Online conversations are transforming the relationship between people and organizations. Are government bodies listening? By David Jacobson, PricewaterhouseCoopers Canada LLP

With blended or multimedia search results at our fingertips (including video, images, blog posts, and personalization searches), leisure and business are rapidly and dramatically changing and converging. Welcome to the age of the “selfsumer”. In this new era, Canadians use discussion forums, blogs, email, text messages and a variety of social networking tools to share what, when and how they buy. The way they communicate has changed the rules of business. If government and the public sector wish to participate, they cannot continue using only traditional approaches to connect with their staff and the public.

My experience as an emerging technologies director with PwC Canada indicates that selfsumers are a growing number of consumers and employees who search for, discover and create information on products, services and companies via multiple sources on the web. They collaborate online using various social media to find and make purchase decisions. This is a new type of consumer that is less reliant on hard sell commercials and more reliant on discovering products and brands using the internet and social networking.

With one voice that can morph into a community in minutes, selfsumers’ online influence has begun to alter the relationship between businesses and the public. This shift has challenged business leaders to think more creatively when developing new products, promotional content and e-commerce channels. Public sector leaders can do the same to increase their level of engagement with Canadians.

Analyzing selfsumers’ digital behaviour can help government organizations refine their ability to capture consumer intelligence, gain insight into their changing needs and build connectivity. It can also help cash-strapped agencies save money because targeted campaigns are supported by a deeper understanding of consumers which removes guesswork and decreases the likelihood of wasted time and financial resources.

Government executives must rely on their CIOs to translate selfsumers’ ideas into a business and IT strategy. To be fully effective, the IT centre will need different approaches to read digital behaviour and meet strategic goals.

To stay agile with changing digital conversations, CIOs need to be more creative when strategizing with the executive team. For example, they can deliver new types of lucrative business applications, uncover ways for departments and data servers to share information and knowledge, and improve data-warehousing to keep pace with growing amounts of information exchanged between Canadians on blogs and message boards. This creativity, agility and innovation will become more beneficial as selfsumers’ tastes and skills continue to influence more business applications and practices.

According to PwC’s study How the Consumer Conversation Will Transform Business, the number of online discussions about a customer-facing organization – its brand and reputation – can reach thousands or even millions per day. Aggregating and analyzing these online conversations will require increasingly sophisticated technology and a commitment to continually improve strategies to listen, process and quickly respond. Government agencies that embrace these methods demonstrate their commitment to helping Canadians.

For more information on the dialogue with consumers, read PwC Canada’s 2009 Report on Emerging Canadian Software Companies: A CEO Perspective and Navigating the Era of the Empowered Consumer.

By Ivan Milam, PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP

More than a decade ago, most Canadian public sector and government CIOs focused on providing “the pipes, power and ping” for their organizations. Their primary job was to keep the department’s IT infrastructure and applications running. Their priorities were often set by other executives whose primary purpose was to drive down cost while demanding increased service.  However, over the past 10 years public sector CIOs have increasingly come to the  understanding that to be an equal partner at the executive table they must break from their traditional “infrastructure delivery” roles and embrace a much more strategic one of an equal business partner in the organization.

As a trusted public sector advisor with PwC, I have helped many departments make this very important transition.  Through these experiences, I’ve witnessed CIO’s make this journey by using, to varying degrees, elements of the following 6 key activities.

1. Deliver core services efficiently

IT departments are continually asked to do more with less. CIOs who are strategic partners demonstrate to business executives that they’re delivering core services at the lowest expense while achieving high levels of client satisfaction.  Without this foundation piece, CIOs typically get stuck in the process of continually defending IT’s cost instead highlighting its value.

But doing so means utilizing all available options to enhance IT efficiency. These include outsourcing, co-sourcing, co-partnerships, and improving collaboration with other stakeholders and partners.  Leveraging all options to improve the day-to-day IT functions free up CIOs to do what CIOs do best – highlight strategic and innovation opportunities to help drive their organization’s to meet their strategic goals and outcomes.

2. Immerse yourself in the business and demonstrate your knowledge

CIOs must not only show value by delivering services efficiently. They must also develop a genuine understanding of the business outside of IT operations. High performing IM/IT executives learn about the business processes, business drivers, and strategic focus of all business units in their organization.  By showing their knowledge of the organization and selling ideas supported by data and a sound knowledge of the business, they demonstrate they are not only a technology person but a strategic peer at the executive level.

