Reviewing COPSC: 11 Case Studies of Ontario Community Portals

Supplementary report for Reviewing COPSC: Building on the lessons of community portals

Prepared for The Ontario Ministry of Economic Development and Trade

May 2006

Prepared by Invenire4 Ltd., Ottawa, Ontario COPSC Cases

Table of Contents

Introduction ...... 1

1. Chatham-Kent...... 3 2. Elgin - St. Thomas ...... 35 3. Hamilton ...... 60 4. Hastings-Quinte ...... 93 5. Kenora Region...... 114 6. Niagara Region...... 139 7. Oxford County...... 163 8. Greater Sudbury...... 199 9. Thunder Bay District ...... 232 10. Wellington-Guelph ...... 255 11. Windsor-Essex...... 278

About Invenire ...... 316

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank those who contributed their knowledge, experience and time to the COPSC project. We would like to express our gratitude to the over 100 people who participated in the interviews; the COPSC project managers who helped us identify the interviewees within each project; as well as the COPSC program staff (Marta Lobko, Greg Mcfarlane, Henry Cheng, Mary Clark, and Yasser Muttaqi) who helped us get an overview of the projects and the Ministry perspectives. Particular thanks are due to Ann Hoy, Dick Ko, and John Cotsomitis at the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade who helped us to understand the context for this study and gave us the support we needed when we needed it.

Contributors Chris Wilson, Invenire4 Ltd Wayne Foster, Wayne Foster Communications Inc.

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Introduction

This supplementary report to “Reviewing COPSC: Building on the lessons of community portals” was prepared for the Ontario Ministry of Economic Development and Trade and is a compilation of the case results produced as part of the COPSC program evaluation process.

The aim of the review of the Connect Ontario: Partnerships for Smart Communities (COPSC) was to answer some fundamental questions: • To what degree have the individual community projects achieved their goals? • Did the projects reach the individuals and group audiences that they intended to reach? • In what way are the projects making a difference in their communities? • In what way are the projects helping the partners or agencies involved in the project? • Was the Province’s participation in these initiatives essential, useful and worthwhile? • To what degree did the overall COPSC program achieve its goals?

It should be emphasized that because the community projects were all at different stages of completion, not all of the projects were able to provide the same kind of input to this evaluation. And although the Performance Measurement Plan set out a large variety of metrics that may have been desirable, it was understood that the projects would not be able to equally provide all of the quantitative or qualitative data specified (and in fact most were not able to supply much in the way of statistical data).

Therefore, in this review the approach used was theory-based evaluation1 one that is used for initiatives that are not well-suited to a summative evaluation or statistical analysis of outcomes2. This evaluation approach began with development of a logic model for how a project should have operated (based on its original plan) and then compared it to how it was in fact operating. This approach essentially describes two simple stories -- expected and actual – and focuses the assessment on the differences, if any, between the two. The elements of the Logic Model centred on resources, activities, outputs, reach, outcomes or impacts (short, intermediate and longer term), and the relevant external influences3.

For the COPSC review, the before and after stories were prepared as a series of 11 case studies and are presented herein. The methodology used to develop these case studies consisted of three stages:

1 Weiss, C. (1997) 2 W.K. Kellogg Foundation (1998) 3 Wholey, J.S. (1983) and (1987)

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(1) consultation with key players in MEDT and MGS to determine what information was available, the detailed history of the Program, the kinds of priorities for looking back and going forward and the project terrain, (2) preparation of a draft document based on the above discussions, which formed the foundation of a Performance Measurement Plan (PMP) and an Interview Guideline that was used to guide data collection and subsequent interviews with key project stakeholders, and (3) extensive, in-depth interviews (over 100) with participants of the 11 COPSC project groups to validate and correct a draft community profile document and provide a basis for the conversation which generated the case studies.

The community profiles included information (where available) on: • demographic information, • SMEs and SME support, • employment by industry, • economic development, • internet access, • access to Service Ontario Government Information Centres and other important community services

The project profile that was built from the original project business plan provided the initial project logic model and included information on: • community priorities, • project goals, • services provided, • partners, • governance, • costs, • leverage expected

The interviewers utilized a question guideline to engage subjects in a conversation rather than following explicit survey type questions. Interviews typically lasted about 90 minutes. The cases were reviewed by the project teams for accuracy and tone. With the exception of Hamilton4 all were approved by the projects as being representative of their experiences.

The results of those interviews are presented in the following case studies.

4 Hamilton’s comments or objections are noted in the case text.

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1. CHATHAM-KENT PROJECT TITLE: CONNECT CHATHAM-KENT

URL: http://www.chatham-kent.ca Launch Date: October 2002 Completion Date: February 29, 2004

PART A -- THE LOGIC MODEL

COMMUNITY PROFILE The aim of the Connect Chatham-Kent project was to develop a single window access point for municipal and community services and information in Chatham-Kent. Services were to include online recreation program registration and payment, facilities booking information, a community calendar, interactive mapping, a business and service directory, a portal security system, and an online scheduling system for hospitals and local doctors. CK wanted to create a different image of itself other than a small agricultural community struggling to stay afloat

The key to the success of this project was getting the basic infrastructure piece in place first. There was little in the way of high-speed Internet access outside the urban core, the municipal website was hosted externally with a private ISP, there were no existing transactional services nor was there a secure environment to conduct transactions. Although invitations to participate were extended to many local organizations, only two stakeholders – the Municipality of Chatham-Kent and the Chatham-Kent Health Alliance -- were willing to commit time and resources to the portal’s development, largely due to the original application being accepted for funding, then application deliverables having to change.

The Connect Ontario program has gone a long way in changing its image. By the time of this report, Chatham-Kent had received a total of eight prestigious national and international awards for the quality of its portal, its electronic services for both citizens and businesses, and for its use of GIS. “Initially we had a five-year plan to roll out our e- services strategy. With the Connect Ontario program we’ve done what we planned to do and more within 2 years.”

Geo-spatial: The project covers the Municipality of Chatham which is compromised of 2,400 sq. km. -- 60% of which is rural. It has population of 107,709 yielding a population density of 43.6 per sq. km. In 1998, 36 independent Municipalities, public utility commissions and police services amalgamated to form what is now the Municipality of Chatham-Kent.

