GTEC has confirmed Deputies from the Public Service Management Advisory Committee (PSMAC) to Keynote GTEC’s final conference day on the topic of High Performance Government (our 2010 theme).

The Deputies from PSMAC, and its predecessor, TBPAC, have been engaged in GTEC for three years. As a senior committee of deputies, TBPAC has oversight over technology in the federal government. The Deputies will participate in the keynote, but the wider committee has also been invited to participate in a luncheon at GTEC with Keynoter, Tom Ridge. The former Pennsylvania Governor and first head of Homeland Security after 9/11 will be keynoting GTEC on Tuesday, October 6 at the National Arts Centre.

The PSMAC Panel is scheduled as the morning Kickoff Keynote on Thursday, October 8 at the Westin Hotel. The Panelists are:

Chair: Michelle d’Auray, Secretary of the Treasury Board, Treasury Board of Canada, Secretariat

Panelists:
Carole Swan, President, Canadian Food Inspection Agency
Ian Shugart, Deputy Minister, Environment Canada
Neil Yeates, Deputy Minister, Citizenship and Immigration Canada

When the Deputies were engaged for the Keynote, Michele d’Auray (who incidentally was formerly the CIO of the GoC) asked me to define what we meant by High Performance Government and identify what the audience might be interested in hearing from the deputies. The following is what I provided to her. Regardless of if the deputies speak directly to these questions or not, I am sure the panel will be insightful and speak to what government could look like, in their view, in the future.

GTEC 2010 and the theme of “High Performing Governments”

Since it began 17 years ago, GTEC has always focused on serving Canadians better through information and technology. In the early years, creating high performing networks meant automating government processes and delivering more efficient services on-line.

Governments in Canada were early leaders in “e-government”: delivering services to Canadians on-line. Today, consumers are demanding open access to government services, data and processes because collaboration is becoming a common feature of their business lives and social networks. The relationship between citizens and their governments has changed.

While the world is becoming more open, governments are managing service delivery under the lens of public accountability and transparency. Are we at a crossroads, or can governments be open and collaborative while maintaining public accountability? If so, then what are the policy vehicles available to serve Canadians better within this new paradigm?

Looking forward, what are the key components of high performing public sector organizations? Most governments maintain their own performance management and accountability frameworks, but how will performance be measured by citizens who are increasingly connected and informed.

Hope you can make it! The Session is included with your conference pass.

As you may know, we have moved the venue for the awards to the National Gallery of Canada, which is a spectacular site!

We’d like to present this video, which brings you through the layout and visuals for the awards ceremony and the celebration dinner. Since everything is “new” this year, I hope the video will help give you an overall visual for the evening and an idea of what you can expect as a guest.

For your information, ticketing is also different this year, and we have structured the event to offer better value so that more team members can participate. The pricing is as follows: You can attend the awards ceremony and the celebration dinner at a cost of $150, or just the dinner following the ceremony for $90. We hope you will take advantage!

Also please note, the seating for the ceremony is limited to 500, and the post event tickets are limited to an additional 250 guests, so please book soon as they are already going fast! For tickets, please contact Silvia Villon at 613-599-8880, ext. 102, or via e-mail at svillon@gtec.ca.

We look forward to seeing you at the Distinction Awards!

Teri Takai, the CIO of the State of California is no stranger to change and transformation.  She was brought to California by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to implement a vision of higher performing government through the use of technology, to improve government services and provide access and transparency to the state’s citizens.  With a budget crisis, an aging technology infrastructure and a vast, decentralized state government, California’s IT program faces a myriad of challenges.   Takai’s focus on adapting to citizen demand while confronting the political and cultural challenges brings a unique perspective.

This week, the state announced a major IT reform push which includes shortening the timeframe for implementation from 3-5 years to 24-26 months.  We are posting the press release below as some background and context to Teri’s unique challenge in California.

Teri Takai’s background is certainly diverse.  Prior to her appointment in California, Takai served as Director of the Michigan Department of Information Technology (MDIT) since 2003, where she also served as the state’s Chief Information Officer.  In this position, she restructured and consolidated Michigan’s resources by merging the state’s information technology into one centralized department to service 19 agencies and over 1,700 employees. Additionally, during her tenure at the MDIT, Takai led the state to being ranked number one four years in a row in digital government by the Center for Digital Government.

