In an interview last week with Cartt.ca, CRTC Chair JP Blais said “As long as people say they want predictability, I’m fastidiously predictable.”
Consider a regulatory decision that came out just two days after the interview. MTS made significant investments to upgrade its province wide emergency network and applied to the CRTC for these costs to be treated as an exception, just as the CRTC had ruled in 2010. However, in this case, the Commission said “Regarding MTS’s submission that the Commission had previously approved the company’s proposed 9-1-1 service rate change related to the upgrade of its ALI database, past approval of exceptions to the frozen rate treatment is not a reason in and of itself to approve the company’s application.”
Isn’t predictability in the regulatory treatment a reasonable expectation, especially when carriers are making significant investments in upgrading 9-1-1 infrastructure?
There is not a single industry that digital technologies don’t touch anymore. Digital technologies underpin every sector, from fishing and farming to mining and health. That means the number of jobs requiring people with digital skills will continue to grow. Canada must do more to give people the skills and experience they need to compete in a global and digital world. In particular, we need to give every Canadian the opportunity to get online. No one should be left behind.
To succeed, Minister Bains emphasized the need for government and the private sector to make smart investments in:
People: Expand work-integrated learning programs, such as internships, apprenticeships and continuous learning opportunities, for Canadians at every stage of their careers—from new graduates up to the highest-ranking executives.
Technology: Set big-horizon goals and create broad-based partnerships to fund ambitious research projects that solve complex, large-scale problems and spark commercial opportunities for the private sector.
Companies: Leverage the buying power of government, as the single-largest purchaser of goods and services, to support the growth of innovative companies that have the potential to be globally competitive.
He is right. And as we move forward, there are some important lessons that we can learn from global leaders in transformation, such as David Bray.
David began working for the U.S. government at age 15 on computer simulations at a Department of Energy facility. In later roles he designed new telemedicine interfaces and space-based forest fire forecasting prototypes for the Department of Defense. From 1998-2000 he volunteered as an occasional crew lead with Habitat for Humanity International in the Philippines, Honduras, Romania, and Nepal while also working as a project manager with Yahoo! and a Microsoft partner firm. He then joined as IT Chief for the Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Program at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, leading the program’s technology response during 9/11, anthrax in 2001, Severe Acute Respiratory System in 2003, and other international public health emergencies. He later completed a PhD in Information Systems from Emory University and two post-doctoral associateships at MIT and Harvard in 2008.
David volunteered in 2009 to deploy to Afghanistan to help “think differently” on military and humanitarian issues and in 2010 became a Senior National Intelligence Service Executive advocating for increased information interoperability, cybersecurity, and protection of civil liberties. In 2012, Dr. Bray became the Executive Director for the bipartisan National Commission for Review of Research and Development Programs of the United States Intelligence Community, later receiving the National Intelligence Exceptional Achievement Medal. He received both the Arthur S. Flemming Award and Roger W. Jones Award for Executive Leadership in 2013. He also was chosen to be an Eisenhower Fellow to meet with leaders in Taiwan and Australia on multisector cyber strategies for the “Internet of Everything” in 2015.
Outside of work, David was selected to serve as a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and as a Visiting Associate for the Cybersecurity Working Group on Culture at the University of Oxford starting in 2014. He also has been named the “Most Social CIO” globally in 2015 by both Forbes Magazine and the Huffington-Post, tweeting as @fcc_cio.
He writes about the need for deeper, focused substance versus the too typical reach for the quick shiny prize.
In particular, a lot of this would include rethinking beyond how we use technology tools — we need to rethink how we do the work to improve the stakeholder experience.Most importantly, we need focus on those meaningful elements of public service that need to be done to improve the United States and the world, and also focus on either automating or ending the less meaningful and often rote elements of public service that may no longer be necessary.
While startups often create a place where experiments and new ways of working can be done, several parts of public service cannot fail — which means we will need to identify a systematic, substantive approach that identifies:
What parts of public service absolutely, positively must run-on-time and not fail; i.e., crucial parts of defense, the economy, etc.
What parts of public service are most likely to produce significant “returns on investment” if new, better ways of doing the business of public service were found at the local, state, or national levels, and thus might be best for in-situ experiments including AI and new ways of working?
What parts of public service are rote or less meaningful in today’s rapidly changing world, and thus might be best decreased, completely automated, or stopped?
He also writes about needing “better solutions to help empower individuals to make contextual choices about their privacy and what data they want to provide in return for “free” apps or other services.” He suggests interesting models for open source privacy services, “empowering consumers to decide when, where, and in what context their data should be shared with data requestors.”
