John Walsh

John Walsh is passionate about data story telling and leveraging data to solve business problems and to improve decisions and services.  He  was named the first Chief Data Officer (CDO) of Environment Canada and Climate Change in March 2018.  Environment Canada and Climate Change is a national science based department with over 5000 employees and the lead department mandated to protect the environment.  In his first year as CDO, John stood up the office and developed and executed a department wide three year Data and Analytics Strategy, one of the first department strategies within the Government of Canada.  Under his the leadership, current CDO priorities focus on data governance renewal, data analytics as a service, data awareness and literacy, managing data as an asset, and data integration.  In advancing the data agenda, John works closely with the CIO, a key partner in the data space.  John comes to his role as CDO after several years as Director General Economic Analysis and Data at Natural Resources Canada, where he lead economic analysis and modelling efforts and, in 2015, was named the departmental data lead.  His previous Government of Canada roles include executive positions at Employment and Social Development Canada, and as a senior analyst at the Privy Council Office, and Canada Revenue Agency.  John sees data as foundational to a healthy democracy.  He believes now, more then ever, citizens need to be able to know which data and information they can trust from the enormous quantities they consume everyday.