Human Resources

Nortel Networks announced a net reduction of 1,100 jobs globally last month, part of a previously announced business transformation plan designed to improve its performance.

Intel Corp. executives told employees they would cut 1,000 management jobs in an effort to rebound from poor profits in recent quarters, the company said. The layoffs will be complete by the end of July, and will be spread across Intel divisions worldwide, said company spokesman Bill Calder.

In an effort to prevent data theft, several Canadian firms have banned employees from taking mp3 players and flash drives to work.

Ten years after HIPAA became a U.S. federal law, health insurers are scrambling to make changes to their IT systems in order to comply with one of its last major requirements.

The provincial government's Information Technology Office (ITO) recently signed a three year, $14.5 million contract with Toronto, Ont.-based Lenovo Canada, providing province-wide consolidation among 16 government departments.

Large numbers of companies are taking risks with data protection, because they are not aware of the requirements of the law. Nearly half (44 percent) of companies use live data in test environments -- something the 1998 Data Protection Act warns against explicitly, according to a recent survey of IT directors by Compuwar

Ken Cochrane has been appointed Chief Information Officer with the federal government after three years as Chief Executive Officer at the Information Technology Services Branch of Public Woprks and Government Services Canada.

The Canadian Information Processing Society (CIPS) is making improvements to its Information Systems Professional (ISP) designation program by creating a body of knowledge all IT practitioners should attain. The Mississauga, Ont.-based society is also updating its code of ethics to reflect changes in the compliance and privacy landscape in Canada, and extending the ISP designation to groups that have not been eligible in the past.