He proposes open “Health of the Internet” reports:
Such a report could be akin to how the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) provides regular updates regarding the start, spread, and conclusion of the flu season each year. The CDC’s reports are anonymized, aggregated statistics. A cyber public health approach could protect privacy and improve IoE resiliency by publicly sharing the equivalent of anonymous cyber signs, symptoms, and behaviors that different IoE devices are experiencing on a regular basis.
David Bray will be speaking at The 2017 Canadian Telecom Summit, taking place June 5-7 in Toronto. He has important messages for CIOs in the public and private sectors as well as all of us concerned with technology policy. You should plan to be join us. Registrations are now open.
Planning is underway for The 2017 Canadian Telecom Summit and you need to be there. The 2017 Canadian Telecom Summit will also recognize 25 years of competitive telecommunications in Canada as it explores this year’s theme: “Competition, Investment and Innovation: Driving Canada’s Digital Future”.
The Canadian Telecom Summit delivers thought provoking presentations from the prime movers of the industry. The Canadian Telecom Summit gives you the chance to hear from and talk with them in both a structured atmosphere of frank discussion and high octane idea exchange and schmooze in a more relaxed social setting over coffee or cocktails.
The leadership of the telecom, broadcast & IT industries will converge in Toronto to discuss the key issues and trends that will impact this critical sector of the economy. Join more than 500 of your peers, suppliers, policy makers, regulators, customers and competitors in attending telecom’s most important gathering.
Now in its 16th year, The Canadian Telecom Summit has become the place for Canada’s ICT leaders to meet, interact and do business. As in past years, this year’s Summit will feature high-octane interaction, top-level keynote speakers and thought-provoking panel discussions. Plan to join us.
The 2017 Canadian Telecom Summit features cutting-edge topics for its panel discussions. With so much public attention focused on telecommunications issues, no other event is quite like The 2017 Canadian Telecom Summit in covering the industry from every angle.
The Canadian Telecom Summit has something for everyone! Hear keynote addresses from senior executives from across the industry. Meet with your suppliers, customers and peers for 3 full days of thought provoking interaction.
Among the topics that will be explored:
What kinds of communications infrastructure is needed to provide Canadians with a platform to excel in a global digital economy?
What are the characteristics of a policy framework that fosters the development of innovative new applications and technologies to deploy in Canada and offer around the world?
What conditions are needed to encourage investment of capital and the availability of competitive communications services to Canadian consumers and businesses, regardless of where they are located?
How can low income Canadians participate in a more inclusive digital future?
How can communications services and applications be refined and developed with a goal for competitors to offer choice and differentiated services to all Canadians?
What else would you like to see? Visit the conference website often to see how the program is developing. A number of speakers are already confirmed to be there. Book your place soon and plan to join us.
I hate getting those calls as much as the next guy. You know the ones I’m talking about: a static beep followed by the background noise of a call-centre boiler-room and the familiar words “air duct cleaning”; or, maybe it’s Jeanette from Credit Card Services with my last chance to save; or, the computer technical support department; or, the $999.99 credit I won toward my Mexican vacation resort.
Despite all the best efforts of legislation and regulation, authorities have not been able to stop the fraudsters, scammers and spammers.
In August, the FCC hosted the launch of “the Robocall Strike Force, an industry-led group that is committed to developing comprehensive solutions to prevent, detect, and filter unwanted robocalls.” Earlier in the summer, FCC Chair Tom Wheeler pledged to cut off robocalls, saying “Robocalls and telemarketing calls are currently the number one source of consumer complaints at the FCC.” At the final meeting of the Strike Force the update identified a number of areas where work activities remained open, including:
Consumer Access to Free Call Blocking & Filtering Solutions
Development of Network-to-Device Information Sharing Framework
Deployment of VoIP Caller ID Authentication
In Canada, the CRTC launched a consultation in July 2015, “Empowering Canadians to protect themselves from unsolicited and illegitimate telemarketing calls.” That resulted in the production of a summary database of “options and features that are currently available to help Canadians protect themselves from unsolicited and illegitimate calls.” Let me know what you think of the usefulness of that website.
Also arising from that consultation, earlier this week the CRTC issued Compliance and Enforcement and Telecom Regulatory Policy CRTC 2016-442, stating “The Commission finds that the technical solutions available to Canadians to protect themselves from unwanted unsolicited and illegitimate telecommunications are not sufficient.” The CRTC has asked CISC (the CRTC Interconnection Steering Committee) to “develop practices to block blatantly illegitimate calls at the network level”, effectively providing a Section 36 authorization for Canadian carriers to block calls. CISC is to report back within 90 days – early February.