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Demographics (2001 census unless otherwise stated)

Project area coverage (sq km) 2,470.76 Employment All Industry sectors (2001) 54,980 Manufacturing & Construction 15,840 Population 107,709 -1.80% Other services 9,165 Wholesale & Retail 8,410 Population density 43.6 Health & education 7,850 Business services (admin, support, 6,245 Regional GDP ?? Agriculture, forestry, mining & other 5,520 Finance & Real estate 1,965 Regional GDP per Capita ?? Internet Access Home Demography Business Median Age 38.5 School Average household size Overall % Youth (< 25) 33.3 Type (dial-up, wireless, cable, DSL) Rural broadb % students (5-14 + fulltime 15+) 22.1 # public internet access sites % Seniors (65+) 15.1 % visible minorities 3.8 Eco-Dev % Aboriginal 2 Local Venture capital % Immigrants (since 1991) 1.7 Local Trips by Canadians % English 87.4 % French 3.4 Service Ontario Centres % Non Eng or FR 8.8 # % w/ degrees/diplomas (20-64) 31.7 Kiosks Average earnings $29,599.00 Distance to nearest Labourforce 54980 Participation rate 65.9 Access to Employment rate 60.4 Airports Unemployment rate 8.3 Access to International 4 Median Income $23,020.00 Local 1 % from Earnings 74.5 Distance to nearest inter 80 % from Transfers 13.1 Local Flights per month % low income Health # Employing Firms 4446 Hospitals 2 Distance to nearest hosp< 1 km LEs (> 500 empl) Primary Medical care #?? # employees ?? Courts 2 Revenue ?? Distance to nearest court < 12 k % of GDP ?? Colleges 1 SMEs (< 500 emp) Colleges w/in communting distance 3 #??Universities 2 # employees ?? Universities w/in communting distan 4 ratio of Small bus employment to total empl Self employment ?? Company by employment size SME Revenues ?? Agriculture% Manufacturin % of GDP ?? 500+ 0 0.7 300-499 0.7 1.5 SME support 100-299 3.4 4.4 # C-OBSC 2 5-100 60 58.5 Distance to nearest 0 1-4 30.3 29.6 Small Bus/Entrepreneur Centre NA 8.9 9.6 Patent Office ?? Distance to nearest patent office ??

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Economic profile: The local economy is primarily agricultural however it does have large manufacturing facilities in auto parts and a significant involvement with the natural gas industry. The economy of the area is struggling. Almost every block in the downtown area has a vacant building – usually vacant for several years.

Technology profile Basic infrastructure connectivity The area had unequal internet connectivity with the urban areas having some high speed connections but in the rural areas of the region there was only dialup if anything. There was no redundancy in the network or its database infrastructures. There was no municipal firewall to provide security. The municipal site was hosted with a private ISP. In effect there was really little infrastructure on which to build a portal and a suite of e-services. While there remains “lots of dial-up”, by the spring of 2006 the BRAND initiative will ensure that 98.6% of the local geography in rural areas will have access to high speed Internet.

Internet penetration rate Widely variable between urban and rural

User / business sophistication Widely variable between urban and rural

Social Capital profile Private-public-civic interaction • The local Chambers of Commerce are usually small with no support staff except for Chatham and Wallaceburg. • The public sector is very close to the private and civic sectors. Sometimes hard to tell where one ends and another begins.

Cross-linkages between organizations • Good cross linkages at CKLAG level but after its withdrawal those cross linkages depended solely on the champion.

Dominant player & relation to others • The municipality seems to have been delegated responsibility for the various community portal initiatives by other members of the community with full support from the many not-for-profit organizations..

Role of champion

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• The champion was absolutely essential for the success of this project. Without the commitment of the champions and generally high regard in which they were held across the community, the administrative challenge would have overcome the participants.

Culture/values • Chatham-Kent has two English language school boards, one French board, and satellite campuses for the University of Windsor and the University of Guelph as well as St. Clair College with 2 local campuses.

Maturity profile (demand and supply development) • Demand was latent to begin with • Suppliers existed but were not coordinated • Community networks existed but other than CKLAG, which was sidelined early on, there were no networks relevant to this project.

Needs assessment Stimulate economic development • Need to become more competitive with other regions to attract businesses and people • Fundamentally change the image of the region and its capacity in a KBE

Social service delivery • Need to improve quality of services and information • Need to provide ICT education and training opportunities • Need to develop ecommerce and other transactional capacities

Municipal efficiencies • Need to improve cross-departmental / cross functional coordination • Need to improve Municipal policies/procedures to support change • Need for the municipality to address the competitiveness of private sector service delivery • Need to improve convenience of services to a dispersed citizenry in a large geographic area • Need to improve online security

Strengthen sense of community • Need to improve ICT awareness • Need to provide a central source of county-wide information. Information about the community has become fragmented and siloed.

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• Need to improve the region’s access to training and educational opportunities, especially training in ICT applications • The costs of implementing the necessary ICT changes are beyond the capacity of any individual organization in the region.

Assumptions • Electronic tools such as kiosks and the Internet can handle the more routine interactions with the public allowing for municipal staff to focus on more important, higher value tasks • A more effective web platform will help improve cross departmental and cross functional coordination • The cost of providing services electronically will be recovered by efficiencies made in staff time, reduction in paper processes and transaction revenues • The delivery of public services is best done by public institutions rather than by for profit entities. • The use of electronic services will improve Municipal responsiveness, reduce Municipal costs, result in faster data collection, and result in speedier service for citizens. • The core municipal departments identified and prioritized four critical success factors for the municipal e-Services vision: − Increased quality of life − Achievement of financial objectives − Customer centric − Improved operations

PROJECT PROFILE (summary of what they planned to do)

Partners

Lead Organization: The Municipality of Chatham-Kent Other Partners:

Public (CKLAG group) Private County of Lambton Union Gas St. Clair Catholic District School Board Bell Lambton-Kent District School Board Escom Software (Class Solutions) Chatham-Kent Health Alliance Orion Technology St. Joseph Hospital Cisco Systems

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Public (CKLAG group) Private Public General Hospital Chatham Kent Public Utilities Sydenham District Hospital Metafore City of Sarnia Concept Interactive Ridgetown College Chatham-Kent Energy St. Clair College McKesson Information Services BlueWater Health Pathways Healthcare Scheduling Lambton College St. Clair College

Only the Municipality of Chatham-Kent and the Chatham-Kent Health Alliance were contributing partners. However, at the initial letter of intent stage of Connect Ontario there were several more public sector partners (effectively represented by the Chatham- Kent Lambton Administrators Group) who were willing to contribute significant resources to the project. CKLAG had been coordinating around common administrative concerns such as group pricing and purchasing of goods and services and the regional development of an ICT infrastructure.

CKLAG became mandated with coordinating a regional ICT infrastructure strategy among the various jurisdictions. That initial project was less of a portal concept and more of an infrastructure build initiative to establish high-speed internet hubs in MUSH sector facilities throughout the region. A Connect Ontario LOI approval delay of 18 months meant that the Chatham-Kent partners went ahead with their infrastructure plans independently. When the Connect Ontario project was eventually approved, the CKLAG partners no longer had the resources to contribute to it. In addition, what got approved was not the infrastructure plan submitted by the Chatham-Kent partners but a portal project. Consequently the prominence of the CKLAG steering committee declined with respect to Connect Ontario in favour of the Municipality of Chatham- Kent.

