Quote of the week
“[Digital] raises key questions about how we manage our key commodity – information.”
Editor’s Corner
There are, of course, thousands of public servants who deliver services directly to citizens: at the federal level, border agents, food inspectors, Service Canada desk officers, to name just three.
At the provincial level, think of the teachers and medical personnel. Municipally, consider the sanitation worker or the parks maintenance worker.
But even their work is being transformed by the power of digital technology. First of all, there is its ability to find information – data – on everything from border movements to medical images. And, thanks to analytics, that data can be used to assess situations and predict trends and outcomes.
Second, digital makes this information available just about anywhere, thanks to mobile technology. So, in short, access to data and information is no longer limited to the knowledge desk worker, but can be used by the expert field worker as well…in real time.
All this is having a huge impact on how governments do their business…and the challenge, of course, is to align everything together to make this vision a reality.
It is an issue that is being explored in a Digital Governance Forum being hosted in Ottawa today and tomorrow. It’s probably a little late to attend in person, but follow us on Twitter #DGF15 to catch all the news as it unfolds.
