Earlier this week, Industry Minister Tony Clement announced the launch of a consultation on the Digital Economy.

The consultation is examining various themes and each theme has a number of questions for which responses are being sought.

Consultation Questions

• Innovation Using Digital Technologies
  • Should Canada focus on increasing innovation in some key sectors or focus on providing the foundation for innovation across the economy?
  • Which conditions best incent and promote adoption of ICT by Canadian business?
  • What would a successful digital strategy look like for your firm or sector? What are the barriers to implementation?
  • Once copyright, anti-spam and data breach/privacy amendments are in place, are their other legislative or policy changes needed to deal with emerging issues?
  • How can Canada use its regulatory and policy regime to promote Canada as a favourable environment for e-commerce?
• Digital Infrastructure
  • What speeds and other service characteristics are needed by users (e.g., consumers, businesses, public sector bodies) and how should Canada set goals for next generation networks?
  • What steps must be taken to meet these goals? Are the current regulatory and legislative frameworks conducive to incenting investment and competition? What are the appropriate roles of stakeholders in the public and private sectors?
  • What steps should be taken to ensure there is sufficient radio spectrum available to support advanced infrastructure development?
  • How best can we ensure that rural and remote communities are not left behind in terms of access to advanced networks and what are the priority areas for attention in these regions?
• Growing the ICT Industry
  • Do our current investments in R&D effectively lead to innovation, and the creation of new businesses, products and services? Should we promote investments in small start-ups to expand our innovation capacity?
  • What is needed to innovate and grow the size of the ICT industry including the number of large ICT firms headquartered in Canada?
  • What would best position Canada as a destination of choice for venture capital and investments in global research and development mandates?
  • What efforts are needed to address the talent needs in the coming years?
• Canada’s Digital Content
  • What does creating Canada’s digital content advantage mean to you?
  • What elements do you want to see in Canada’s marketplace framework for digital media and content?
  • How do you see digital content contributing to Canada’s prosperity?
  • What kinds of infrastructure investments do you foresee making in the future? What kinds of infrastructure will you need in the future to be successful at home and abroad?
  • How can stakeholders encourage investment, particularly early stage investment, in the development of innovative digital media and content?
• Building Digital Skills
  • What do you see as the most critical challenges in skills development for a digital economy?
  • What is the best way to address these challenges?
  • What can we do to ensure that labour market entrants have digital skills?
  • What is the best way to ensure the current workforce gets the continuous upskilling required to remain competitive in the digital economy? Are different tactics required for SMEs versus large enterprises?
  • How will the digital economy impact the learning system in Canada? How we teach? How we learn?
  • What strategies could be employed to address the digital divide?
• Improving Canada’s Digital Advantage
  • Should we set targets for our made-in-Canada digital strategy? And if so, what should those targets be?
  • What should the timelines be to reach these targets?

There are two ways to participate: through the on-line ideas forum, or through a more formal submission of a document.

But there is a problem with the submission guidelines. Formal submissions are limited to 10 pages, with a one page executive summary. So, we have 24 questions (plus some with follow-up questions) organized under 5 themes, plus a couple questions under the broad heading of “Improving Canada’s Digital Advantage”) and the response is limited to 5000 words and 10 pages, whether you respond to one question or to all of them.

I think there is a difference between an objective of keeping things succinct and mandating superficiality.

It seems to me that we should want people and associations and companies to think of wholistic digital strategies, trying to tie together responses that look at multiple themes. Given that the consultation paper asking the questions was 40 pages, is it reasonable to have the responses limited to one quarter the size? As an exercise, I cut and pasted the listing of the questions above. That uses up 543 words and a page and a half at 10 point font.

In speaking with the help desk, it appears that the 10 page limit is more of a recommendation than a hard cap. Uploads are limited to 10MB – which sets more of a firm ceiling on the document size. The point is clearly to manage the work load in reviewing the materials.

Hopefully there will be a re-phrasing of the submission limits – encouraging complete, but succinct inputs toward creating a national digital economy.

I caught a rant by David Duchovny’s character on Californication last night that was worth pondering – especially by those of us who blog and tweet:

People… they don’t write anymore – they blog. Instead of talking, they text, no punctuation, no grammar: LOL this and LMFAO that. You know, it just seems to me it’s just a bunch of stupid people pseudo-communicating with a bunch of other stupid people in a proto-language that resembles more what cavemen used to speak than the King’s English.

During the initial webcast from Canada 3.0, a tweet asked the question about why everyone felt the need to be in Stratford, considering the discussion was about a digital strategy. A response was that you can’t meet people from your desk.

Random encounters, opportunities for meaningful encounters with serious (and not so serious) people, are among the reasons to climb from behind the keyboard and LCD and interact with the non-virtual world, face-to-face – no thumbs required. No event compares to The 2010 Canadian Telecom Summit in providing a three-day schmooze fest, with formal discussions led by the top influencers on Canada’s ICT industries, on top of incomparable networking opportunities.

Have you registered yet? Download the complete conference brochure here [pdf, 1.2MB].

In yesterday’s blog post, I observed that some of the first user comments on the Digital Economy consultation website focused on digital plumbing – the supply side of broadband.

Yesterday, David Eaves wondered if we are asking the right questions. He observed:

I think we need to stop talking about a digital as the future.