What are blatantly illegitimate calls?
Blatantly illegitimate calls include calls that purport to originate from telephone numbers that
match the telephone number of the person being called;
are “spoofed” with a number that is local to the person being called, in the case of an incoming long distance call; or
do not conform to the North American Numbering Plan (i.e. are non-dialable telephone numbers [e.g. 000-000-0000]).
These three specific circumstances account for up to 35% of all complaints filed with the National DNCL Operator in 2015. The Commission considers that universal blocking of these types of calls would be consistent with
the UTRs, which require telemarketers to identify themselves and provide a telecommunications number where the originator can be reached; and
Telecom Decision 2007-48, which states that telecommunications numbers must conform to the North American Numbering Plan in order to be registered on the National DNCL.
Hold on. What is with the second bullet? Getting registered in the Do Not Call List refers to me, the person receiving the call, not the person calling me. Decision 2007-48 effectively says that Canada’s Do Not Call List is for Canadian phone numbers. Further, with respect to the first bullet, the logic only makes sense if the originator is a telemarketer. What if it is my daughter calling me from overseas? The CRTC has no control over the phone company or app with which she makes her call and by definition, as an overseas call, the originating number cannot conform to the NANP. A caller ID from outside North America cannot and should not conform to the North American Numbering Plan. Incoming calls from various long distance companies, or from VoIP apps (such as Skype and others), can deliver a range of non-conforming caller IDs. Will these be captured by the CRTC’s blanket ban?
While the CRTC claims the “use of universal blocking to prevent calls with blatantly illegitimate caller ID information also strikes an appropriate balance between the protection of individual privacy and the need to permit legitimate uses of telemarketing telecommunications”, it appears that there are bound to be legitimate calls blocked that did not originate from telemarketers.
As the Commission itself recognizes in the discussion about universal blocking:
A number of parties expressed concern that universal blocking could prevent legitimate calls from reaching their intended recipient…
…
Eastlink, Primus, and trueCall argued that universal blocking, if implemented broadly, would not reflect the distinct preferences of individuals, given that all calls would be blocked at the network level (i.e. affecting all subscribers) and that the blocking could not be customized by the consumer…
Carriers generally argued that universal blocking is ineffective at combatting nuisance calls from callers who constantly change the numbers that they display on caller ID, which makes it difficult to determine which calls should be blocked…
So the CRTC is sending this off to CISC:
Accordingly, the Commission requests CISC to
identify and develop a comprehensive list of attributes of calls that indicate blatantly illegitimate caller ID information and that can be universally blocked;
identify potential unintended consequences of universally blocking calls based on the list of attributes identified above;
as required, develop redress mechanisms to prevent and remediate these consequences when universal blocking is deployed, and approaches for monitoring their effectiveness; and
provide a report of its findings on the above to the Commission within 90 days of the date of this decision.
A much bigger scourge is that of phishing, with scammers spoofing the originating source of emails. Ottawa Police is circulating an educational video as part of an education process for users to recognize fraudulent messages. Should the CRTC be ordering ISPs to block blatantly illegitimate emails?
Ultimately, these efforts by the CRTC and by the police point to the ineffectiveness of legislation and regulation such as Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation and the Unsolicited Telecommunications Rules. Hopefully, CISC will report back about the risks of blocking legitimate calls from ordinary citizens and we can move on. But we need to consider the unnecessary costs these rules have imposed on legitimate businesses while the perpetrators of fraud and genuine consumer annoyances continue their practices unabated.
While it would be nice to find a regulatory solution or a novel technology, I continue to believe the most effective way to deal with nuisance calls was invented more than 130 years ago. Just hang up.
I noticed a tweet that said that no one in that person’s timeline was excited about seeing Trump win. To me, that is a problem. So I replied, saying “I tend to learn a lot by reading things that can sometimes make me angry”:
Why so many people were surprised by last night's results.
I tend to learn a lot by reading things that can sometimes make me angry https://t.co/QjJm9AdT1q
In August, I wrote about this phenomenon (Reading just what we want or what we need?), asking “How do we encourage reading alternate perspectives, consideration of dissenting viewpoints, and engaging in cooperative dialog?” It is a real challenge when we self select digital news feeds, or get algorithmically selected articles served to us on social media based on what is perceived to be what we want to read. Perhaps the advantage of print media was the enforced diversity of views based on bundles of content including more than what we want.
Aren’t our minds nourished by snacking on opposing views once in a while?
