada ranked among global leaders in early e-government but later declined, while several administratively capable peer countries sustained stronger delivery capability under similar technological change and public sector pressures. The dissertation asks which structural, procedural, and behavioural mechanisms prevent policy ambition from becoming durable delivery capability inside government, and why repeated episodes of delivery stress produce recurrent patterns of response rather than cumulative institutional learning.
Essay 1
The first essay develops the conceptual and historical foundations of the digital capability trap. It treats digital and AI delivery capability as an institutional outcome shaped by governance, sourcing, architecture, and workforce arrangements. It introduces the mechanism-based framework and situates it in the literature on digital government, institutional change, and capability development. It then traces Canada’s digital trajectory to show how early institutional choices created constraints that persist across reform cycles.
Essay 2
The second essay applies historical institutional process tracing to a detailed within-case analysis of the Canadian federal government. It organises explanation around the four mechanism families and applies explicit evidentiary tests to trace how these mechanisms operate, interact, and accumulate over time. The analysis identifies recurring configurations associated with persistent fragility, partial stabilisation, and more durable capability reinforcement. It also establishes the empirical basis for structured comparison of delivery trajectories in other administratively capable states.
Essay 3
The third essay extends the analysis through structured, focused comparison with the United Kingdom, Australia, and Estonia, and translates the mechanism framework into a practical diagnostic tool. The diagnostic focuses on governance, sourcing, architecture, and workforce arrangements. It is validated retrospectively against past cases and then applied prospectively to current digital strategies and emerging AI enabled systems. AI is treated not as a separate causal regime, but as an institutional intensifier that magnifies existing delivery dynamics and accelerates the formation of capability traps.
Research approach
The dissertation uses historical institutional process tracing to analyse major digital government initiatives over roughly three decades, with Canada as the primary within-case and the United Kingdom, Australia, and Estonia as comparative cases. It focuses on sequences of decisions, reforms, and institutional responses to delivery stress. It uses explicit evidence tests to identify concrete mechanisms rather than broad, catch all explanations. Evidence is drawn from Auditor General reports, parliamentary and committee materials, inquiry findings, and policy documents. These sources are complemented by approximately twenty-five to thirty elite interviews with current and former officials and practitioners, subject to ethics approval.
Contribution
The dissertation contributes an institutional, mechanism-based explanation of why delivery fragility persists in administratively capable states, and why repeated rounds of reform do not reliably generate durable capability. It also translates retrospective explanation into a prospective diagnostic instrument that supports earlier judgement about institutional delivery risk, before path dependence and lock-in narrow options.
Background
Patrick has more than twenty years of experience in strategy, digital transformation, and large scale implementation across consulting and technology firms, including Accenture, IBM, Cisco, EY, Deloitte, and KPMG. He also has experience in audit and review functions. This practitioner background informs the dissertation’s focus on how institutional arrangements shape delivery outcomes over time, while the analysis remains grounded in documentary evidence, process tracing, and structured comparison.