IfG.CC -
Institute for eGovernment

"This report underlines Canada's success in offering on-line services that best serve Canadians," said Minister Owen. "We are leading the way in e-government in terms of service breadth, service depth and customer relationship management. We are providing services in ways that cross traditional program, departmental and governmental boundaries. Canadians have told us how they want to receive their services, and the Government of Canada is delivering."

The comparative study, conducted annually for the past five years by the high-tech consultancy Accenture, rates the quality of service governments in 22 countries offer their citizens. In it, Canada placed first in all categories of e-government "maturity," which Accenture calls service breadth, service depth and customer relationship management.

The United States can take a lesson from its neighbors to the north when it comes to executing E-government initiatives. For the fourth straight year, Canada topped the annual list issued this week by the management consultant and IT outsourcer Accenture of most mature international E-government offering. The United States is no laggard; it moved up one notch, tying for No. 2 with Singapore. Yet, with a score of 80 out of 100, Canada easily outdistanced the runners-up, both of which received a score of 67.

Customer satisfaction is a key driver of government CRM programs, and Canada tops the world in terms of its government's use of CRM to reach its citizens, according to a recent report by consulting firm Accenture.

Open Text executive chairman Tom Jenkins put it bluntly at the kickoff to the Canada 3.0 digital-media conference in Stratford Tuesday, cautioning against the "technospeak" that threatens to bury the message about the critical importance of digital media to Canada's future.

"We have to make it relevant," he told more than 1,500 digital pilgrims who converged on the Rotary Complex for the third annual conference.

The study, "Leadership in Customer Service: New Expectations, New Experiences," is Accenture's sixth annual global report on government service delivery. In a departure from previous reports, the 2005 study goes beyond measuring the extent to which governments offer services online to investigating their leadership in delivering true customer service - the value they bring to their citizens through multiple channels.

Accenture says the Canadian government is the most electronically advanced in the world among 22 industrialized and developed countries, surpassing even the United States.

Predictions on the Canadian Government Sector in 2005, produced by IDC, suggests that e-service roll-out will be a priority for no more than a quarter of government IT project managers in 2005. This compares with it being a priority for 42 per cent of project managers in a similar survey two years ago.

The complex structure of the spectrum auction means the government is deriving revenues from two groups of bidders: Incumbent service providers are restricted to bidding on 60% of the available spectrum in an open auction, while new entrants to the industry are able to bid both on the open spectrum and the remaining 40% of the spectrum, which has been especially reserved for them in a closed auction. This has created a huge premium, estimated to be about $750-million, for the spectrum in the open auction.

Canada, widely acclaimed as a global e-government leader, is facing serious "stumbling blocks" with its Government On-Line (GOL) programme according to the country's official auditor.

In the May elections report, released Wednesday, Mayrand writes about his plan to test e-voting and encourages parliamentarians to update the Elections Act.

The report suggested the Elections Canada Act should be revised to incorporate the impact modern communication tools such as Facebook and Twitter have on the election.

SSC is currently consolidating and modernising the Government’s data centres, replacing 485 data centres with seven modern, secure and reliable centres. The agency is employing Wedge Networks to upgrade data centre security and protect the Government’s critical information systems being shared across diverse departmental networks.

Canada’s government announced Thursday, Aug. 4, it will shut down more than 90 percent of its 300 data centers, leaving the nation with fewer than 20 when the plan is complete.

In addition, Canada’s government will make the move away from 100 different e-mail platforms to one all-encompassing system. Furthermore, all resources associated with the delivery of e-mail, data center and network services are being transferred from 44 departments and agencies to a new entity called Shared Services Canada.

An ePassport is also known as a “biometric passport”. It looks like a traditional passport book, but it contains an electronic chip that is encoded with surname, given name, date of birth, place of birth and gender information. It also includes a digital picture of the bearer’s face. Signatures are not reproduced on the chip.

Physicians at one pioneering regional health center say they've used electronic medical records since 1997 and urge a national effort to do the same, the Toronto Globe and Mail reported Friday.

"When we started out we had paper charts and we longed for something more legible, more complete and more accessible, so computerization seemed like the way to go," said Dr. Lewis O'Brien, a family physician with the Group Health Center in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario.

British Columbia plans to be Canada’s leader in eHealth, once an electronic medical records system is up and running within about four years, according to the B.C. Medical Association official who co-chairs the province’s Physician Information Technology Office (PITO.)

The service already provides a video link — in real time — with medical professionals in Happy Valley-Goose Bay helping clinics in Nain, Hopedale and Natuashish.

Churchill Falls, Port Hope Simpson and Cartwright are next, with work expected to begin in a few months.

Ask an expert to name a government that is good at IT, and chances are the reply will be Canada. For the fifth year running, the country has topped a global league table of progress in putting public services on the web. It scores highly in UN surveys of e-readiness. And a major new academic study suggests Canada is the country that comes closest to getting IT contracts right. Such accolades are of interest to other governments trying to leap into the digital age — especially in Britain, where Canada has replaced Australia and Singapore as the example to emulate.

The IT industry and public sector think citizens are clamouring for the delivery local services online, but that’s not necessarily so, local government experts told the Municipal Information Systems Association's (MISA) 2004 Forum this week.