Before serving in state government, Takai worked for the Ford Motor Company for 30 years, where she led the development of the company’s information technology strategic plan.   She also held positions in technology at EDS and Federal-Mogul Corporation. In 2005, Takai was named “Public Official of the Year” by Governing magazine. She is Past-President of the National Association of State Chief Information Officers and currently serves as Practitioner Chair of the Harvard Policy Group on Network-Enabled Services and Government. 

Please read on for interesting context on Teri Takai’s reform agenda, which will certainly be part of the context to her GTEC Keynote on “High Performance Government” in October.

State Launches IT Reform Push

Lower costs and greater efficiency expected

For Immediate Release

August 11, 2009

Contact:
Jeffrey Young or Eric Lamoureux
916-376-5037

West Sacramento, Calif. – State officials and representatives of the information technology industry gathered today in West Sacramento to begin the task of reforming the state’s IT purchasing process. Late last month, the Governor enacted a series of process and legislative changes included within the 2009-10 budget, that when implemented will greatly shorten the time it takes to get an IT project done, generate project benefits earlier, avoid costs and aid in the modernization of the state’s technology environment.

Today’s forum with the IT companies that currently contract or hope to do business with the state included State Consumer Services Agency Secretary Fred Aguiar, State Chief Information Officer Teri Takai and Department of General Services’ Chief Procurement Officer Jim Butler. Hundreds of companies are expected to attend to voice their comments and feedback, implementing the Governor’s goal to be as efficient and as transparent as possible in this process. It is being webcast live at http://www.dgs.ca.gov/Webcast.htm and is available for viewing at http://media.dgs.ca.gov/itforum.

“The Governor has made it clear to us all that we must look to cut the time and cost involved with our large IT projects in California while working to ensure we benefit from the latest technological advancements,” said Jim Butler, the state’s chief procurement officer. “We must work to stop the multi-year procurement process. The Governor’s plan will cut our purchasing time from five years to one, while also cutting costs and enhancing our ability to collect more revenues.”

The new program makes changes in a number of areas. The most significant improvement being reducing the total time it takes to implement a large IT project. Under the new plan, the process would be reduced from 3-5 years to 24-26 months, avoiding a large amount of workforce costs. Additionally, the plan also incorporates changes to allow multi-stage phased procurements-these allow a small number of winning first round bidders to create pilot or prototype versions of the systems they have bid on. This, a normal part of the IT procurement process outside of state government that was formerly prohibited. The opportunity to evaluate working version of systems should greatly improve the final products.

The IT procurement process improvements will also engage the IT community ahead of the state releasing Request for Proposals on new projects. This will allow the IT industry to provide much better input to the bid documents the government produces. Other improvements streamline the appeals process, drop some burdensome reporting requirements, and reduce mandatory financial withholding requirements for IT vendors.

“These reforms will strengthen our existing laws and help the IT vendor community partner with us to build projects that will operate more efficiently and effectively,” said Teri Takai, California’s Chief Information Officer. “As we overhaul our aging technology infrastructure, California has a golden opportunity to achieve Governor Schwarzenegger’s vision to reform, rebuild and better serve all Californians.”

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If you have been following me on twitter (@kdentremont), you’ll  know that I essentially follow topic areas connected to the annual themes of GTEC and re-tweet articles and interesting thoughts from opinion leaders. It’s not a very creative use of Twiter, but it’s working for me.

Tim O’Reilly is an uber-tweeter in my book and he has pointed me to a number of ideas and thoughts that are helping clarify my view of Web 2.0.  Recently, he pointed me to a column he wrote for Forbes on how “Government 2.0 – The promise of Innovation” (http://bit.ly/QWwfG). 

I expect we’ll see at GTEC that Tim likes to ask questions based on his copious reading and constant search for information.  In the column, he examines the juxtaposition of what exists online in terms of applications, searches and user communities against the goals and values of government services.  Government 2.0, for O’Reilly, is really “government as a platform”…. for engaging the public in a national dialogue and delivering on some of the age old premises of our democracies in the US and Canada.  Pretty cool stuff.

As cynical as we all can be, it’s hard to deny that Web 2.0 technologies promise to not only aggregate demand for government services, but to actually help manage the inner workings of government IT operations.  So many tools already exist to create social the social networks that government managers desperately need to create demand for on-line services.  Banks and companies have figured out online transactions and perhaps even mastered some of the security challenges around identity management.

