Patrick Paquette
Ottawa, Canada
I'm an independent tech contractor in Ottawa, working with both private sector and government clients. Networking, systems innovation, and governance technology are my main areas. I also care a lot about whether technology is actually making democracy better or just making it look that way.
I ran as a candidate in Ottawa's Ward 19 (Cumberland) in 2010, pushing for e-democracy before most people knew what that meant. The core idea was simple: give citizens real tools to follow issues, weigh in, and hold their representatives accountable. That argument is stronger today than it was then.
What I think about
How do you stay in control of your own information when AI is curating everything you see? How do municipalities use AI without just handing their judgment off to a vendor? And how do you build civic technology that actually works at the local level before trying to scale it up to a province or a country?
These aren't abstract questions. They come up in the contracts I take on and the conversations I have.