In the second and upcoming phase of the Connect Chatham-Kent project, a broad range of public, private and civic partners are being recruited to help steer the future development of the portal so that it can more effectively meet the specific needs of the civic and business sectors.

Investment Total Project Cost: $3,424,039

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Provincial Funding: $1,499,539 Leverage5: 2.3 Connect Ontario: $999,539 GeoSmart: $500,000

Partner Funding: $1,924,500 Direct: $ 1,505,686 In-kind: $418,814

Information and Services to be provided

Content Municipal Services X Agriculture Services Municipal Information X Agriculture Information X Business Services X Youth Services Business Information X Youth Information Children’s Services Senior Services Children’s Information Senior Information Small Business Services X Employment Services Small Business Information X Employment Information X Health Services X Recreation Services X Health Information X Recreation Information X Education Services X Library Services X Education Information X Library Information X Cultural Events X Community Services X Virtual Tours Community Information X Gateway to Federal Services Gateway to Provincial Services X Gateway to Federal Information X Gateway to Provincial Information X Gateway to News providers

Applications to be provided The Connect Chatham-Kent project proposed a number of applications that would provide interactive/seamless tools with which to conduct business, deliver e- government, enhance social service delivery, and encourage citizens to use the Internet. Those applications included:

Prior Proposed via COPSC Library databases Gateway Portal (mix) (Improved web platforms) CKLAG wide area network Municipal firewall implementation CLASS registration software Security Infrastructure – segregation of networks Wide area network expansion to libraries and service desks

5 Calculated as total project cost / provincial funding

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Mapping (GIS) Authentication System/ IMS Recreation Program Registration and Facility booking Community Events calendar Online Hospital Appointment scheduling Online business & service /NFP directory

ACHIEVEMENTS (what they actually did) Outputs All Completed • Firewall implementation • Security system to segregate networks • Extension of wide area network • Improve and restructure the municipal web platforms, technologies and infrastructure to enable delivery of enhanced information and e-services • RecConnect (on-line recreation program registration and facility browsing services) • GIS/geospatial mapping applications and services (internal and external) • Business directory (100% listed + some non profit) • Community Event calendar • Patient Appointment Request Service • On-line portal security system (IMS)

Additional outputs • BRAND initiative essentially completing the WAN build (98.6% access to high speed Internet by spring 2006) • Creation of multiple geographically related databases • On-Line CK Wellness Magazine • CK Tickets – community event tickets on-line • Virtual Home Safety Tour (on-line game for children) • Property Tax Information Service (tax assessment information) • Economic Development Site Selector Tool • Shopping Cart Service and Payment Gateway • On-line Tax Certificate Service • On-line library catalogue • Provincial Offences Court Ticket Payment • Disease and pest control tracking (West Nile and Emerald Ash Borer) • CK Learning Links (educational, training and apprenticeship programming availability)

Next phase

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• Community organizational web presence and tools (Partnership framework to encourage community organizations to participate, Community Jobs Board, press/media release area, etc.). • Directory of human and social services

Outcomes • Use of portal to market the region • Clinicians no longer book hospital appointments

Indications of ROI • Time reductions for processing recreational registrations from 10-15 minutes to 5 minutes • Between 2004 and 2005 total recreational registrations over the Internet increased by 80% and total registrations (all sources) by 41%The booking area facilities (arenas, pools, meeting rooms, etc.) has increased by 13.4% since 2003Overall number of annual portal visits has increased by 89% since 2002.

Impacts • Changed image of Chatham-Kent to become one of a creative, technologically savvy region • Changed mind set of public decision-makers

PART B – CHATHAM-KENT’S STORY

At the turn of the century, the Municipality of Chatham-Kent found itself in the tight budgetary position of most local governments of the day. Yet it could not realistically cutback on services to reduce either its workload or its budget because it had a legal responsibility to deliver a range of services to local residents.

The biggest influence on the decision of Chatham-Kent (CK) to under take the development of the portal was the state of the community’s basic Internet infrastructures and lack of basic information service delivery. Other than a few private ISPs delivering wireless and DSL services in the urban areas of the county there was little in the way of high speed access, and little in the way of trustable security. There was also no GIS system at the outset nor was there was any redundancy if the existing system(s) went down. The municipal website as well was hosted offsite, offering no secure foundation for a portal. For the CK Health Alliance there was no existing system secure enough for dealing with patients nor was there any way of undertaking authentication of patient identities.

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Infrastructure Therefore, the community’s first step, taken under the direction of the Chatham-Kent Lambton Administrators Group (CKLAG)6, involved the creation of a county-wide WAN with the help of Bell Canada. This initiative put in place fibre optic hubs in public sector buildings throughout the counties of Chatham-Kent and Lambton. This was no small task for a community that was 60% rural and in the end there were still 9 locations that remained unconnected and so became part of the Connect Ontario project7.

After analysing the cost of contracting out a secure web portal and finding it both prohibitively expensive and constraining8, the Municipality opted for developing its own enterprise-wide web portal solution and bringing it in-house. However, the public sector organizations connected to the CKLAG WAN (including the municipal government, police, schools, EMS, fire department, health, etc.) required multiple levels of security and access. To permit them all to use the same network would require the installation of an effective system to moderate public interactions with the various public entities. Therefore the first stage of the Connect Ontario project became to develop an effective firewall system to enable different levels of secure communication. The CK interviewees underscored that this initial focus on basic IT infrastructures was not the result of the project’s leadership being less community and more municipally focused but rather the result of a strategy that foresaw that these basic elements had to be successfully in place before attempting a variegated community based approach. Since there was little beforehand in the way of application infrastructure, the municipality became the willing ‘guinea pig’ for developing the infrastructure and tools that could later be adapted for use by community organizations.

In 2007, a new CKLAG WAN will be built to offer many SME businesses connectivity and the ability to hook up to the fibre optic hubs created by the new CKLAG WAN. “After the announcements about the new WAN, in the fall of 2005, small business interest in connectivity has been really good, and the general uptake of the Internet seems to be good as well. This has been further stimulated by the BRAND project which will make high speed Internet accessible almost everywhere.”

GIS Although some local data had been collected in a common format by the Municipal Property Assessment Corporation, the first and most critical element of building the CK

6 This included the chief administrative officers of the areas MUSH sector organizations. 7 These included: Dresden Service Centre, Ridgetown Service Centre, Merlin Library, Ridgetown Library, Tilbury Library, Dresden Library, Highgate Library, Wheatley Library and Thamesville Library. 8 Estimated at about $20,000/month at the time and the current usage by the Municipality and the community far exceeds those early expectations

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GIS system was creating the database that would enable data to be shared among a variety of user programs. Data was drawn from the planning department, street data, water main and sewer data, PUC parcel (land) data, assessment data, natural features data(including soil data), ortho-photography, well data and other sources. This data collection process was very labour intensive and little subsidy was received from either the GeoSmart program or Connect Ontario to undertake it. Currently maintaining these databases and keeping them up-to-date still remains the most essential element in the GIS system. “Any GIS system is only as good as its underlying data.”