Regardless of the constraints to adopting these solutions within government, the world is changing and governments are facing pressure to “keep up with the Jones” where IT is concerned.  Consumer expectations are being set by industry leaders are able to move at breakneck pace and are, let’s face it, motivated by the commercial value of adopting the technologies that drive their businesses forward.

I understand the issues governments face.  IT sustainability, reuse, protection of information and identity management are all huge technology issues that collide with the current policy directions around cost containment and public accountability.  Still, the Web 2.0 world will not wait around for us to figure these challenges out.

The latest tweet from Tim that had me thinking was this one on Gartner’s 2009 Hype Cycle Report: http://bit.ly/MM5Vx .  Gartner is pointing to major trends like Cloud Computing, greening data centres, virtualization and advances in mobility products, amongst other things, as trends that are growing at breakneck speed. These are signs of a technology landscape that is changing greatly and moving far away from the traditional models governments have been using.  At what point will these trends become part of the solutions to the woes of governments?  Is IT in government really a “problem” to fix, or is it the actually the “fix” for our current problems? Clearly, some of these concepts are shifting cost and business models around the world, and there is no reason to believe that they can’t do the same in the public sector. So if the debate is whether the IT community should be on the leading or trailing edge of next generation services and solving some of our current challenges, I say it’s the solution and we should be leading the charge.

At one point in the evolution of GTEC, the event was focused around leaders who blew open traditional models of service delivery by injecting new systems, processes and technologies into governments. Every signal I see points to an opportunity to leverage a huge wave of change, to change the way governments operate.  The IT Community was the pioneer and CIOs built an information highway in government long before it extended out to the rest of Canada.

The next wave of government 2.0 is a cultural challenge that requires governments to embrace new technologies just as they did in the early 90s when “e-government” was a wild idea.  If not the IT community, then who else in government has the know-how to start the discussion?

Keep talking and keep pushing.  IT is, and should be, the driver of positive change in government.

I have had the pleasure of being around the Distinction Awards for a long time.  In fact, I managed the program for the original founder, Ron Connelly in the mid 1990s.  Then as now the Distinction Awards are the jewel in the GTEC crown.

The program is special in many ways; from its unique two-stage 3^rd party adjudication to the fact the awards are really an industry/public sector collaboration process for start to finish.  There are a number of reasons to be proud as a nominee, an honouree and/or a medalist.

In the early years, medals were awarded based on the new adoption of technologies and competition to be recognized as a trailblazer was fierce.  Agencies at all levels were headstrong in their efforts to implement new and exciting technologies that automated processes and made the public service an “e-government”.  Much like the term “e-government”, things have evolved over the years and the IT/IM community faces a number of new challenges and new standards.  Even though we are still adopting new systems and technologies, the game has changed significantly.

We now live in an era where innovation has met a new rigor known as accountability.  It is not to say that systems and people were not accountable in the past, but the scope of administrative oversight on accountability is significantly changed.  So has the environment around IT, now that Canada and its citizens have fully embraced electronic service delivery.  The challenge for IT/IM organizations is more to manage huge information resources and manage systems over the long term than it is to change the paradigm of how governments do business.

Governments also face unparalleled public scrutiny. Serving citizens is a noble calling, and an increasingly difficult career. Perhaps now more than ever before, recognition is critical to maintaining morale and engaging public servants in the ongoing stewardship of their information and resources.  So, after 17 years of regular and gentle amendments to the judging and categories, we’ve decided to make some more dramatic changes.

No More “Finalists”:

The first major change was to eliminate the concept of “finalists” from the awards altogether.  Essentially, any nominated project that succeeds through the first round of judging is now known as an “Honouree”.  On the night of the Gala, every Honouree will receive a Service Delivery Award, which cites the project and also names the team members specifically.

We have made this change because history has shown us that the difference in many cases between winning a medal and being a finalist has been minute. The not for profit association that has administered the judging process from the outset, SCOAP, as well as sponsors and participants we surveyed all agreed that the point of the program was to recognize excellence and that it was important to spread the recognition out to the projects, and the team members themselves.