3. Align your innovation and ideas with the organization’s strategic vision using a structured process

Instead of taking orders at the board room table, leading CIO’s are proactive in presenting ideas that align IT’s investments with the organization’s priorities. One way to do this is to develop a structured process for prioritizing innovative ideas for IT investment. A structured process helps to identify, evaluate, develop and present new IT innovations to the organization. Then, as an executive team, they can determine the best ideas that align with the organization’s strategic vision.

4. Stay engaged by connecting with people

Gaining visibility at the executive, stakeholder and staff level with active participation and collaboration is another tool used by many CIOs. Building these relationships allows CIOs to share the organization’s vision and learn how vendors, suppliers or employees can contribute.

Successful CIOs are often seen engaging stakeholders by participating in local public speaking events to communicate where they’re taking their organizations and how stakeholders can help. Other platforms used to get the message out to staff include wikis, blogs and social networking tools. These methods contribute to collaboration and innovation, and build awareness around the IT department’s value to the organization.

5. Enable agility with effective architecture

Typically, a lot of companies have a complex IT architecture with different systems that do not work well together. This hampers innovation and the agility to solve problems quickly.

CIOs who bring IT from the back office to the executive table develop and more importantly implement architectures that provide flexibility to handle the changes that innovation brings. Reducing system complexity and increasing standardization are two key approaches that allow organizations to pivot on a dime when embracing new technologies or discovering new priorities.

6. Keep an eye on risk

The balancing act for CIOs is to bring value while remaining cognizant of risk. IT represents a significant area of vulnerability for an organization in different ways. Without adequate controls, companies may leave themselves open to fraud, security breaches, or a loss of intellectual capital. 

Effective CIOs balance security, risk and compliance requirements with innovation.

With technology playing such a large role in our lives today, CIOs must be equal partners at the executive table.  Today, an ever increasing number of CIOs are advancing down this path. For each CIO and each organization, the journey is different but many of the steps are similar. 

Recently on blog radio, I was asked about the perception of procurement today as opposed to 10 years ago when we began Summit: Canada’s magazine on public sector purchasing. It has changed.

One of the driving factors of creating the magazine in the first place, was that, as contract publishers, we found ourselves continually educating our government customers on how to do business with us in a changing technology environment. 

Web publishing, print on demand, and tools like CDs were all quite new 10 years ago (to someone over 50 that is pretty amazing). As publishers, we had to learn how to use the technology to survive as a small business and to educate our potential clients about the technology and its benefits to them. While excited about the potential of IT solutions, the procurement staff in charge of purchasing our professional services did not yet appreciate how technology would change their lives and the work they were trying to do.

Just to go back to the magazine for a moment; we felt that a magazine that would bring the innovations, best practices and challenges in various areas of the public sector to the desks of procurement professionals everywhere in Canada would help them do business better and improve the public sector market for Canadian business. We have done that and because of the pervasive role of IT, much of our content has been devoted to the development and procurement of IT tools, solutions and professional services. 

There were tons of challenges over the past 10 years in the purchasing of IT… it is no secret that many public sector IT projects did not succeed… at least not in the sense we thought they would. After all, it is pretty hard to conduct an IT project using traditional tools, processes and measurement when everything about IT changes so fast.  By change, I don’t just mean the hardware and software itself, but the clients that information technology is purchased for become very sophisticated very quickly in their private lives. Government is extremely challenged to keep up to their expectations. Most times it cannot, and so we perceive failure. This may be one of the biggest challenges still facing IT procurement today. Reining in expectations is not easy.

Most of us can purchase for ourselves a new computer, cell phone, mobile devices, TVs and the attendant software, so we get to try the newest and best fairly frequently, but consider that the public sector must look at thousands of new machines, new phones or mobile devices and software and licences and the follow on systems integration and support, to say nothing of training and possible legislation changes and organization restructuring. It becomes easier to appreciate that the public sector will continually have to scramble just to try to be anywhere close to current when it comes to technology.  To their credit, procurement staff does strive to meet the internal client demand while balancing the need against the desire.

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.