IfG.CC - The Potsdam eGovernment Competence Center

Haldimand County will be closing down all of its satellite administration offices, and instead, building a new main building in central Cayuga.

That was the decision councillors made at their Feb. 2 council-in-committee meeting, after dealing with lengthy staff presentations, as well as hearing final comments from the public.

Google affiliate Sidewalk Labs is walking away from building a smart-city development in Toronto after two and a half years of controversy over its origins, overreach, and privacy and financial implications.

The Alphabet Inc. subsidiary won the right to plan a community called Quayside on the downtown Toronto lakeshore in 2017, hoping to build a 12-acre neighbourhood “from the internet up.” In partnership with the tripartite government agency Waterfront Toronto, the New York urban-planning firm imagined a place filled with new technologies such as heated sidewalks, robotic garbage systems, and, crucially, sensors to learn about how people move about cities in ways that could inspire even more innovations.

Council recently passed the city’s 2013 budget with a tax hike of 5.27% – a rather low number compared to previous increases of about 8% last year and 9% in 2011.

Still, the GNCC says a 21% tax hike over a three year span is hurting Thorold’s ability to retain businesses and more sharing of services with partnering municipalities would help mitigate the escalating cost of services.

Sometimes, the best ideas are born in the midst of a crisis.

And perhaps that’s something that can be said about the transformation public libraries in Middlesex County have experienced over the last five years. During that time, they have gone from being, as defined by the Oxford Dictionary, “a building or room containing collections of books, periodicals, and sometimes films and recorded music for use or borrowing by the public or the members of an institution” to what they are today: Resource centres where community members can find assistance to solve a great variety of problems they may be facing in their lives.

“We’ve expanded the number of Northern telemedicine sites – now 261 in the northeast region,” said Louise Paquette, CEO of the North East Local Health Integration Network (LHIN).

“I’m very proud to say that telemedicine is a critical part of the North East LHIN’s plan to improve access to care for all Northeastern Ontarians. In fact, the northeast is the highest user of the technology among Ontario’s LHINs.”

The days of always having to drive for hours to see medical specialists in Sudbury, Sault Ste. Marie, Toronto and other locations are becoming fewer as a result of the Ontario Telemedicine Network (OTN).

Both Elliot Lake and Blind River have more than one OTN site. Elliot Lake has one at St. Joseph’s General Hospital and another at the Elliot Lake Family Health Team (FHT).

Last week, we brought you the flip side of this argument--Deaconess Health System CIO Todd Richardson has pushed a device-agnostic strategy, allowing physicians to use their personal smartphones, tablets and other devices for work purposes.

It's no longer financially viable, says the urban design business.

The Alphabet-owned urban design business Sidewalk Labs on Friday revealed that it would no longer be pursuing its smart city plans to transform Toronto's eastern waterfront into what it had dubbed as a "global model for combining cutting-edge technology and great urban design to dramatically improve quality of life".

Alphabet Inc.’s ambitious dream to create a city of the future on Toronto’s waterfront is over. Millions of dollars and years of lobbying weren’t enough, and the tech giant’s urban planning unit, Sidewalk Labs, officially shuttered the project on Thursday.

The stated reason was the coronavirus pandemic’s effect on real estate prices. Without the ability to profitably sell office space and homes in the development, the project wasn’t viable, Sidewalk Labs Chief Executive Officer Dan Doctoroff said in a blog post.

EHealth officials were in Thunder Bay last Friday to make the $376,000 announcement to network 12 hospitals, 25 health teams, and 168 physicians but due to incompatible information technology systems, the Lake of the Woods District Hospital and the Sunset Country Family Health Team are the only organizations not participating.

The rest of the region operates on a system called Meditech, which the local hospital investigated and found prohibitively expensive, as a new IT systems must be bought with operating budget funds. The Meditech software is incompatible with the system used locally.

That's because the Northern and Eastern Ontario Diagnostic Imaging Network (NEODIN) DI-r, a shared imaging archive, enables doctors in one hospital to access images and reports acquired at another. And now, Arnprior and District Memorial Hospital (ADMH) has been linked into the network.

Brent Schultz, ADMH's medical radiation technologist, was on hand for the launch of the system last Tuesday at the hospital.

But according to many experts at a conference on e-health in Ottawa, Ontario May 26–29, technological limitations stemming from mismanagement by government e-health agencies and commercial turf battles are preventing researchers and patients from realizing many of the rewards that the "big data" era could deliver.

The computerized system of patient records is being funded by eHealth Ontario, the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care and the community health centres.

Greg Reed, the CEO of eHealth Ontario, made the announcement March 7 at the Centre de santé communautaire du Grand Sudbury, one of two community health centres serving the Sudbury region.

Construction on The Northern Ontario Broadband Expansion Project kicked off in the spring after a federal environmental assessment was approved in April.

Since then, despite setbacks caused by forest fires, over 270 kilometres of broadband cable has been laid in three separate parts of northwestern Ontario. Also, a regional First Nation construction company has been awarded a contract for a huge portion of the project.

It won’t necessarily be an easy ride.

A small group of citizens, open data advocates and city staffers gathered in a Brant Street community centre for a frank focus session on open data and open government Wednesday night.

It was the fifth of six consultations aimed at engaging the community around “e-Government’” which the city defines as: “the use of information technology to directly engage customers in the provision of government services and information.”

This e-Government Strategy will create a list of services that will help enhance citizen engagement with the City and enhance the services delivered to city residents, while aiming to improve the accessibility, efficiency and convenience of city services.

The controversial Quayside project, a smart city plan being developed by Sidewalk Labs, has come to an end amidst “economic uncertainty” due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA), which raised alarm bells over privacy rights since the project was launched, has called Sidewalk Labs’ decision to pull out of Toronto a “victory for privacy and democracy …”

“This project is a great example of how participation and input from the public can improve the way the city delivers information,” said Mayor Rick Goldring. “I believe the open data pilot project can inspire and create new opportunities for enhanced service delivery. It also demonstrates the city’s commitment to corporate transparency and accountability.”

Brian Beamish says Ontario’s privacy laws have not kept pace with digital technologies and practices such as sensors, big data analytics and AI.

In his 2018 Annual Report, Privacy and Accountability for a Digital Ontario, Brian Beamish, Ontario’s Information and Privacy Commissioner, recommends several initiatives to enhance access to information and protection of privacy in Ontario.

City Coun. Vince Bucci was the lone vote against the only recommendation to come out of last week's first meeting of the joint committee.

After an hour of opening remarks, which saw all six members of the committee discuss their expectations, a majority agreed to ask for a staff report listing the services each municipality provides, which will be presented at the committee's next meeting in January.