Medals for the “Best of the Best”:

Another change we made was to limit the number of medals we would hand out up to 17 gold Medals, or one old medal per category (there are 5 groups and 17 categories for nominations). A cynic would argue that handing out medals would essentially place us back where we started, just without the distinction of winners and finalists; however, our view is that the “Distinction Awards” need to continue to recognize exceptional success.  As a result, one project that is truly outstanding from each nomination group will receive a Gold Medal. 

As in the past, gold medals are still extremely hard to get, and receiving a gold medal at the Distinction Awards means that the nominee has set the standard within the nomination group.  There will still be an atmosphere of suspense at the Gala, as the gold medalists are announced, but the larger focus of the evening will be on recognizing our esteemed Honourees.

A New Look to Suit the New Feel:

The final change we made to ensure that recognition was the true focus of the Distinction Awards was to change the format and venue of the Gala.  For the first time in our history, we are moving away from a seated dinner to a formal ceremony and celebration.

Like other formal ceremonies, we will present the Honourees and award medals in front of a seated audience of public and private sector leaders.  This year, we will do that in the Great Hall of the National Gallery of Canada.  In one of the most spectacular halls in the City, and with the Parliamentary Precinct as our backdrop, the Distinction Awards Ceremony will feature all of our past traditions such as the Honouree Parade, Mounties and remarks by the Minister of State for Science and Technology, but all of this will be done within a ceremony that focuses solely on the recognition of the honourees.

For those who are curious, the actual order of ceremony is available on the website at: http://www.gtec.ca/distinction-awards/distinction-awards-overview.php

Prior to the Ceremony and afterwards, guests will be treated to a cocktails and a proper feast, in a format that allows everyone to move around, mingle and celebrate.  One of the benefits of the new venue is the ability for us to display the Honouree Certificates prominently in the grand hallway that leads to the Great Hall.  We will also have a number of food and beverage stations for guests to sample such a substantial selection of food that we are referring to the post celebration as a “stand-up” meal.

Finally, the ticket cost for participants has been reduced and segmented into two types of tickets.  Guests can either attend the entire evening, including the welcome reception, the ceremony and the celebration, or they can attend the Celebration only. Either way, there is room for more people to participate, and more time for teams to celebrate, take team photos and enjoy the company of the evening.

So these are the highlights of what we believe will be a fresh look on recognition and celebration in the public sector.  We hope that we will set a new trend and raise the bar for programs of this nature in the future.  As always, the Distinction Awards will truly be a grand event worthy of our esteemed nominees.

Every few years I make the trek to Las Vegas to Visit our sister event, Interop.  Much like Las Vegas, Interop was a bit of blur of innovation and I am leaving with a bit of a cloudy head, but not the kind of cloudy head you might be thinking of.

First, Interop is the grand daddy of all shows in the technology industry.  This is the place where companies sell uber-solutions to uber-geeks, where technologies can be promoted using a standard elevator pitch and fistacuffs (No, seriously, see Xirrus’ “Melée at Mandalay”: Xirrus, Booth #1331).  Outside of the excitement of the trade show floor, on the floor there was a palpable tension in the conference rooms.  Thanks in large part to the doom and gloom of recession talk, the real “melée” at Interop, for me, was the collision of inventive sellers with desperate buyers looking to save their way out of a recession with IT solutions.  Times are clearly tough, but many here see technology as THE means to getting onto a more profitable path. 

Everybody here is talking cloud computing.  Interop dedicated keynotes, a conference stream, an “unconference” (which you’ll see at GTEC too, in ‘09), a networking night and an exhibit area to the cloud.  In the conference rooms, most delegates admitted that they are only starting to leverage computing in the cloud, but Interop’s attendee survey showed that 40% of them planned to invest in it within the next year.  While some of the interest is definitely from technology enthusiasts, I got the sense that most CIOs are having a hard time ignoring the cost-benefit analysis supporting the cloud.  (Here’s a link to some good information from the Enterprise Cloud Summit).

Putting my public sector hat on, I was impressed by IBM’s VP of Cloud Services, Ric Telford, when he told the story of the Pike County School Board, an IBM client that virtualized desktop computing in their schools.  This was not really earth shattering news, until he dropped the statistic that the board cut desktop computing costs by 62% through the virtualization process.  Any parent with kids in school can relate to the value of a 62% savings for cash strapped public schools.

