The GTEC Team is happy to announce that Corinne Charette, Chief Information Officer of the Government of Canada, will return as the 2011 event’s Honourary Chair.

“I am pleased to return as GTEC’s Honourary Chair for a third year,” said Corinne Charette. Corinne was appointed to the position of Chief Information Officer of the Government of Canada in 2009.

“GTEC is a great event, which has evolved over 19 years to become a major force contributing to innovation and change in the Government of Canada”, said the CIO of the Government of Canada. In this role, Corinne Charette will set the agenda for the event and identity themes that will inform and inspire public servants across Canada for the next year.  During the event Charette will host key GTEC functions and deliver a keynote presentation on opening day.

Winter may have a firm grasp on the weather but we here on the GTEC team are working up a storm of our own putting together this year’s installment of Canada’s Government Technology Event. 2011 has already brought a couple of exciting developments that we wanted to share.

2011 Theme: Connected Government – Working Together to Better Serve Canadians

Download full theme document.

The pressure on governments to provide more and better services within diminishing budgets continues.  GTEC 2011 will continue to push the discussions forward and will examine this evolution in government service delivery.  Within the theme, ‘Connected Government – Working Together to Better Serve  Canadians’, GTEC participants will collaborate and participate in discussions on:

• Collaboration through connections – connectedness within the public service at large and with the public they serve

• Completing the service loop – working together and collaborating within the public service and with external partners to satisfy citizen and business expectations to provide better and a more seamless service experience

• Embracing the technology – Leveraging and renewing the technology and information infrastructure and deploying new and emerging technologies that promote more collaboration and connections

• Protecting the individual and government – adopting and reinforcing the information policy and practices that are necessary to balance the demands for more connectedness, convenience and transparency while at the same time protecting the privacy of the individual

• Examining the communities and organic organizations that are emerging in response to a more connected and mobile service provision environment

• Understanding the people and the relationships – our communities, our employees and our cross-functional, cross-jurisdictional, public-private partnerships that are emerging to provide better more seamless service

Note: We’re currently accepting speaking proposals that fit into our theme. If you’re interested, you may submit your proposal here.

New Venue: The Ottawa Convention Centre

In the absence of a convention centre, the Westin has been a great location for the event but after a couple of tours during construction, we’re excited to stretch our legs in the new venue. The larger space and state of the art design will provide new opportunities for the event and make it easier for delegates to collaborate on better serving citizens through technology innovation.

New Website: Launching End of February

Our web team is currently developing an all new website around the 2011 theme. We are targeting a late February launch for the new site and event registration.

New Sister Event: GTEC Washington DC

Some of you have probably seen communications about GTEC in Washington DC. No, we haven’t moved; we’ve expanded. Like the Canadian event, the show in Washington will be focused on the use of technology to improve service delivery to citizens with the focus being on the issues faced by those in the US Government.

If you have any questions about this year’s event or just want to talk government technology, feel free to contact us here on the blog, on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. We’re listening and always interested in talking shop.

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.

 Service Mash-ups will be the theme for this years event taking place October 5-8th at the Westin Hotel in Ottawa, ON. 

Industry leaders and government organizations at all levels likely share similar views on how to enable better government services through information technology, but do they share a common vision of how to get to government 2.0?  If you put leaders in a room and asked them to paint a concrete picture of a government 2.0 service, what would it look like?

Web 2.0 developers use a tool called a mash-up to combine data from more than one source into a single integrated tool. In a similar way, 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.

By showcasing programs and services in parallel environments, we hope to clarify opportunities for integration, communication and innovation in service delivery for governments at all levels.

Some Key discussion topics will include:

• Identity management and authentication
• Virtualization and cloud computing
• Social collaboration tools
• Workplace 2.0 strategies
• Building sustainable IT/IM business cases
• Shared services policy implementation
• Citizen centric services