Government Technology Conference in October

The next annual Government Technology Exhibition and Conference (GTEC) is taking place at the Ottawa Congress Centre from October 15 to 17, 2007.

GTEC is an annual meeting place for IT/IM decision-makers from the federal, provincial, municipal, and regional levels of government. This year's theme will be "Government 2.0: Exploring a new age of Innovation and Collaboration".

There will be many information management sessions at GTEC. Based on a recent e-mail from the Treasury Board Secretariat, some of the IM-themed sessions will be:

• Policy on Information Management 2007: How does it apply to me?: "The objective of the Policy on Information Management is to achieve efficient and effective information management to support program and service delivery; foster informed decision making; facilitate accountability, transparency, and collaboration; and preserve and ensure access to information and records for the benefit of present and future generations. This session, will not only outline the renewed policy but it will explore compliance, effectiveness, and how it affects the average Government of Canada employee." - Speaker: Hélène Valin, Manager, Information Management Strategies Division, Treasury Board Secretariat
• Competitive Technical Intelligence and Patent Information Analysis, A New World of Data Management: "Defined by the Society of Competitive intelligence (CI) Professionals, CI is the legal and ethical collection, organization, analysis and interpretation of the activities going on with other organizations. The desired result of this process is a competitive advantage for your organization." - Speaker: Grégory Fruchet, Group Leader, Competitive Technical Intelligence, NRC Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information
• Don't Delete! – Electronic Discovery and its Impact on Information Management: "Information regardless of form is subject to discovery and may be required to be produced. That includes every e-mail sent or received, every file or anything touched by the alleged discriminating official. This session will cover the IM impact of e-Discovery and how it is affecting service delivery as well as highlighting the potential conflict between IT's need to free up server space and IM's obligation to produce information under e-Discovery, getting to the bottom of the true dangers of instructing users to delete files and e-mails that are not longer relevant." - Panellists: Diane E. Crouse, Director, Knowledge and Information Management Services, Government Consulting Services; Susan B. Wortzman, Partner, Lerners LLP, Commercial Litigation and Dispute Resolution, and Class Proceedings Practice Groups; David Wilson, Vice-President & General Counsel, Alcatel-Lucent Canada Inc.
• Library 2.0: Library Services and Web 2.0: "The world of library services are changing as Web 2.0 becomes more wide spread. According to Wikipedia, Library 2.0 is a loosely defined model for a modernized form of library service that reflects a transition within the library world in the way that services are delivered to users. Based on the philosophies of Web 2.0, this includes online services that increase flow of information from the user back to the library. This session will cover how the libraries are using these new methods including wikis, blogs and second life, to provide library services, and what benefit there are to the Government of Canada." - Speaker: Donna Bourne-Tyson, University Librarian, Mount Saint Vincent University
• Government 2.0: Wikinomics, Government and Democracy - Don Tapscott, Chief Executive and Co-author of Best-Selling Book, Wikinomics, New Paradigm: "In recent years, governments have embraced "e-government" and "citizen-centric" approaches to service delivery and emphasized inter-agency collaboration. Some governments have even extended new roles to citizens, community-based organizations, and private businesses in a bid to lower costs, harness new competencies, and leverage untapped sources of innovation. Today, four forces are bringing the urgency of public sector transformation to the fore: A technology revolution, a demographic revolution, a social revolution and an economic revolution Don Tapscott has called it Wikinomics. The principles of Wikinomics - openness, peering, sharing, and acting globally - provide a powerful manifesto for public sector transformation. Tapscott, one of the world's leading authors, strategists and change agents, will discuss initial insights from a new multi-million dollar research program on the future of government and democracy."
• Beyond Google: Enterprise Content Management - The Future of Enterprise Computing - Tom Jenkins, Executive Chairman and Chief Strategy Officer, Open Text Corporation: "As Google and search technology have dominated the thinking of the consumer Internet by transforming the way software is delivered to users, there is an enterprise equivalent also taking shape primarily around a product area called Enterprise Content Management (ECM) which is the management of unstructured data. This presentation will be a discussion around the core elements that make up ECM and the major business and technical influences that can be expected to shape ECM in the coming decade. Information discovery is a critical component of ECM and the discussion will trace the history of internet based search engines from the perspective of the speakers' early participation through to current research into meta data techniques and the impact of email attachments as a defacto repository in many organizations today. "