Pike County is only one of many examples presented at Interop.  It’s also one of many news items on the cloud that has crossed my path in the last week or so.  And, it’s not all just “business” news.  Last week, the US government issued this RFI. This week, Fast Company has named the CIO at the US Defense Information Systems Agency, John Garing, as one of the top 100 most creative people in business.  Why?  Garing was said to have “powwowed with such luminaries as Amazon’s Werner Vogels and Salesforce.com’s Marc Benioff to bring cloud computing, network services, and Web 2.0 tools to the Department of Defense.”   It seems to me like everyone, small or large, is taking a hard look at cloud computing.

My point is that cloud computing is clearly “the” hot topic right now, but Canadian governments who are not already looking into cloud computing might want to start paying attention to what others are doing.  If technology is really the enabler of government services, it might be time for government CIOs to get their heads around the cloud as one of the next big things in service delivery.

The Distinction Awards take on a dramatic new tone in 2009 with the introduction of a new event format, and an expansion of the recognition program for nominated projects. The new-look Distinction Awards Program formalizes recognition in two principle ways: by presenting all nominated projects that clear the first round of judging with a “Service Delivery Award”; and by creating a new “Gala Celebration” that project teams, leaders, deputies and executives can all participate in. 

This year the Distinction Awards will truly become the recognition program they were conceived to be. Every nomination that makes it through to the final round of judging will be recognized with a Service Delivery Award which will include the project name and the individual names of all team members listed on the project, and up to 17 exceptional nominations will receive a coveted gold Distinction Award Medal.

According to Andrew Moffat, the president of SCOAP, the association of Canadian IT professionals that has conducted the judging for the past 16 years, “the intention of the awards has always been to celebrate excellence within the Public Service. In the past the awards followed an old paradigm where the ‘winners’ were the medalists. The changes being implemented this year recognize that all of the projects that make it through to the final round of judging are worthy of recognition because they clearly demonstrate excellence. Going forward, the gold medalists simply highlight the best of the best.”

GTEC’s Executive Director Kevin d’Entremont also said, “competitions don’t encourage high standards of excellence in the public sector. We are choosing to put the emphasis on celebrating the exceptional service that already exists in the public sector, in a meaningful ceremony that is appropriate for all to enjoy”.

Ticket prices for the Gala Celebration have also been reduced to encourage participation by more team members. The 2009 Gala Celebration will be presented in the stunning Great Hall of the National Gallery of Canada. Beginning and ending with elaborate receptions, and with the Parliamentary Precinct as its backdrop, the Distinction Awards Celebration Gala will be attended by government CIOs, invited Deputy Ministers, leaders in industry, and the Secretary of State for Science and Technology, the Hon. Gary Goodyear.

For more information on the Gala, judging and to reserve tickets, please contact:

Silvia Villon
Distinction Awards Gala Manager
GTEC
Tel: 613-736-9851, ext 120
e-mail: svillon@gtec.ca

Ottawa, Ontario – Wednesday, April 29, 2009 – GTEC announced that the 2009 Showcase Province will be Saskatchewan.  Saskatchewan is a leading province in innovation and technology, with a strong partnership of private sector firms, public and Crown entities working together to expand technology and business opportunities in the province.

“The Government of Saskatchewan views technology as one of the keys to building our province and sustaining our economic momentum,” Minister responsible for the Information Technology Office, Dan D’Autremont said.  “Whether it’s enhancing our research and development tax credit or developing more efficient government services through the adoption of technology, our goal is to make it easier for our private sector to develop the innovations that are helping to grow our province’s economy.”

The Saskatchewan Trade and Export Partnership (STEP) will lead the delegation.  Saskatchewan will also exhibit some of the innovative ways it is using technology to improve services to its citizens and grow the economy, including:

• How its unique public-private trade organization (Saskatchewan Trade and Export Partnership) is helping companies to export Saskatchewan-developed technology around the world.
• The expansion of high-speed Internet coverage to every corner of the province.
• How centralization of IT services is creating opportunities to develop less expensive and more effective technology-based services for citizens.
• How major advancements in the use of geomatics and geomapping is helping the private and public sectors to make better decisions.

“Whether it’s enhancing our research and development tax credit or developing a more efficient government oil and gas system, our goal is to facilitate the ideas and innovation that our private sector is using to build Saskatchewan and exporting around the world,” D’Autremont said.

