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Category: Government

Doing things differently in government

Two weeks ago I managed to seriously fracture my humerus bone. I had to have surgery to put a titanium plate with 8 screws into my arm so that the bone could heal properly over the course of the next 6 months. While the benefit of having surgery after a fracture is not having to wear a cast, the discomfort and limited mobility is quite similar. After 4 days at the hospital I thought I was ready to go back to my regular routine (those that know me also know that inactivity is not exactly my friend).

Welcome Shared Services Canada

It’s official !

“The Honourable Rona Ambrose (@MP_RonaAmbrose) , Minister of Public Works and Government Services and Minister for Status of Women, along with the Honourable Tony Clement (@TonyClementCPC), President of the Treasury Board and Minister for the Federal Economic Development Initiative for Northern Ontario, today announced measures to streamline and identify savings in Information Technology (IT) through Shared Services Canada” , a new government agency (see full press release).

How using a marketing approach can help open data

One of the biggest barriers to the growth of the open data movement in my opinion is that nearly every open data related meeting/event is still comprised primarily of data geeks and app developers. The language that is used by this community (e.g. machine readable data, open access, genomes, geo-spatial, etc…) confuses the typical non-geek beyond hope. If you don’t capture the minds of the non-geeks out there to stimulate demand, how on earth are open data initiatives (e.g. data.gov and data.gc.ca) going to stay alive?