This whole conversation isn’t about being a digital country. It isn’t about a future where everything is going to be digitized. That isn’t the challenge. It is already happening.
…
The dirty truth is that Canada’s digital future isn’t about digital. What is special isn’t that everything is being digitized. It’s that everything is being connected. The web isn’t interesting because you can read it on a computer screen. It is special because of hyperlinks – that information is connected to other information

His blog post is worth reading, although some of his ideas for moving forward are guilty of prejudging outcomes before providing a full review, such as his perspectives on network conditions.

But we agree that the vision for Canada’s digital future needs to be broader.

As I wrote yesterday, “Ensuring leading edge infrastructure is a necessary, but not sufficient enabler of Canada’s global leadership. … There are a range of issues to be explored.”

In scanning various media, I noticed a story about a digital consultation process. The story speaks about high priced broadband and lagging behind other countries in the roll-out of next generation services. What made this story interesting was that it was about Europe, not Canada.

The 2010 Canadian Telecom Summit will feature a number of sessions that examine these issues – including international perspectives – starting with the opening keynote address by Industry Minister Tony Clement on June 7.

Have you registered yet? Download the complete conference brochure here [pdf, 1.2MB].

Canada’s Industry Minister Tony Clement released a discussion paper and announced a national consultation on the digital economy. A welcome message from Industry Minister Clement describes this as being part of a bigger process toward developing a national action plan:

This consultation is the next step in developing the right environment for the greater adoption of digital technology. After it is complete, we take the results into account as we develop an action plan to address the digital issues facing Canada now and in the future.

In his remarks at the Canada 3.0 conference in Stratford, Minister Clement said:

Canada can and should be a leader in the global digital economy. Nothing prevents us from being the best place in which to invest, grow a digital business or create digital content for the world.

Now is the time for the private sector to step up. To contribute its ideas. And then, when the digital strategy is in place, implement the game plan.

I noticed that Statistics Canada released its 2009 Canadian Internet Use Survey yesterday as well. It has a few interesting observations that we can examine over the next little while. I suspect that the timing was not coincidental, especially given that the survey was sponsored by Industry Canada. Among the first things that caught my eye was the continued dominance of cable over wireline telephone company connections for broadband. Cable continues to be the choice of 52.9% of households while telco connections dropped from 38.5% in 2007 to 32.8% in 2009.

Many of the first user comments on the Digital Economy website focus on plumbing – the supply side of broadband. It seems to me that the conversation needs to get much broader.

People have talked about setting a moonshot vision for Canada in the digital world. As I wrote last month, the US didn’t put a man on the moon by setting a vision to build a Saturn V rocket.

The vision needs to be broader. As Minister Clement said, we need to look at “how best to encourage the greater adoption of digital technologies.” Demand side drivers, not just supply-side incentives. Ensuring leading edge infrastructure is a necessary, but not sufficient enabler of Canada’s global leadership. Adoption of ICTs, development and protection of content, skills. There are a range of issues to be explored.

Tuesday June 8 at The 2010 Canadian Telecom Summit will feature a number of sessions that examine these issues. Minister Clement will deliver the opening keynote address on June 7.

Have you registered yet? Download the complete conference brochure here [pdf, 1.2MB].

Over the past few months, we have been getting a stream of calls that are supposedly from the “Promotions Department” of a major communications services provider.

The deal being offered sounds good, but before I give out information about my household’s assets, I like to have an idea about who I am really speaking with. I just figured that if this was really a call from a major company, the sound quality should be better and they should conform to the Telemarketing Rules, especially the one about “display the originating calling number.” Instead, I kept getting “unknown name / number” and really bad sound quality.

On most of the calls, when I asked for their number so I could call them back, the agent disconnected the call. One time I did get a caller ID – the toll free number actually displayed, but it routed to an auto attendant with no voice mail – another telemarketing rule violation:

For any telephone numbers provided to a consumer, the telephone call shall be answered either by a live operator or a voicemail system to take messages from the consumer. The voicemail must inform consumers that their call will be returned within three (3) business days

I asked colleagues at the service provider to try to help track down this third party agent, however, without identifiers, we knew it would be difficult.

Last week, I decided to play along and make the agent think I was really interested. I recorded the call and got the agent to give me a number so I could call her back after I talk the deal over with my family – she really wanted to call me back. Miraculously, the number she gave matched the toll-free CLID from a week ago. 

These combined to help the service provider track down the third party agent who was behind the torrent of inappropriate calls. They tell me that they have come down hard on this channel – although I don’t know if that means the agency has been terminated or just been put on notice. Either way, the calls have stopped.

Now, I am sure that this agency’s methodology must have been successful enough for them: use cheap VoIP based lines, agents in a boiler room, and if people don’t say “yes” right away, just disconnect and move on to the next number. But I would have thought that doing it the right way could actually be more profitable.

It seems to me that if the caller ID gave the name of the service provider, then their credibility would have gone up instantly and they would have improved their sales. Real companies should be proud of their name and their agents shouldn’t have to rely on sales tactics that feel slimy. It comes down to protecting a brand and image.

I suspect that my approach to dealing with these calls worked faster and ultimately was more effective (measured by speed of effecting change) than going through the official national complaints centre. Later this week, the CRTC will be ruling on the appeal of a DNCL violator, for calls dating back 18 months. There has to be a better way.