“GTEC is not just about the federal government, and neither is government service delivery.  The truth is that communities and services are becoming increasingly interwoven and governments need to collaborate across jurisdictions to deliver services better,” said Kevin d’Entremont, Executive Director of GTEC.  “There are lessons to be learned from the provincial model for service delivery, and I am pleased that Saskatchewan’s presence will highlight both private and public sector innovation.”

The GTEC 2009 focus is “Service Mashups”.  GTEC’s Government 2.0 (G2.0) Conference will bring leaders together to “mash-up” public sector programs and services to uncover the underlying issues that enable or prevent governments from innovating service delivery. Rather than offering a series of presentations, GTEC’s conference will challenge community leaders to collaborate on a vision of government 2.0 services based on actual benefits and limitations of their policy and operating environments.

Thank you for participating in GTEC 2008. 

This past year was a year of change for GTEC, as we successfully transitioned to the Westin from the Ottawa Congress Centre.  There was a definite buzz on the show floor and at the conference.

In 2009, GTEC will continue to stress the importance of collaboration and innovation.  Perhaps with a greater focus on innovation and inter-jurisdictional cooperation, GTEC will continue to explore how government 2.0 technologies can reshape the relationship with the citizen.  We hope to provide more content on how Citizens can see government through a single window, through web and other technologies that permit them to receive services without the burden of needing to know “who” is delivering them.  Identity management and security, government culture and web 2.0 technologies, life-cycle management and innovation will continue to be threads that link our conference content to the primary issues government and industry are facing in the near term.

We look forward to sharing details on 2009 as they emerge.

Distinction Awards honour John Bethel on October 27, 2008

Ottawa, ON – September 24, 2008 – The Leadership Medal at the Distinction Awards are an affirmation that one person really can make a difference even within a large IT organization or project. As leaders, nominees will have inspired and mobilized the energies and talents of others to work toward the achievement of the shared goals and objectives of their organization, the people within it and the people it serves.

On October 27, the Distinction Awards will present a Gold Leadership Medal to John Bethel, the Assistant Deputy Minister for Alternative Service Delivery (ASD) for the British Columbia government.  With a view to saving money and transforming service delivery in B.C., John Bethel has worked tirelessly to help the B.C. government execute 10 ASD deals worth $1.8 billion, with a projection that they will generate $550 million in financial benefits to the government in addition to significant non-financial benefits.

As a member of the Joint Executive Steering Committees for current ASD deals, and an evaluator on new Joint Solution Procurement projects, John provides strategic advice to client ministries throughout the lifecycle of these long-term partnerships.

John sits on the board of the Centre for Outsourcing Research and Education (CORE), a national organization for the promotion of best practices in outsourcing in the public and private sectors and is a regular speaker at conferences and training events dedicated to ASD models.

According to Kevin d’Entremont, Executive Director of the Awards, “We don’t give these medals out every year, and it truly takes an inspirational person or event to merit this honour.  The B.C. government’s joint-solutions procurement partnerships are large, complex deals that set the benchmark for Canadian governments.  John’s passion for his role is a testament to the commitment that the province has made to finding new ways to service citizens better.  He is the ideal candidate for the Leadership medal this year.”

Distinction Awards medals are given in five groups: Federal, Provincial, Municipal, National, and leadership.  Although there can be up to 42 medals each year, only one medal can be given in a Leadership Category.  The last time a leadership medal was awarded was in 2006.

“In BC, Alternative Service Delivery is not a theory or a process or a Secretariat.  It is a discipline–a way of doing business.  We set out clear goals to achieve better value and better service for the taxpayers of BC – and we work every day to achieve that value.  It is not easy, but it is worth it,” said John Bethel. 

“Our success is rooted in executive and political support, and the dedication of hundreds of public servants across government that have focused their careers on procuring, negotiating, and managing complex ASD partnerships   I am truly honoured to be recognized for our program’s success and look forward to receiving the award at GTEC on behalf of each and every one of the leaders in the BC Public Service that have proven it can be done,” continued Bethel. 

The 2008 Distinction Awards Gala is one of the most highly anticipated events of the year for public servants. To be held on October 27, 2008, the Gala be attended by over 600 executives from government and industry, plus our finalists and departments heads from across Canada.