A few nights ago, I saw a TV commercial that used your tax dollars to advertise the Health Infoway – a government initiative promoting its missed objectives. I say your taxes, not mine, because my wife will tell you that my taxes are being used to fund those TV and print ads telling me how great the economic action plan worked for us.

The missed objectives for the Health Infoway? You may recall it was the budget in 2009 that provided $500M to the Canada Health Infoway with a specific target: half of us were supposed to have electronic health records by 2010. I don’t think I have an electronic health record yet; do you?

At the time I wrote up the program, quoting the budget documents that promised that this funding would also speed up the implementation of electronic medical record systems for physicians and integrated points of service for hospitals, pharmacies, community care facilities and patients.

What do we actually have to show for it? Click on the graphic and at least the Infoway folks have put together a nice multimedia ad for what they should have already delivered.

I am certain that the current advertising campaign is designed to help prepare us for the next injection of a half billion dollars to be announced in the 2011 budget later this month. Hopefully, the media will ask tough questions like what happened to the money 2 years ago and what is being done about the missed 2010 objectives.

At the end of the day, I’d prefer an ad campaign that brags about successful completion of a project, rather than squandering my cash to lobby for more of my cash.

The ad claims “Knowing is better than not knowing.” What do you think? Do you feel better knowing than not knowing?

Yesterday, comScore released its 2010 Canada Digital Year in Review. The whitepaper is a free download [pdf, 4.6MB]

It is 44 pages filled with data on how Canadians are consuming digital media and it provides an important snapshot of 2010 with comparisons to the previous year.

• How are Canadians consuming digital media, and how does this compare to other countries?
• Which trends dominated the digital landscape in 2010?
• How does media consumption differ across age and gender segments?
• What trends are we seeing in the social networking space, and what impact does that have on email activity?
• How has digital advertising shifted in the last year, and how has social media played a part?
• Which content categories are serving up the most videos? Who’s watching online video in Canada?
• What is the current state of the search market?
• How will mobile media consumption in Canada stack up against other markets?

The headline – Canadians again are the world’s most engaged consumers of digital media, spending double the global average amount of time on-line and about 20% more than the runner-up, the United States.

It is an important and timely injection of hard data that challenges some of the assertions being made about of Canada’s digital economic capability. Given that usage tiers have been a part of mainstream Canadian retail internet for the past 4 years, comScore’s study appears to shoot down charges that usage sensitive pricing inhibits Canadians from heavy use of internet services. Further, the data gives credence to why Canadian internet access networks may be experiencing different levels of stress from that experienced in other countries. More study is required, but it is helpful to have new quantitative analysis added to what has recently been an emotional discussion.

I wanted to find out if psychologists have been doing research into on-line comments, discussions, media.

I have noticed virtual unanimity among the Twitter stream for the UBB hashtag. Dissent breads contempt and I have apparently become a lightning rod for the malicious attacks wrought by many who are on the other side of the issue with no interest in engaging in a discussion of the broader issues. But that isn’t what I am writing about today.

It is to try to stimulate the social scientists and political scientists among my more academically inclined colleagues to engage in some research on the behaviour of anonymous groups. There is an interesting piece by Geoff Livingston called The Ethics of Flash Mobs.

“I prefer to live in a society in which laws, however corruptly enforced, not mobs, decide who is guilty and how to punish them,” said Howard Rheinghold, author of Smart Mobs. “There is the public sphere in which demonstrations and boycotts are legitimate actions, and online flash mobs tipped presidential elections in Korea and Spain. But drowning out voices of dissent has no place in a democracy.”

It is an interesting research project. Political operatives will want to understand how to manipulate flash mobs for electoral support, and need to understand the level of credibility to grant to such movements.

An article in the St. Petersburg Times, Online anonymity creates a mob mentality, speaks of the rage that seems to be overtaking e-mails, chat rooms and Web postings, causing University of South Florida psychologist Jennifer Bosson to ask, “Are people that angry all the time?”

The NDP wants hearings into consumer usage based billing, according to Charlie Angus, saying “Caps for consumers must be looked at.”

I agree that consumers internet plans should be looked at. And, when they stop to think seriously about “caps,” the NDP should reconsider its policy on usage based billing. To date, it has thrown its support behind the misguided Stop the Meter campaign from Open Media. The NDP needs to carefully assess the impact of banishing tiered pricing for internet on its constituents.

Last month, Tim Wu wrote that pricing differentiation should be based solely on speeds. I challenged that view, saying that this limits choice to consumers. At the extreme, it means the lowest price plans are dial-up and any increase in speed has an associated price increase, with no differentiation allowed based on the amount of use. In Tim Wu’s view – and apparently the view of the Stop the Meter folks, all internet plans are unlimited plans.

The NDP social policy says that it believes in “protecting the vulnerable and ensuring that every citizen has access to high quality social programs.” People who want to ban tiered internet restrict the choices available to consumers. Whatever the price might be for unlimited use at a given bandwidth speed, the price would be lower for some level of use less than “unlimited.”

Not every internet user needs an unlimited plan. How is it in the interest of seniors to be restricted to a lower speed at a given price point, rather than let them make the choice to buy a higher speed, but lower volume service? Why would we restrict low income households to dial-up service, because some people think service providers should not be allowed the flexibility to offer higher speed services with usage restriction?

The NDP definitely needs to look at consumer internet services. When it reflects, I think it will realize that it has been caught on the wrong side of this issue.

Yesterday, Industry Minister Tony Clement announced that Senate passed legislation designed to protect Canadian consumers from inaccurate measurement at gas pumps and other such measurement devices.

Canadians can now rest assured that when they spend their hard-earned dollars, they are getting a fair deal. They deserve to get what they pay for—and no less. The Fairness at the Pumps Act is a strong deterrent to those who, either through malicious intent or carelessness, sell goods without accurate measurement.

It seems to me that consumers deserve similar protections when purchasing anything that can’t easily be counted. When I buy a handful of pencils, I can count them. But not everything is as easy to verify. There are rules in place that provide penalties for faulty weights on our food items, but are consumers sufficiently protected against faulty measurements?

A few years ago, I ordered what was supposed to be a 6 ounce glass of wine at The Boathouse in Muskoka. When a shot of wine was served to me, I thought that maybe I misunderstood – maybe the menu meant a 6 ounce glass with one ounce of wine. I haven’t gone back.

Bell Canada had a problem with its billing engine for internet usage which has apparently been fixed.

When we are paying for units of anything, water, electricity, gigabytes or glasses of wine, don’t we all deserve to be confident that we are getting what we pay for?