IfG.CC -
Institute for eGovernment

Three years ago this month the auditor general of Ontario issued a report highly critical of eHealth Ontario’s progress, spending, and lack of strategy. Since then, a new management team and board of directors have been working to turn around the agency and deliver real progress.

The hospital’s plan to go paperless will help it line up it’s technology standards with eHealth Ontario initiatives, but it won’t get any financial help from the provincially-funded agency.

Though eHealth is in the business of helping health care providers communicate and share patient information electronically -- something the hospital recently announced it will spend more than $50 million to do -- it steers clear of hospitals. As the agency helps more physicians, labs and other health-related workers use technology better, it’s up to the hospital to keep up.

A report from Saskatchewan’s privacy commissioner says the Crown corporation that handles the province’s health information system shared information it should not have about every adult and many teenagers in the province.

But eHealth Saskatchewan says that clinical information was not among the data it passed along without legal authorization to Elections Saskatchewan.

The once-troubled eHealth Ontario agency will announce Wednesday it is spending $72 million to link 700 health providers from 43 Toronto area hospitals and 201 long-term care facilities to a single electronic health record system known as ConnectingGTA.

ConnectingGTA will essentially translate and link up digital information from 700 sites so doctors can access each patient’s personal electronic medical record.

Kildonan Medical Centre, located at Winnipeg's Seven Oaks General Hospital, was the first location to feature the system, named eChart, in the province. Five more sites quickly followed in Winnipeg, Brandon and Notre Dame de Lourdes, said the province.

Dr. Tunji Fatoye works at Kildonan Medical and said the new system allows for swifter access to information on patients' lab results, immunizations and medications.

Every business knows its most important asset is the customer. Businesses are constantly polling them, listening to them and acting on their demands.

Modern government, successful government, is no different.

Deputy Minister of Canadian Heritage Daniel Jean, Deputy Minister of Industry Canada John Knubley and Associate Deputy Minister of Public Works and Government Services Canada Renée Jolicoeur spoke at a government technology conference Thursday in Ottawa. The panel, moderated by Deputy Minister and President of the Canada School of Public Service Linda Lizotte-MacPherson, focused on the management of changes within government IT.

The initiative will begin to herd some 640,000 email boxes, spread across hundreds of servers, in a bid to rationalize a balkanized system that's inefficient, costly and vulnerable to cyber attacks.

Shared Services Canada, a giant agency created last year to bring order to the federal government's sprawling IT empire, has sent out an industry notice asking for the qualifications of interested firms.

The federal government will continue consolidating its IT and back office systems, make more use of videoconferencing and try to reduce the amount of software and hardware licencing fees its pays in its efforts to slash Ottawa’s spending over the next five years.

These are some of the nuggets found in the budget released Thursday by Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, which also said also said the Conservative government will spend $1 billion on support of science and technology, much of which will go to helping start up companies through supporting venture capital.

As the name suggests this is a best practices program that will define how a Federal Government can implement a Cloud Computing strategy. This will act as a unifying project, we’ll be basing this on Canadian activities and it will also be the headline theme for the launch of our USA Chapter too.

The critical point this program will define is the role this platform can play in stimulating the economy and driving economic growth.

Shared Services Canada will help transform Canada’s federal government, reducing costs, securing government networks and better preparing it to offer new services to Canadians, says Diane Finley, minister of public works and government Services.

Speaking at the second day of the Government and Technology Exhibition and Conference (GTEC), Finley said Wednesday that the ongoing rollout of Shared Services Canada is one of the government’s most important initiatives.

As the private sector offers quicker and easier services online, Ottawa is lagging behind in both expectations and service.

The federal government is lagging behind both private sector offerings and Canadians’ expectations in online services, internal documents warn.

A full 77 per cent of federal services still cannot be completed over the Internet, documents prepared for Treasury Board President Scott Brison show.

The trend of rising overhead costs comes at a time when the government is counting on big savings by revamping its internal services to "transform" how it operates, manages its people and serves Canadians. The government already has several internal services projects under way, including Shared Services Canada, but overhead costs continue to climb.

Government documents posted online Wednesday show that the Conservatives have given Shared Services Canada the mandate to buy end-user hardware and software for workers in the 43 federal agencies it serves, along with a handful of parliamentary watchdogs and other federal agencies. In all, Shared Services Canada will be in charge of buying end-user devices such as laptops and mobile devices, and software, including security software, for 106 federal organizations.

Grant Westcott told MPs on a Commons committee Thursday the money will cover Shared Services Canada's eight-year plan to consolidate the government's 100 email systems into one, reduce 300 data centres across the country to 20, and undertake a "substantial" part of the work to consolidate the networks supporting those centres.

Grant Westcott said as part of consolidating the IT operations of 43 government departments, Shared Services Canada will inherit "a whole series of contractual arrangements."

"We know already that there is a wide variance in pricing - by consolidating them together, we can then go to the lowest price by the aggregation of the contractual obligation and thereby reach savings that way," he said.

A new “courts digital transformation solution” will make missing court paperwork, long delays in accessing court records and hours wasted in court to schedule trials a thing of the past, the Ontario government announced Friday.

The Ministry of the Attorney General is in the process of procuring a system that Attorney General Doug Downey says will be a “foundational change” for a legal system that has been stuck in the past.

Don't hold your breath over Canadian doctors fully adopting an electronic medical record (EMR) system any time soon.

Health information and technology experts say it will likely take another 20 years or more before the e-health dream is fully realized in the country.

The improved connectivity is expected to enhance communication and consultation between e-health services and reserves, and bring specialists to the reserves without the specialist having to leave their office.

Last year's announcement by the Federal government to develop a shared services approach to IT service delivery and procurement hit the solution provider community in Canada like a thunderbolt.

The move to modernize and consolidate IT systems and resources in 43 government departments through the aid of Shared Services Canada put uncertainty and fear inside every major IT solution provider in the National Capital Region.