Chatham-Kent’s GIS strategy linked GIS to four main areas of relevance: • Municipal planning • Public utilities management • Emergency Measures System, and • Economic development

Once in place, the two GIS systems (internal and external) have been used by various businesses and citizens. It has been a key attractor for the portal. Internally, it is used by police to determine the geography of an incident scene; it is used by public utilities to plan and repair water mains, sewers and power lines; it is used externally by business to explore property acquisitions and their tax implications; and it is used by farmers to plan crop seeding and manage nutrients and pesticides.

“The take up by farmers and their suppliers have been very good. VeggiMart, for instance, encourages the use of ‘Map It’ to trace a product right to its bin site source.”

Local insurance providers are saving money on the cost of verifying the presence of water hydrants. “In a county like Chatham-Kent this can save up to 1 ½ hours of travel time each way.” The existence of the GIS tool has turned information into a service. For example a local pool supplier found they could increase sales by determining a potential customer’s pool size by mapping it directly onto a picture of their back yard provided by MapIT and the lawn care specialists who could more accurately estimate cutting costs.

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Figure 1: Chatham-Kent’s Travelodge Hotel

As an example, the above image of the Travelodge Hotel at the corner of Richmond and Bloomfield in Chatham illustrates the detail of the aerial photography image, up to 30 cm resolution for external use. Although greater detail is possible (internally), for security reasons it isn’t deployed to the public for fear of revealing too much information about a location, especially in regards to critical infrastructure and security.

Due to the recent amalgamation, 23 independent sets of municipal bylaws required integration and the new GIS system has been a very useful tool for unifying them into a single bylaw and zoning system (a work in progress still). The engineering department uses GIS to manage the 4,000 km of municipal drains (more drains than roads in Chatham). Since the cost of drain maintenance is allocated to those using it, the GIS system can automatically generate a list of stakeholders, businesses and residents wherever drain maintenance is taking place in order to notify them of the upcoming repairs and costs.

The Emergency Measures System is making increasing use of GIS. Currently it is used it to track ambulances, their speed, whether their lights are flashing and to feed this to the private centre of operations. As EMS moves to MLTC, they will be replacing the onboard maps in emergency vehicles with onboard computers. At the Emergency Operations Centre they use GIS to map and keep track of critical infrastructures (private) and to conduct simulation exercises for various emergency preparedness scenarios.

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From the perspective of the City’s economic development department the GIS system has helped immeasurably in cutting down on both the cost and response time in preparing packages for businesses interested in expanding or moving to Chatham. Preparing those packages is now a matter of hours not weeks as clients can be directed to using Site Selector to identify properties, services and utilities, demographics and taxes. “It sends a message of a supportive community.”

Health While the provision of health services were not a priority of the Connect Ontario program, they were a community priority and a priority of the only non-municipal partner of the project, the CK Health Alliance (CKHA). The over lapping interest among the partners in security and authentication made for a natural partner fit. Two things were necessary to achieve the online scheduling system (Patient Appointment Request System) envisioned in the project’s business plan – a means to achieve the security and authentication and a means to coordinate patient demand (a single doorway).

Initially the booking system for patients was a paper one and one that was replicated across each and every hospital and health service department. “There was a great deal of back and forth with patients in order to fix an appointment and no way to see what other appointments the patient was making.” Through the efforts of the Health Alliance a central booking centre was created that acts as an intermediary with all the hospitals and health service departments. “It’s a bit of a call centre”.

The next step was to link this central booking office to the Connect CK portal. Making a direct link to the portal held significant security risks for patient information so the team decided to follow a segregated approach illustrated below in Figure 2.

In this approach a user creates an account on the portal Identity Management System (IMS). The portal may acquire other information but only the user name and password is of interest to the Portal. The user name and password are then passed to the CKHA server which then, as a second step in the security process, asks for their healthcare number, date of birth, telephone number and sex. This information, specific to the PARS application, is then passed along to the patient appointment centre. Within 2 days the patient gets a response that allows them to confirm an appointment time. In this way sensitive health information remains the responsibility of and under the control of the health authority. The Portal account information is the responsibility of and under the control of the Municipality. The risk of data hacking via the portal is limited to basic informational data on the user. The success of the IMS tool has encouraged the municipality to develop a similar system for individual and business tax accounts which will be made available in early 2006.

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Figure 2: Security for the Patient Appointment Request System

A big challenge for the PARS initiative was the lack of funding at the hospital level for IT related projects. The CKHA Board was committed to the project and so allocated significant resources to the project which primarily involved the creation of the central booking office. This internal piece wasn’t reflected in the scope of PARS project with Connect Ontario.

In the year since the PARS application was launched, the hospitals and health providers are clearly excited about it but the public adoption and use of PARS has been slower than anticipated. In retrospect it was felt that more promotion and marketing could have been done. A lot of effort was generated around creating awareness of the project but not much effort was directed towards conveying the potential benefits. Brochures are now going out for distribution by local doctors and CCAC facilities. The services being covered by PARS will soon include those of the CCAC as well. It was suggested that they may need to conduct more one-on-one promotional or educational efforts.

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One of the big challenges in implementing PARS was its external rollout among a variety of external partners since it required a significant system change. Their compliance and adoption meant that they needed to see clearly the benefits for themselves as well as their patients. Initially some hospital departments didn’t even have a computer. “It required us to be more flexible, more patient and to take more time.” Now that there is a central booking office, “they are seeing the savings of time and money and they are more willing to contribute to the software costs and the web related staff costs. They also see their quality of service is improving.” Clinicians, for instance, no longer have to be involved with booking appointments (a task they may have spent upwards of 30% of their time) and so have more time to actually see patients.

“In health care, the use of e-services may not result in cost savings for public organizations like hospitals but downstream there have been definite benefits to doctors and to patients. At an organizational level it’s hard to capture the benefits because savings in one area are immediately applied to other areas.” It was interesting to hear that the “wait time” data now required of all hospitals to submit was pulled directly from PARS. The government uses high level measures of “wait times” but PARS can tell exact patient impacts.

Civic engagement The Chatham-Kent team identified an interesting barrier not seen elsewhere. Despite their encouragements of not-for-profit and voluntary stakeholders to participate in the direction of the project, members of the civic sector have chosen to be largely silent supporters. This may have to do with the initial CKLAG champions being from the MUSH sector and their early decision to focus on basic infrastructure. However, even recent efforts to lure civic leaders to help direct and expand the project have been largely unsuccessful. This has led to several missed opportunities where potential funders turned down applications to support community directed initiatives on the basis of the leadership being “too municipal”.

