IT World Canada is proud to announce that parent company ITWC’s president and CMO, Fawn Annan, is this year’s recipient of the Municipal Information Systems Association (MISA)/ASIM Canada’s Dennis Steen Award.
Named for a longtime Ontario government employee who supported the organization, which represents municipal IT workers across Canada, but was not a member, the Dennis Steen award recognizes an individual who has made “outstanding contributions to the Canadian municipal IT community, furthering the objectives of MISA/ASIM Canada and its member associations,” according to the organization.
Annan, who has been working with MISA/ASIM Canada and its provincial divisions since 1995, including as a board member of MISA Ontario, said she was “absolutely thrilled” to receive the award.
“I’ve had almost 30 years of experience with working closely with them,” she said. “I actually won an award from them in 1997 for vendor of the year, so it’s great that after all this time, it comes around. I’m very happy about it. It means a lot.”
Kathryn Bulko, a City of Toronto manager and the past president of MISA/ASIM Canada, said that Annan received the award for being “a long-time friend to MISA and to Canadian municipal IT.”
“It was Fawn who first approached a small group of municipal IT leaders to confirm our interest in attending what became the Lac Carling series of conferences, along with representatives from the federal, provincial and territorial governments in Canada,” Bulko told IT World Canada.
The conferences, which annually brought together three levels of government to discuss digital transformation for 15 years, served as Annan’s introduction to MISA and was the reason she received the organization’s Vendor of the Year award in 1997.
“Some might suggest that neither MISA/ASIM Canada nor the Public Sector CIO Council would exist today if not for Lac Carling,” Bulko said. “Strong municipal participation in the Lac Carling events also directly led to us having 3 seats on the Public Sector CIO Council.”
The municipal IT community also owes much to Annan for its current status as a full partner in the Canadian government IT and service delivery communities, Bulko said.
Annan was also instrumental in recently reviving MISA/ASIM Canada’s quarterly magazine, Municipal Interface, which prior to this month had not been published since September 2016.
Though today the Lac Carling conferences are a distant memory, their legacy lives on in MISA/ASIM Canada’s MCIO Summit, which has now been running for seven years and counting.
Like Dennis Steen himself, who began serving as the provincial representative for MISA Ontario in 1976, remained active on its board until his retirement in 1995, and served a behind-the-scenes contributor to the formation of MISA/ASIM Canada, Annan has proven herself an indispensable ally in furthering the objectives of MISA/ASIM Canada and municipal IT.
We here at IT World Canada sincerely congratulate her.
