It’s official. We have winners.
Lots of them.
The first CGR e-awards program, designed to celebrate inter-jurisdictional achievements in electronic service delivery, identified a large handful of first class projects.
All were remarkable as effective, efficient demonstrations of the capacity of electronic solutions to deliver public sector services. But some – the medal winners – were finally, with some difficulty, considered more remarkable than others by a cross-country panel of judges headed by Robert Parkins, editor of CIO Government Review.
Projects were recognized in six categories with bronze, silver and gold awards and saluted in a program in Ottawa in mid-February. The winners, by category:
1Raising the Bar Across Jurisdictions.
For projects that contributed significantly to improvements in service or service quality for the benefit of citizens.
Gold: Online Municipal Payment Taking Services from Cities to Villages. Submitted by: Service New Brunswick.
Service New Brunswick provides bilingual online and multi-channel payment-taking services for 50 New Brunswick municipalities. This provincially-owned Crown Corporation provides more than 95 per cent of its citizens – residents of everything from the smallest villages to the largest cities – with the opportunity to make payments electronically. SNB recognizes that citizens don’t differentiate between levels of government, and they want access to a government service on demand and at their convenience.
Silver: Lien Check – An Atlantic Canadian Success Story. Submitted: as a joint Initiative of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, and Prince Edward Island.
Lien Check is a new, online service developed cooperatively among the four Atlantic Provinces, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, in partnership with Unisys Canada. The service provides quick and easy access to the personal property registries of each province to search for liens on serial- numbered goods such as motor vehicles, mobiles homes, and trailers.
Bronze: Income Verification Project. Submitted by: Canada Revenue Agency.
The Income Verification Project facilitates the secure electronic transfer of income data from the Canada Revenue Agency to its provincial and territorial partners. This electronic transfer process replaces a cumbersome paper-driven process. Service to more than 5.5 million Canadians, including seniors, students and lower income families applying for income-tested support programs, has been greatly improved, while the administrative costs of governments have been dramatically reduced.
2Citizen-Centric Inter-jurisdictional Initiatives. These initiatives met with extraordinarily high levels of citizen acceptance; delivered significant benefit to customers/clients and/or demonstrated an ability to see a problem from the citizen’s perspective by designing a solution that was both innovative and easy to use.
Gold: Chatham-Kent Community Portal. Submitted by: Ontario Ministry of Economic Development and Trade, Science and Technology Division; Municipality of Chatham-Kent.
Residents of this largely rural community now find it easier to seek out and access government services thanks to an innovative web-based community portal. The portal also provides not-for-profit agencies, charities and church groups with a venue to share messages. Community emergencies can be communicated immediately. A future enhancement to the portal will allow patients to request a variety of medical appointments from their home, office and/or other Internet connections, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Silver: Canadian Consumer Information Gateway. Submitted by: Office of Consumer Affairs, Industry Canada.
With up-to-date information from more than 450 different government partners, the Canadian Consumer Information Gateway is Canada’s most extensive online source of inter-jurisdictional information for consumers. Its success lies in a client-driven interface, tested to ensure that consumers can cut across jurisdictional boundaries effortlessly. The Gateway provides a menu of relevant topics, a simple search engine, quick access to timely highlights, and an array of powerful tools to help consumers save time and money, complain effectively and protect themselves from fraud.
Bronze: ExpressAddress. Submitted by: eSask.
ExpressAddress provides Saskatchewan residents with a convenient and secure way to update their addresses when they move. ExpressAddress also allows residents to make requests to connect, transfer or disconnect services with six participating Saskatchewan organizations. For example, they can transfer their existing telephone services, sign up for hydro and water, and change their address for their driver’s licenses when they move from an apartment to a house, all in the same transaction.
3Inter-jurisdictional Life Events.
Inter-jurisdictional projects that demonstrate the ability and willingness of governments to cross boundaries and provide seamless, end-to-end service for citizens around significant life events (birth; death; marriage; education).
Gold: mycommunityinfo.ca. Submitted by: Technology Services Division, City of London. ONTARIO. This initiative provides one-window access to community and government information for 24 upper and lower-tier municipalities in southwestern Ontario. mycommunityinfo.ca also publishes Life Events bundles that extend federal and provincial initiatives, providing storefront information for local communities. Internet services do not build or depend on databases but instead use Google search technology to index more than 160 public sector web sites and more than 100,000 web pages in the service area.
Silver: Canada Benefits. Submitted by: Social Development Canada. Canada Benefits is a doorway to government-wide information about benefit programs and services for individuals. With its Benefits Finder, an interactive question-and-answer tool, Canadians can obtain a personalized list of benefits from Canada Benefits.
Bronze: CHSPR – WCB Partnership. Submitted by: Centre for Health Services and Policy Research – Workers’ Compensation Board of British Columbia. An innovative research partnership between the Workers’ Compensation Board of British Columbia (WCB) and the Centre of Health Services and Policy Research at the University of British Columbia (CHSPR) exploits the WCB’s ability to link its data with a unique data resource called the B.C. Linked Health Database. The partnership undertakes research of operational or policy significance to the WCB to gain insights into the broader health, social and economic effects of workplace injury and the claims adjudication process.
4Executing the Vision Inter-jurisdictionally. Successful inter-jurisdictional initiatives that testify to the merits of a clearly articulated vision supported by a well executed plan. Key success measurements provide definitive proof of the success of the vision.
Gold: Business Number Government to Business One-Stop Service. Submitted by: Canada Revenue Agency and its partners; the governments of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Ontario, Manitoba, and British Columbia, and the Workers’ Compensation Boards of British Columbia and Nova Scotia. Federal and provincial government organizations have partnerred to offer automated, single-window registrations for businesses in different jurisdictions. The adoption of the Business Number to identify a particular business and its accounts, and the construction of provincial information hubs and business registries, enabled partners to provide registration electronically for programs that new and expanding businesses commonly need. Substantial savings are possible due to the re-use of infrastructure, relationships and knowledge. These programs typically include business licences and permits, business name registrations and Workers’ Compensation Board accounts.
Silver: Southwest Ontario Digital Imaging Network Project. Submitted by: Thames Valley Hospital Planning Partnership. In February 2004 the eight hospitals in the Thames Valley Hospital Planning Partnership initiated the pilot phase of a shared digital imaging project that will extend to all 22 southwestern Ontario hospital corporations at 38 sites. This will enable patients to have an X-ray or MRI scan performed at one site with the results accessible at the others. This unique project is organized as a cooperative initiative among hospitals – rather than each hospital developing its own system.
Bronze: Common CV (CCV). Submitted by: Canadian Institutes for Health Research, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, Fonds de la recherche en sant