For example, the CLASS software used in RecConnect supports voice recognition (IVR) and IVR was considered as an add-on to the COPSC effort to better service those residents with some physical impairment. Bell has frequently supported this type of activity but Chatham-Kent’s request for support was turned down because RecConnect was too closely connected with the Municipality. Similarly, a request for support under HRSDC’s Job Creation Program to provide portal outreach to the voluntary sector was turned down because the portal was “too municipal” and this component was seen as “operational” in nature.

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One interviewee commented that Chatham-Kent’s difficult economic state and the closeness between the civic and public sectors typical of a small town may have generated a “let them do it” mentality among Chatham-Kent’s civic leaders. In retrospect, there has obviously been an opportunity cost for this approach, especially when one considers the general criteria used by private and public funders of community projects. It is encouraging, however, to see that “engaging the civic sector” and “community partnerships” have now become the primary focus of Connect Chatham-Kent’s Phase II plan. A searchable database for human and social services is planned along with a more complete listing of not-for-profit organizations9. And as mentioned earlier, the portal group is now working with both the United Way and the CCAC on a community services database strategy.

The community event calendar and RecConnect have been very popular programs for the community residents. RecConnect uses the CLASS software that is used by most Ontario municipalities and several Connect Ontario projects, like Hamilton and Oxford. It also features the ‘Map it’ tools to locate facilities in the region. Between 2004 and 2005 the recreational registrations through RecConnect increased by 80% and total registrations by 41%.

The overall booking of area facilities (arenas, pools, meeting rooms, etc.) has increased by 13.4% since 2003. As a result of RecConnect, the duration of calls associated with facility bookings has declined from 10-15 minutes to about 5 minutes allowing staff more time to make more bookings and to add more value. For example, in 2004 there were 60 sponsored public skating events and this year there were 120. Although this hasn’t meant any reduction of FTEs, it has meant that citizens have experienced more benefit for the same cost.

Economic development In terms of economic development, what was once innovative is now expected. “You can’t do economic development these days without a web presence.” Chatham-Kent has been a leader in the application of web based tools to assist in economic development. This has paid off in a reduction of staff time to prepare the information packages requested by firms and in an improved quality and timeliness of those responses.

To attract investment everything now has to be in electronic format. CK does this by responding to inquiries through the use of Site Selector and following up with hard

9 A partial listing currently exists in the CK Business Directory under community organizations

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copies. Sometimes the amount of data is so large (CAD drawings for example) that they have had to create special sub sites on the portal to communicate the data to businesses.

It was suggested that today there are fewer general questions about the region because these can be obtained directly from the portal and through Site Selector. Therefore, when the contacts and information requests come in they tend to be pre-qualified and already demonstrating an interest in Chatham-Kent.

Small business According to interviewees, there is a huge range in the IT sophistication of small business operations. “Lots of small businesses don’t have email or can’t use a PDF file.” Consequently CK’s economic development agency has to maintain two parallel systems – one print and one electronic.

While much of the community is rural, some of the rural businesses, particularly agri- businesses have very advanced technology users and make frequent use of e- procurement, Doppler radar, and GPS. On the other hand said an economic development representative, “we are still challenged to get small business people to do a business plan.”

The portal does seem to be making a difference for some small businesses. “We know, for instance, that for one of the area’s Bed and Breakfast’s, ¾ of its business comes through the CK portal.”

In CK the Community Futures program is a prominent channel for directing money to small businesses and for self employment support. There’s also community economic development services which are housed with OMAFRA; rural economic development; various BIAs; and MEDT’s investment group. There are links to some of these on the portal but no clear listing of all of them.

Administration Chatham-Kent values it’s relationship with the province, but also feels it is necessary to provide constructive criticism to improve future funding processes.

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During the initial phase of the project (from July 2001 to spring 2003), a primary challenge for the project was its From the Ministry’s perspective Chatham- 10 relationship with the Province . The Kent filed a proposal in 2001 for implementation Province was not seen as acting as a funding of $2.6 million towards a portal project of $6.98 million. The amount requested far exceeded the partner. Their process drove a lot of normal funding average of $1.5 million (including mistrust. “How many times did the GeoSmart components) and the group had not Province have to announce that we were developed an acceptable business plan, as required under the COPSC program guidelines. The external to receive a million dollars?” After each COPSC Review Panel therefore rejected Chatham- announcement the rules kept changing. Kent’s original proposal. Chatham-Kent then submitted a revised proposal and business plan (which was “They awarded us $1.4 million but by accepted) for $1.5 million in funding towards a portal then had disallowed 80% of the original project of $3.4 million. CKLAG application, causing us to From the community’s perspective they were told things verbally that were later disavowed. They redefine a completely different project.” were told the technology infrastructure project Then because of various delays they developed by CKLAG would be acceptable under COPSC. It was not .They were told that they did not didn’t sign the contribution agreement need to develop a new business plan but then were until March 2002 but the project start required to do so. These mixed messages caused a lack date was brought back to July 200111. of trust.

The one year delay in approval meant that the proposal had to be rewritten and the original CKLAG partners no longer had money to contribute. Those partners were partially scared off by the delay and their belief that the Province might not ultimately contribute.

The disconnectedness between the capital, operations and database development aspects of this type of project lead to less than optimal business planning and more effort12. The Chatham project was frequently in the position of “robbing Peter to pay Paul” while trying to balance the equipment focus of Connect Ontario with the operations focus of GeoSmart. In an ordinary technology development project, these equipment and staffing costs follow a more phased and coordinated pattern.

The province seemed to change its application requirements quite frequently and without consultation. “In the preliminary stages of application approval we had to re-

10 Chatham-Kent was one of 3 early pilot projects and the COPSC program was being developed at the same time. COPSC has received positive feedback from project group partners (including the Mayor of the Municipality of Chatham Kent). 11 According to the Province, the project start date was backdated to July 2001 at the request of the Chatham-Kent project group to allow them to claim previous expenses. Apparently the trade off for the project was to back date in order to be reimbursed for incurred expenses or keep the full implementation period. They chose the former. 12 Pursuant to program guidelines, COPSC reimbursed eligible operating expenses up to a maximum of 10% of the provincial grant. Given that it was a “capital program” funded out of the Ontario SuperBuild Fund, COPSC was constrained as to the amount it could fund operations.

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write the application at least five times because either the policy changed, or the application requirements were not solidified or Ministry staff changed their minds.” In order to acquire the funding we had to do our accounting one way; then the new project representative had us account another way to be reimbursed and then we had our own internal accounting process. We had three different forms to fill out.” They wanted timesheets for contributions of 2 hours or more, and there was no flexibility in moving resources from one line item to another. The estimated unbudgeted extra cost for this was 1.5 FTEs and at least $100,00013. “Connect Ontario must have spent more money looking over our shoulder than in helping with the actual projects.”

