(3/23/2007) We've all seen it happen. Self-destruction. Career-limiting beB-havior. Professional suicide. Some previously normal and capable IT manager suddenly starts acting strangely and destructively. If you are the supervisor of such a person, you've got a challenge on your hands. | (3/21/2007) In Part 1 of InterGovWorld's Spotlight on Donna Achimov of Service Canada, we discussed read-to-me access to information and how a degree in journalism kickstarted a degree in public sector management. In Part 2, we look at how focus-testing can finetune services for citizens, how Service Canada employees stay connected even when they're way up North, and how being a "techie" can help if you want to work in the public sector. | (3/19/2007) In Part 1 of InterGovWorld's Spotlight on Donna Achimov of Service Canada, we discussed read-to-me access to information, bundling services together, and how a degree in journalism kickstarted a degree in public sector management. In Part 2 we look at how focus-testing fine tunes services for citizens, how Service Canada employees are always "connected" even when they're way up North, and if you want to work in the public sector it helps to be a "techie". | (3/16/2007) A Quebec medical practitioner says Canada's biggest problem with e-health is the lack of leaders among physicians to motivate the use of IT in their practices. A physician's work is more art than science, he says, and governments should open their coffers, offer more assistance and toughen their stance with legal requirements. | (3/13/2007) Access to human resources information can now be gained 24/7 by workers with the Calgary Health Region. The information is being delivered via automated self-service kiosks developed by systems integrator IBM Canada Ltd. | (3/12/2007) Public service and information are hard to fathom from the Blue Pages. Blue Pages directories read like hieroglyphics, with none of the great storytelling. In the age of citizen empowerment, Blue Pages are too complex and too bureaucratic to empower anyone. Municipalities know this, so instead they're moving hundreds of government departments out of the telephone book and onto a single number. | (3/12/2007) The City of Mississauga, Ont., has implemented an IP telephony system from Cisco Systems Inc. throughout the municipality's 78 facilities, as well as Cisco's IPCC product suite in its central call centre. While upgrading Mississauga's telecom system to VoIP was based on hard dollar returns, higher service levels proved a compelling driver in its own right to put VoIP into the call centre. | (3/12/2007) Banks and retail firms have been putting up with security failure rates that no government could even consider tolerating. At last, Secure Channel will be mandatory for all federal government departments and agencies. But just as no good deed goes unpunished, it seems no good decision goes unquestioned. | (3/12/2007) The world of diagnostics has been made a smaller place thanks to Malaria TV. The newly developed system will allow a diagnostician to view in real time the blood sample of a patient in another part of the country or the world. | (3/12/2007) Ottawa turned on its 311 call centre in the fall of 2005 and also operates a walk-in service centre that's staffed by representatives from all three levels of government. After several years of planning, the national capital is ready to begin plans for upgrading to VoIP. |
  | |  | | Blog Spotlight: Sandford Borins |  | As Professor of Strategic Management at the University of Toronto, Sandford Borins brings InterGovWorld.com readers exclusive insights into how and why the public sector is changing. You'll find new perspectives and questions, observations and objectives, lessons and answers. Cover to Cover, the blog by Prof. Sandford Borins, appears every Thursday. Inside Cover to Cover | |
| | | Unified Communications |  | Unity is a word often heard in the public sector, with myriad agencies and departments looking to foster collective thinking around some of today's most pressing issues. The word, however, doesn't usually get mentioned in the same breath as technology. That's a situation, though, that might soon be changing, thanks to a new software platform known as unified communications.
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