Rosie Lombardi

Improving healthcare is near and dear to Canadian hearts, but the challenge for government is demonstrating meaningful progress towards goals to citizens.

Spanish visionary approach trumps Canada's techno-centric healthcare model

Toronto is joining the ranks of major cities such as New York, Chicago and Washington that are installing video surveillance to combat crime.

Ontario's privacy commissioner has played a role in match-making two emerging technologies. Combining encryption with voice biometrics shows promise for protecting privacy while also improving consumer services, said Ann Cavoukian, Information and Privacy Commissioner (IPC) of Ontario, in an announcement.

How did a little city of 78,000 souls in British Columbia earn the big title of "Capital of Google Earth"? The city of Nanaimo achieved the title inadvertently, says Per Kristensen, director of IT. "We didn't come up with it - it was coined by Time magazine last year," he says.

Should people be able to hide abortions, AIDS, mental illness and other such touchy matters in their medical histories? The question is moot in a paper-based health care system: the hodge-podge of information out there about an individual is difficult to track and find, since complete medical records don't exist. But this won't be true much longer.

Procrastinating Canadians rejoiced at the end of April when a system slowdown at Netfile, the online tax filing service provided by the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA), resulted in a six-day extension of the deadline for filing tax returns.

Back in 2006, government announcements were made about the introduction of a new 511 telephone information service by the end of 2007. But progress on this initiative has been slow.