Sometimes, the best ideas are born in the midst of a crisis.
And perhaps that’s something that can be said about the transformation public libraries in Middlesex County have experienced over the last five years. During that time, they have gone from being, as defined by the Oxford Dictionary, “a building or room containing collections of books, periodicals, and sometimes films and recorded music for use or borrowing by the public or the members of an institution” to what they are today: Resource centres where community members can find assistance to solve a great variety of problems they may be facing in their lives.
Read more: CA: Ontario: Middlesex County: Setting the example for community service in the county
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.
Read more: CA: Federal government lagging on online services, documents warn
While the government is trying to put a square fiscal peg into a round deficit hole with its new budget, it is fast discovering that if you hew too closely to your election promises, the world around you will upset the best laid plans.
Old-fashioned solutions like infrastructure spending on bricks, roads and public works or an accommodative monetary policy won’t revive Canada’s flagging economic fortunes. The government’s challenge is now to come up a serious Plan B that is focused on mainstreaming the digital revolution into the rest of the economy and the public sector. That is where the real gains in productivity, innovation and growth will come from.
Read more: How the next digital revolution can revive Canada’s economy
Haldimand County will be closing down all of its satellite administration offices, and instead, building a new main building in central Cayuga.
That was the decision councillors made at their Feb. 2 council-in-committee meeting, after dealing with lengthy staff presentations, as well as hearing final comments from the public.
Read more: CA: Ontario: Council votes to close satellite offices, build new Cayuga building
The federal government's super-IT department says data was never put at risk when servers failed and network equipment at a new data centre failed to perform to specification earlier this year.
The problems at the data centre at CFB Borden meant the digital firewall designed to protect against malicious actors was running, but wasn't always easily or readily available, according to internal government documents.
Read more: Shared Services Canada says data centre problems never put information at risk