Government & Public Sector

Albertans are to have a new and improved electronic health record (EHR) system soon as the result of a partnership with IBM Canada Ltd.

New rules for electronic delivery of documents in civil cases go into effect in December in the U.S. Lack of compliance could result in significant penalties for companies, according to legal experts and executives.

Since Teri Takai became CIO for the state of Michigan in 2003, the office has enjoyed significant results, including savings of $100 million (U.S.) Bringing to the table years of experience in senior roles at Ford Motor Co. and EDS Corp., Takai is a large part of why Michigan is highly ranked within the government technology field. She was saluted herself when Crain's Detroit Magazine named her as one of its 100 Most Influential Women. Takai spoke with senior writer Lisa Williams at the Lac Carling Congress, where among other issues they discussed the challenges of her job and why more women aren't in senior public sector positions. Excerpts from their conversation follow:

Newton's Third Law works in the physical world, but politics is different. When citizens demand swift action, the reaction to every action is not equal. In a crisis, Newton's theorem could be restated as: "Every action results in bureaucratic overreaction, in direct proportion to the emotional impact of the headlines." The U.S. Sarbanes-Oxley legislation, or SOX, is a case in point.

The Ontario government has announced plans for a four-year $46 million program that will help new companies develop cutting-edge technologies to fuel the economy and create jobs for Ontario families, according to provincial officials.

Voting at the Lac Carling Congress suggested that participants are in a mood to move from theoretical framework to practical solutions.

The summer of the gun in Toronto in 2005 left a trail of dead and wounded youth and a posse of government agencies struggling to respond to the crisis.

The 10th Lac Carling Congress may have been a watershed event. It marked the emergence of municipalities as the project directors who are taking citizen-centred service delivery beyond the conceptual stage - to a work in progress.