The funding approval process was considered “deplorable”. According to the City, by the end of the fourth quarter almost 90% of the project had been completed and CK had not been paid for their 1st, 2nd, 3rd, or 4th quarterly draws14 (about $500,000). At that point the Municipality was thinking of pulling the plug because it appeared the Province was not going to honour their agreement. While this issue was resolved, the process was unlike anything else the Municipality has been involved with on a provincial level. It was pointed out to the evaluator that typically joint projects are front-end loaded and every expense doesn’t have to be justified with every draw. “With MTO it’s a two-day audit process in the end. With Connect Ontario first there was no money and then we had to create a completely separate accounting infrastructure, quarterly reports, each 2” thick, and a final report that was at least a 8” thick.” Said one municipal representative, “We couldn’t use our own software and the need to make every penny balance wasted a lot of resources.” The extra administrative costs inevitably ate up municipal funding that “should have been used elsewhere in the project.”

According to interviewees, the way the Connect Ontario project was constructed, the business options the project could entertain were limited. They were told that whenever they had a choice, “we always had to buy rather than rent. Instead of using outsource models (ASPs) as had been successfully applied in Kingston [in a non-COPSC context] we had to do everything in-house. We were dictated to. We weren’t a partner. But then they frequently couldn’t decide what they were doing.”15

13 These reporting requirements were put in place to ensure proper project management and Chatham-Kent project was subject to the same reporting requirements as all the other projects. 14 According to the Province, the Chatham-Kent project group filed a combined request for payment form for the first three quarters of the project. Under its payment process, COPSC provided an up-front payment (i.e. an advance) to the project group every quarter, based on their budget and supporting documentation. The community would disagree saying that they submitted Q1 and Q2 requests and then they were told to submit a combined Q1 to Q3 request. 15 According the Province, it was up to each project group to decide what type of portal model to adopt. COPSC did not favour any specific model. In fact, two COPSC project groups did use ASP models.

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Throughout the project the CK team has been largely self reliant. The early involvement with the Broadband conferences was much appreciated but CK was usually out ahead of the other projects in terms of implementation. Networking with other Connect Ontario occurred within the Regional Networks of Ontario (RNO) group which has only limited value for CK because on the one hand the RNO website data tended to be static and on the other hand because CK team members were generally too busy to follow up. The CK team commented that they were regularly challenged about the approach they took (which appeared more municipally focused than elsewhere) by other Connect Ontario projects without those projects fully comprehending the dynamics in play in Chatham. More productive networking did occur with Tillsonburg in Oxford County which shared CK’s interest in CLASS software and the use of GIS.

Administration (May 2003 to Present) More recently Chatham-Kent’s relationship with the Province has improved dramatically. This is largely due to an entirely new provincial administrative team guiding the process. The efforts that the Province has made in improving their processes, providing more guidance and providing resource materials, has greatly improved since the initial three funded community projects were undertaken. The project team currently enjoys a very good and solid working relationship with the Province and have witnessed improved turnaround times, as well as very direct and specific requests or requirements.

Looking forward At this stage of the CK portal, the capital investments in equipment and software have been made. According to one source, “What remains to be done, according the interviewees, is a further development of quality geographic data, its integration with various kinds of community data and the capacity to interpret the integration of those data.” Chatham-Kent is moving to consolidate its 6 or 7 database systems in order to minimize the problems of incoherent information that arise from multiple database ownership. What also needs doing is the redevelopment of the portal’s architecture and taxonomy because the site has grown almost four times larger than was expected at the outset. There are now over 5,000 content and downloadable PDF pages on the portal, up from 3,000 last year.

The interviewees identified that the problem of data ownership is not one that is confined to Chatham-Kent but one that is a large public policy question in general. “When you start addressing who is responsible for what information a lot of inter- organizational and inter-jurisdictional conflicts raise their heads.”

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For instance, in Chatham-Kent the municipality’s Connect Chatham-Kent, the Community Care Access Centres and the 211 initiative under the United Way are all collecting essentially the same data about organizations and services in the Municipality. All three organizations are working to answer the question of which group is best positioned to collect and maintain the data. While the Chatham-Kent stakeholders are confident they will resolve this at a local level, at a higher more inclusive level “we need to have a serious public discussion about what data needs collecting, who would be best at collecting and maintaining it, and who will be responsible and accountable for it.” Municipalities are collecting data, various provincial and federal departments are often collecting the same data, Canada Post is collecting data and many not for profits are collecting data. There are opportunities to eliminate redundancies and to reduce the confusion that comes from multiple sets of the same or similar data.

It was suggested that the best starting place might be to collect data on a regional level because local updates would be easier and more cost efficient to generate. Lower jurisdictions could pull whatever data they needed from a regional database. Higher jurisdictions could then either aggregate local data or create their own data that would be cost ineffective for local groups to undertake to collect. It was suggested that this is generally done in the EU and in the USA, although GIS information in Holland tends to come from the national level. The problem in Canada, we were told, is that we don’t have definitive sources for any kind of information.

In addition to the seven other national and international awards it has received, the Municipality of Chatham-Kent, in partnership with the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade, and the Chatham-Kent Health Alliance, received the gold medal in the Citizen-centric Inter-jurisdictional category of the first annual Canadian Government Review (CGR) e-Awards. The CGR e-Awards offer independent, third- party recognition of some of Canada’s best inter-jurisdictional initiatives and salute those projects that demonstrate cooperation and synergy among two or more levels of government in providing service delivery to citizens.

In conclusion, “Chatham-Kent would never have been able to undertake what was done under Connect Ontario on its own. Connect Ontario was more than a catalyst. Our population is not large enough to effectively look after the geography we have. It would have been very difficult to persuade Council of the cost/benefit. Just the cost of photography itself involved in GIS is huge and directly proportional to the size of the territory involved. The per person costs are very high for this sort of thing.” “Would we do this again? Absolutely! We need more programs like Connect Ontario. But we

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will be much more careful, and consider the significant resources required to address the administrative and initial application costs, in the future.”

PART C – ASSESSMENT

FOCUS

Municipal vs broader community • There is a recognized lack of civic sector involvement in the direction of the portal. While the initial champions of the portal were municipal leaders, in their zeal to get things done they may not have spent sufficient time to get the local civic champions on board. Therefore, the ownership now felt by Chatham-Kent’s civic sector in the portal is tenuous.

In the absence of civic champions, the Municipality has tried to provide several community oriented services, including: the CK Wellness Magazine, CK Tickets, the Virtual Home Safety Tour, and CK Learning. It is also planning to provide web presence for community organizations, a non-profit directory, and a directory of human and social services.

It is more encouraging, however, to see that the primary focus of Connect Chatham- Kent’s Phase II plan has become “engaging the civic sector” and “developing community partnerships”. The willingness of the municipality to cede decision making to community leaders to help develop services for the voluntary organizations is also encouraging.

