Only weeks after leaving his post as British Columbia’s chief information officer, Arthur Lee Denny said it’s clear to him that Canada’s public sector is facing serious challenges.
Denny, a 30-year IT veteran who recently accepted a job as SAP Canada’s public sector industry executive in his hometown of Calgary, said his 12 month stint as CIO in B.C. came at a time of massive change in the province.
“The last year in B.C. has been about dealing with a pretty drastic fiscal reality,” Denny said. “Most of our activity was around, in most cases, reducing the projects and certainly reducing the number of projects we were doing.”
That also meant cutting the number of B.C.’s technology staff, shaving up to 40 per cent off existing budgets and engaging in the “forced ranking” of initiatives. “Not many technology projects survived,” Denny said.
