IfG.CC -
Institute for eGovernment

Bernard Courtois, president and CEO of ITAC, says his organization, acting at the request of the Ministry of Health and Long Term Care, will serve as a facilitator in a series of discussions and workshops that will bring together the suppliers, ministry officials and health care providers.

With the ease of online banking comes this Canadian first: patients perusing their X-rays, checking laboratory test results and discreetly obtaining a second medical opinion - all from the comforts of their home computers.

Ontario's Privacy Commissioner even keeps her electronic health record, called MyChart, on a memory stick, a device the size of a pack of gum that neatly tucks into a pants pocket.

Clinicians (physicians, nurses and pharmacists) from nine provinces came together on September 15 to launch the Clinician eHealth Support Network: A peer-to-peer initiative, a group of health care providers who will provide hands-on support to colleagues in their respective jurisdictions to help them address challenges and uncover the opportunities and efficiencies that are associated with e-health.

Rogers is expanding Canada’s first and largest 5G network to 26 new cities and towns in British Columbia.

On Tuesday, the telecommunications giant announced that including these markets, Rogers 5G network has launched in over 50 new cities and towns in the country and will reach a total of more than 60 markets by the end of 2020.

The announcement was made today by the Honourable Lawrence Cannon, Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities, and Ms. Maggie Emudluk, Chairperson of the Kativik Regional Government, representing the Northern Indigenous Community Satellite Network (NICSN). The NICSN involves a partnership among three Organizations: the Kativik Regional Government (KRG) in Quebec; the Keewatin Tribal Council (KTC) in Manitoba; and the Keewaytinook Okimakanak Tribal Council (KOTC) in Ontario.

In its submission to the Government of Canada's consultation on the digital economy MNet asserts that there is a connection between Canada's declining performance in the digital economy and its failure to develop a national digital literacy strategy. The paper, Digital Literacy in Canada: From Inclusion to Transformation, calls on the federal government to take a leadership role in supporting solutions that will create citizens who know how to use digital technologies to their fullest and can think critically about digital content.

Nokia and Greener Acres Canada are collaborating on an intelligent infrastructure programme across Canada which will include the creation of smart city green poles from nearly 50,000 tons of recycled e-waste collected annually in Ontario.

An estimated four million poles will power smart cities and broadband communications across the country.

According to the International Energy Agency's latest report on smart cities, new technologies and increased connectivity are opening massive opportunities for city-level authorities to develop efficient, sustainable energy solutions that enable municipalities to accelerate their transition towards a clean, low-carbon future. Although cities generate more than 80% of the global GDP, they consume over two-thirds of the world's energy and account for more than 70% of global CO2 emissions, which will require leveraging digital solutions to drive a sustainable energy transition and reach net zero by 2050.

However, as a recent article from the Harvard Business School illustrates, advancing the concept of smart cities can be challenging and expensive. But, through well-designed public-private partnerships (PPPs), a Deloitte report highlighted that private-sector incentives could be aligned with economic growth and net-zero goals set by local municipalities to unlock the value of technology and bring a critical mass of players together to spur sustainable economic development.

So it was disappointing news when researchers from the Said Business School at the University of Oxford and at the University of Oviedo published their most recent Broadband Quality Score. The report, sponsored by Cisco, found that Canada ranked 30th among the countries surveyed, a drop from last year’s already lowly 26th spot. Moreover, among 100 cities surveyed, Vancouver ranked 46th, Montreal 69th, Ottawa 81st and Toronto 82nd in broadband quality.

New research shows that police forces across Canada are building extensive digital surveillance hubs without any public engagement. Smart city projects use very similar technologies with the same dangers, yet here residents and municipalities are increasingly implementing Open Smart City principles to avoid potential harms and strengthen public oversight. The police should not be exempt from democratic accountability and the same principles can be applied to them to rebuild it.

People around the world are recognizing the potential of emerging “smart” technologies—those technologies that use machine learning, artificial intelligence and large-scale data analysis—to provide more efficient and effective services. However, there is also significant potential for them to cause harm around privacy, discrimination, transparency, and the corporate capture of what are publicly and democratically controlled tools of government.

Electronic health record (EHR) systems will only be widely used in Canada when doctors here realize the benefits the technology offers, say a group of New Zealand-based healthcare technology product vendors. "What's needed is a compelling enough reason for doctors to shift from paper-based records to computer-based systems," said Roger Brown, director of information technology at MedTech Ltd., one of the largest providers of EHR systems to primary healthcare professionals in New Zealand.

"Canadians want their medical information available electronically to the clinicians who care for them," said Alvarez. "And that's starting to happen in communities across Canada. Collaboration among governments is at an all-time high and with continued federal funding, we are well on our way to providing every Canadian with an electronic health record by 2016."

Perhaps you've noticed the billboards, magazine ads or other media that have been touting the availability of online Canadian government resources

By providing a common infrastructure to enable service integration, Secure Channel has proven to be crucial to citizen adoption and service growth of the GOL Initiative, and was part of what lead Accenture to rank the government of Canada the number-one global e-government for five years consecutively.