Economic development • What was once innovative is now expected. “You can’t do economic development these days without a web presence.” Chatham-Kent has been a leader in the application of web based applications to assist economic development. It has paid off in terms of the reduced staff time to prepare local information packages requested by firms and better quality and timeliness of those responses.

Small business • There remains a huge range in sophistication among small business operations. While much of the community is rural, some of the rural businesses, particularly agri-businesses are very advanced technology users making frequent use of e- procurement, Doppler radar, and GPS. On the other hand “we are still challenged to get small business people to do a business plan.” There is anecdotal evidence that

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the portal is helping to make a difference for small business. For instance, for one area Bed and Breakfast has ¾ of its business come through the CK portal.

Service delivery • There are twelve new services now available on the site that were not there in 2002. More services are being developed, especially in the area of human and social services, which will be developed and added in Phase II of Connect CK. Chatham- Kent has be very successful at generating new services.

Other • In addition to its existing registration and facilities booking services, RecConnect will add registration for public health services, camps and other training services. A new initiative, CK Learning is being developed to offer some basic training services to local residents and will be available in 2006. RecConnect’s on-site facilities will be shared with Polar Bear Corporate Education Solutions and RecConnect will provide community access to those courses. RecConnect is now offering notification of garbage pick-up and recycling schedules. Some of their other directions include linking RecConnect to ‘Best Start’ programs, the local School Boards, day care, St. Clair College, YMCA, and ITWorks’ online web shopping site.

CHALLENGES Changing environment • The problem of change management among various external partners

Technical (Infrastructure) • Effectively dealing with the ‘last mile’ problem in rural environment

Technical (applications) • Protecting the control of private information and its focus of responsibility among various independent partners was seen as an important challenge in the development of the IMS. • IT projects are unique by design and require customization. “It’s hard to make them standardized.”

Implementation • “Tends to be fun”

Adoption • Paying enough attention to stimulating user interest (“what’s in it for them”) for online services and applications

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Local Governance • The initial lead on the Connect Chatham-Kent project was the Chatham-Kent Lambton Administrators Group (CKLAG), a group of senior public sector administrators from across the two counties. When the project changed to become a portal project, the leadership of CKLAG was withdrawn and the project’s governance group became comprised of mid to senior level municipal officials who reported to City Council. Broader community representation was solicited for the governance group but, with the exception of the Chatham-Kent Health Alliance, was declined. Interestingly, as the project progressed and the community implications for some of its tools became more evident, attempts to seek funding for further community involvement in the portal were hampered by the municipal fact. Connect Chatham- Kent is now seeking to develop a governance body with broad community representation.

Provincial partnership • The interviewees generally believed, that in the initial phases of the project, the Province was not acting as a partner16. The administrative process of Connect Ontario drove a lot of mistrust.

PROJECT STATISTICS

• Time reductions for processing recreational registrations from 10-15 minutes to 5 minutes • Between 2004 and 2005 total recreational registrations over the Internet increased by 80% and total registrations (all sources) by 41% • The booking of area facilities (arenas, pools, meeting rooms, etc.) has increased by 13.4% since 2003 • The overall number of annual portal visits has increased by 89% since 2002.

NEW OPPORTUNITIES THAT EMERGED

• Extension of CK Tickets to cover other local events • Expansion of PARS to other communities • Expansion of services to include the CCAC, doctors and other health providers • Integrating the PARS and the central appointment booking office

16 Chatham-Kent was one of three early COPSC projects undertaken while and the program was still being developed. More recently COPSC has received positive feedback from the project group partners (including from the Mayor of the Municipality of Chatham Kent) and the project team indicated to the reviewer that the relationship has improved significantly.

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• Expansion of the IMS to include access to patient health records to patients and doctors • Extension of IMS to provide municipal tax information to citizens and businesses • Extension of the monthly online CK Wellness magazine to cover a wider scope of regional activities • CK Learning • Virtual Home Safety Tour which is a game for children to learn safety tips both in- home and outside the home. • New e-learning component is coming in January 2006 that will enable classes for the fire department and health courses to be given over the net. • The provision of detailed locational information on commercial properties with Site Selector • Capability to conduct disease and pest control tracking (West Nile and Emerald Ash Borer) • CK Traax is an internal municipal tool that tracks citizen inquiries and follow up across the administration. The intent is that in the future citizens will have the ability to log issues and track performance and status of the issue via the web. Also council members will be able to see what types of issues are being logged from their particular wards..

SUSTAINABILITY

Short term • The project has received ‘life cycle’ funding from the CK municipality to continue to expand its scope of operation and to revamp the site in order to address the constraints imposed by the original ‘three-click’ architecture and the requirements anticipated by an expanded involvement of local partners which will add to the complexity of the site. • CK directory has also been exploring the use of a Yellow Pages style advertisement listing in order to generate revenue. A marketing strategy is being developed for this.

Long term • As the project continues to demonstrate value for the community and the Municipality it will likely find the resources it needs to continue. However, sources of additional resources to help it extend and enhance existing services are unclear. • Reliance on interns and coop students has been essential for the implementation of the project but continued reliance on them, particularly in reaching out to the voluntary sector, is not seen as sustainable in the long run.

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• “We can’t manage what we’ve built in the long term unless new resources are allocated.”

GOOD PRACTICES

In the June 2003 issue of Canadian Government Executive magazine, the importance of innovation was highlighted and the Chatham-Kent Community Portal was presented in a two page article by Joann McDonald. The publisher and editor-in-chief, Dr. Hawley Black, commented that the Chatham-Kent Community Portal was an innovative IT project that ʺshows us that you donʹt have to be big to be goodʺ.

Applications The Portal • On September 14, 2004, the Community of Chatham-Kent portal received the Showcase Ontario Award of Excellence as an innovative method of serving its primarily rural community by providing cost-effective and alternate access to: recreational program information; information on over 340 municipally-owned facilities, a community events calendar, an on-line library catalogue, payment of tickets issued under the Provincial Offences Act, community mapping capabilities, business and service directory, access to a health, wellness and fitness magazine, a newly released economic development site selector tool as well as comprehensive municipal information.

Patient Appointment Request Service • The City of Windsor, and the counties of Essex and Lambton are interested in adopting the Chatham-Kent model of PARS, especially since the formation of the Erie-St. Clair Regional Health Authority.

RecConnect • This program that uses the CLASS software has been used by several other Connect Ontario projects, like Hamilton and Oxford. The duration of calls associated with facility bookings has declined from 10-15 minutes to about 5 minutes allowing more bookings to take place and more value adding bookings.

Site Selector • Allows prospective investors to search for available industrial and/or commercial property in CK.

Emerald Ash Borer

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• In May of 2005, the Municipality of Chatham-Kent was recipient of the Ontario Federal Council, Leadership Through Collaboration Award in recognition of its contribution to the Emerald Ash Borer Emergency Response Team.

