As promised yesterday, I am going to continue the theme of Digital Government, today examining the role of public safety in the discussion of strategic sourcing and and pursuit of an innovation agenda.

In an emergency, the FCC observed that you can send a text message for help to almost any working phone number, other than 911.

It is no better in Canada.

Emergency bureaus are often using equipment that is outdated and not able to take advantage of the communications capabilities that are in the hands of most Canadians. No video chat. No sending photos from the scene. Activating GPS? Ha!

As FCC Chair Genachowski says, it is time to bring 9-1-1 into the digital age.

In order to be able to respond to an emergency, our public safety answering points should be early adopters of advanced technologies. Too often, budget squeezes have them ‘make do’. 

Who will take the lead in ensuring that Canadian first responders aren’t left behind. As I mentioned Wednesday, Minister Clement’s Digital Economy status report chided Canadian businesses for failing to exploit technologies:

the best infrastructure, with the highest speeds, is of little use if businesses are not exploiting it. Canadian businesses, large and small, have to adopt technology in order to become more productive, innovative and competitive.

Shouldn’t our public safety agencies be model customers? Like Canadian businesses, it appears that many government agencies “have to adopt technology in order to become more productive, innovative and competitive”.

Iain Marlow interviewed Blair Levin at this week’s IIC conference in Ottawa. Levin led the creation of the FCC’s National Broadband Plan prior to joining The Aspen Institute.

There are 3 audio clips available. 

In the first of these, I heard statements that inspired me to wonder if governments are doing enough as a role model for the adoption of digital technologies. Levin says:

… that the Government makes sure digital literacy is part of its overall culture…. Government is the single largest provider of education. It is the single largest provider of Public Safety. It is the single largest buyer of telco services. It is the single biggest deliverer of other government services such as social security or whatever.

Let me paraphrase: Is the government buying and delivering services in a way that stimulates the supply, adoption and use of digital technologies in the general marketplace?

Example: I can pay my federal small business taxes with no service charge if I personally go to a teller at the bank. On the other hand, I have to pay a $2 fee if I choose to pay on-line. Does this make sense? Shouldn’t the government be taking steps to discourage paper and incent digital transactions?

Another example: Ontario charges a “convenience fee” for renewing a license plate at a kiosk (presumably to avoid the inconvenience of facing a human?); how is this consistent with a digital innovation strategy? Imagine what would happen if the incentives worked the other way – lower cost automated delivery of services, increased use of ICTs, improved levels of comfort in interacting with digital technology. The “convenience fee” comes across as just another tax imposed without any strategic consideration of its impact on the adoption of digital delivery of government services.

What about the government’s purchasing of services?

Ontario’s ORION research network has announced that it is now extending the types of organizations that are using its connectivity to include the Hamilton Public Library. Is there still a need for privately operated “research” networks? If the most sophisticated network requirements continue to be peeled out of the public network domain, is there a reduced incentive for investment that could only be recovered from residential rates?

Government spending on communications requirements should be incorporated into a more strategic type of sourcing – helping to ensure that the general public benefits are considered. Embedding these advanced services requirements can serve to improve the economics of extending the geographic reach and enhanced capabilities delivered to all of us.

Enough ranting for today – I’ll save the issue of public safety ’til tomorrow.

On the same day that Minister Clement delivered his Digital Economy update, the OECD released its OECD Information Technology Outlook 2010 [pdf, 7.0 MB].

The report has some interesting data that speaks to my theme of the need for Canada to turn its attention to adoption – encouraging greater digital literacy and understanding the factors that are keeping Canadian homes and businesses from embracing all of the capabilities of the digital economy.

While the usual critics quickly pointed out that Canada has supposedly slipped to 11th place in broadband adoption, I didn’t notice anyone looking at the data itself [xls, 42 KB] and asking serious questions. The most immediate question should be “why is Canada’s broadband data is 3 years old, despite current information being available from the CRTC?”

Interestingly, the use of old data still didn’t keep Canada from a 3rd place standing for Figure 4.3: Business use of broadband [xls, 48 KB]. But we fall to a middling 15th place when looking at businesses that have a website. Business adoption of ICTs should be a real concern. As the OECD found:

Canada is an exception in that it has relatively few businesses reporting online selling compared with those reporting online purchasing.

In his keynote address to the IIC on Monday, Minister Clement reiterated the five areas he considers critical to creating a digital Canada. Two of these deal directly with these issues of adoption:

I know that the best infrastructure, with the highest speeds, is of little use if businesses are not exploiting it. Canadian businesses, large and small, have to adopt technology in order to become more productive, innovative and competitive.

And on this front, we still have work to do. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Canada has a middling rank in terms of the size of our ICT industry and how rapidly our businesses adopt digital technologies..

Similarly, the Minister observed that Canada needs to do more “to develop a digitally skilled workforce.”

Most encouraging is the upcoming intergovernmental collaboration to address digital economic development. Perhaps this can lead to targeted measures to put computers and broadband connections into every household with school aged children, as you have seen me advocate on these pages in the past [for example, here and here].

An interesting decision from the CRTC earlier today about billing services to corporate affiliates.

The case that led to Telecom Decision CRTC 2010-867 dealt with Bell Aliant and Bell Canada providing certain access services to Rogers and its affiliate, Fido.

The Bell company tariffs for channelizing competitor digital access circuits (CDN) state that if a carrier is co-located in a Central Office, then it must pay retail rates for any channelizing services. Fido was receiving channelizing services in some locations that have a Rogers co-location presence, but it demanded the lower wholesale rates.

Rogers argued that previous Commission decisions suggest that parent companies and affiliates do not always have to constitute a single customer. In fact, Rogers showed that there are at least three examples where the Bell companies treat the affiliates as separate entities, in each case tilting revenues higher in favour of the telco:

1. Local interconnection traffic imbalances are calculated separately, generally resulting in a higher imbalance in favour of the Bell companies;
2. RCI and Fido pay separate rates to access the Bell companies’ Operational Support System, resulting in higher revenues for the Bell companies; and
3. RCI and Fido are separate customers for extended area service transiting and transit services resulting in higher revenues for the Bell companies.

The CRTC agreed with Rogers.

It was interesting to analyse what Industry Minister Tony Clement did not say yesterday in a luncheon keynote address at IIC [press release and backgrounder here, speaking notes here]

The Minister characterized the 33-page address as a “Marathon speech on dig economy and telecoms” but many have reported that there wasn’t a lot of new information.

For example, Reuters reported that:

Canada will soon start consultations on how to conduct its next auction of radio frequency spectrum while also reviewing foreign investment rules for the telecoms sector, Industry Minister Tony Clement said on Monday.

That isn’t really news. After all, Reuters said pretty much the same thing in a story 7 weeks ago.

As Steven Chase of the Globe and Mail reported, the story isn’t that there will be a decision on foreign ownership; the story was that the decision wasn’t announced yesterday. Why?

Talmudic logic suggests that there must be a message in a text that was appropriately characterized as a marathon. That is what makes reviewing the speech such an interesting exercise in analysis.

There is more than meets the eye in this major address. What are the messages?