Emerging Tech

Few executives go anywhere these days without that staple of 21st century commerce - a cell phone - in tow.

Almost half of Canadians with a home Internet connection now access government services online and the figure is rising rapidly. That means federal, provincial and local departments and agencies across the country are working feverishly to throw open the electronic door to their information and services. But even in the rapidly changing world of electronic service delivery, there are some rules of doing business that you ignore at your peril, according to a sampling of Canada's e-government practitioners.

Last month we took a broad look at the results of the ITX Survey, Canada's largest IT Management Survey, conducted recently by Athabasca University and CIO Canada. The results attracted nationwide attention and were widely reported in the print, radio and television media. In this and future issues we'll provide more in-depth analysis of the results. First up, we put IT resources, and in particular the IT department, under the microscope. How ready are they to contribute to the E-business boom? And we'll also look at management of IT projects - how widespread are the problems?

Like a feudal lord trying to keep the barbarians from storming the castle walls, you have to protect your organization

IT professionals who have to juggle multiple projects but have too few hands and face too many demands from upper management sometimes drop the ball when it comes to mentoring.

After pushing, cajoling and gnashing of teeth by those working to Internet-time, including the Software Human Resource Council (SHRC), two pilot surveys are in varying stages of analysis with Human Resource Development Canada and Statistics Canada, prior to release to the SHRC for general distribution.

On Feb. 7, 2000, the first wave of distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attacks hit Internet portal Yahoo Inc.

It took your management team a considerable time to put together a workable business strategy for the company's Web site but that finally got hammered out.