Global research firm IDC Corp. has launched the IT for Better Government Initiative, and the person heading the Canadian aspect of the worldwide initiative says when it comes to public sector innovation, the world does have a thing or two to learn from Canada.
Announced this summer but launched last year, the IT for Better Government Initiative is designed to support worldwide development of IT in governments and to ensure decision-makers in both the public and private sectors have better information around government and technology.
Alison Brooks, research director, public sector for IDC Canada, said IDC analysts around the world will be gathering public sector best practices to share with other jurisdictions.
“There was a need globally to be able to showcase best practices from various communities, so there was a gatekeeping of best of breed research,” said Brooks. “It leverages global government and health care analytical core competencies.”
Analysts from each region will regularly publish three top-line showcase pieces from their regions into the service, allowing other countries to leverage the same research. Brooks adds the public-sector research will also be much more end-user focused than other IDC research. Public-sector buyers are expected to be the primary research customers, but vendors will likely be interested as well.
“So what you get is Canada’s success being showcased for Singapore to learn from and leverage, and vice-versa,” said Brooks.
And Canada does have some learning to share with the world, said Brooks. This summer she published research on Canada’s public sector utilization of Web 2.0 and social networking tools to further end-user needs, demonstrating how organizations change when using such tools and what lessons can be learned. She also published a piece on IPv6.
“Canadian governments are doing a lot of interesting work with social networking. The federal government is very keen on utilizing it with its innovation campaign,” said Brooks. “They’re still slow to integrate it into daily operations, but that’s no different elsewhere.”
As other examples of Canadian innovation, Brooks also points to the system-centric delivery models being pushed-out by the British Columbia and Alberta governments, as well as Service Canada and Service Ontario as being very innovative compared to other countries.
“Canada has slipped in recent years, probably because of an inability to plan long-term given the minority government situation,” said Brooks. “Governmental organizations at the federal level have been hamstrung by a three-month planning window as the most long-term they can get right now.”
Looking at future government technology priorities though, and opportunities for channel vendors to play a role, Brooks said she sees a renewed focus on software delivery, software, CRM and networking.
“At the provincial level there’s definitely a movement towards trying to rationalize service delivery in a manner that gets various silos within that jurisdictional scope to be able to come together, collecting and sharing information about its client base across a number of ministries,” said Brooks. “There’s an increasing sense that having to enter and manage your relationships with different departments in different ways is annoying and unnecessary.”
At the federal level, talent management is a growing concern and Brooks said she sees a desire to modernize information and knowledge management tools.