GIS In May of 2003 Chatham-Kent was presented with the Gold awards for both the Best Municipal Geographic Information System and the Best Web-Geographic Information System from the Urban and Regional Information Systems Association (URISA). It was the first time any organization had received both GOLD awards in the same year. The Best Municipal Geographic Information System award recognized that Chatham-Kent’s enterprise GIS deployment streamlined municipal processes, reduced costs and promoted efficiency in the organization where land management was involved. The system was established to serve the business interests of all municipal employees, clients, customers, and external consultants and was designed around the common theme of open access. All municipal departments now have access to centralized information to facilitate timely, accurate and detailed decision-making to expedite a resolution. As an example, the municipality uses the GIS system for all of CK’s emergency and 911 support services. The Best Web Geographic Information System award recognized the integration of internet-enabled GIS into the Chatham-Kent’s Community Portal as well as its overall web design, creativity, visual clarity, and ease of use.

Process • According to the interviewees, the Connect CK project was a powerful catalyst for moving CK into electronic service delivery and for changing the mind set of local decision makers. “Initially Council couldn’t see the path. Now they can see where the vision can take them.” That has resulted in changed priorities for Council and an increase in their trust of the administration. • Getting the Municipal Council to approve ‘life-cycle’ funding for the project. This has allowed for more effective planning and the ability to secure the human resources needed to do the job.

LESSONS LEARNED

The lessons learned by the project • The project helped to identify silos within the partner group (including 85 municipal business units) and has helped to prevent further building of silos • PARS was not as well marketed as it could have been to general public • In the implementation phase it was good to create ownership of the project with one group in the municipality even though there may be multiple contributors and partners. “If everyone is responsible no one is.”

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• There was great value in having to interact with a variety of different kinds of organizations because the diversified perspectives lead to more enriched thinking and better quality solutions. • The Calendar tool has been very useful to integrate the different areas of the county. It has demonstrated a variety of common points of interest across communities so recently amalgamated. • Connect CK architecture started with the ‘three click’ premise. After three years this type of architecture was proving inadequate even for the present structure, let alone for the type of expansion envisioned. With more civic sector involvement in the portal a new more robust taxonomy is being sought. • “The more you do community partnerships the more you build capacity for exchanges down the line (reciprocity).” • When dealing with the political decision makers the team learned that you need to provide information with flexibility -- both with simple format and in detail when asked for. • Importance of life cycle funding • The leverage experienced in this project was obtained not only from the 50 cent dollars supplied by the Province, but also by the creation of new opportunities that could be done on the foundation of what Connect Ontario had put in place. Much more is now possible in CK because of the portal. • The Municipality has gained through a reduction of duplication around Internet related activities. Originally the Municipality had its own web presence, and one support staff. The Municipality learned it can better develop and retain its tacit knowledge in the organization because of the larger scale it is now operating at and that this is an important consideration for sustainability. It is now easier to persuade Council of the need to retain these FTEs.

The lessons learned by Invenire Portals • Connect Chatham-Kent highlighted the need to ensure that community organizations and leaders must improve their understanding of the practical (what’s in for me”) benefits to ensure their use and adoption of a portal • Portals can fundamentally change image of a community, CK has developed a national and international reputation as a leader in e-government and the use of technology in a community • The importance of portals in dealing with emergency/disaster responses.

Economic development • “You can’t do economic development these days without a web presence.”

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Small & Medium business • SMEs have a wide range of reactions to technology. To incite a shift of behaviour from them towards greater use of IT and the Internet, the benefits of doing so have to be clear and immediate.

Delivery of public services • The use of Internet tools may not reduce service delivery costs directly but they can add value to the service and have practical benefits beyond the boundaries of the public sector organization.

Community partnerships • For such a community oriented project, it was surprising that civic leaders in Chatham-Kent chose not to be involved and to delegate leadership to the municipality. It suggests more time might have been spent upfront to create the civic champions that would have given that sector more ownership of the project. • We heard that, “the more you do community partnerships the more you build capacity for exchanges down the line.” This suggests that each community starts where it is and builds from there. Understanding that starting point therefore becomes an important consideration in determining what can be done in any given community.

Provincial intervention • Initially there was a great deal of misalignment on the administration of the project between the Province and the Municipality which led to serious lack of trust. • The ‘leverage’ on such projects is not limited to initial investment but should include what has been made possible through the effort. • There is a need to take projects not just to the implementation stage but to the adoption stage in order to secure and ensure that investments are not lost.

Technology projects • There can be great difficulty in assigning specific ROI to technology investments because the benefits can be widely dispersed, as in the PARS case • The use of interns and coop students is important but limited because they are temporary and not dedicated resources of the project.

Other • There is a need to establish good policy around who’s best positioned to collect, maintain and take responsibility for the collection of information.

GAP ASSESSMENT

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Things they failed to do • The initial three funded communities received very little assistance in the development or administration of the projects, as there were virtually no resources available from the Province. • The project failed to implement the provincially produced portal ‘skin’ or envelope. When the skin didn’t come from the Province, they built their own17.

Missed opportunities • CK failed to obtain much in the way of civic sector involvement which led to missed opportunities related to obtaining third party funding of additional community oriented components of the project.

POTENTIAL NEW USES/NEW SERVICES

One of the new uses being explored for the CK portal is it’s potential contribution to emergency or disaster responses. “It is now critical for our pandemic planning.” Already the region has used the portal and its GIS tools to track both the infestation of the emerald ash borer18 and West Nile disease. With help from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, every ash tree in the county has been assigned a GPS location. “This makes good sense from the perspective of fighting the infestation, but it also conveys a degree of liability on the Municipality if an infected tree later falls and hurts someone or damages property.”

NEW TECHNOLOGY DIRECTIONS

BRAND The Municipality of Chatham-Kent has recently entered into an agreement with Industry Canada to champion the project, which is a state-of-the-art wireless internet service that will serve the rural and semi-rural residents and businesses of Chatham- Kent under its Broadband for Rural and Northern Development (BRAND) program.

The Municipality of Chatham-Kent will act as the Project Administrator and oversee the network installation provided by a local independent ISP provider. As the project

17 This early requirement for a common look and feel among the COPSC portals was dropped by COPSC when all the project groups refused to adopt it. Even a common program web page which COPSC eventually produced was declined by the projects. There was a sense that the decision not to require the portal ‘skin’ was not effectively received by the CK project and that later when COPSC produced the single web page, it obviously did not meet their expectations of a ‘skin’. 18 2005 Ontario Federal Council, Leadership Through Collaboration Award

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progresses residents and businesses will have the opportunity to purchase high-speed internet services from the Internet provider at competitive market prices.

It is anticipated that 98.6% of the geography within Chatham-Kent will have high speed Internet access by the spring of 2006. It is expected that the introduction of high-speed internet service to the under-serviced areas of Chatham-Kent will create opportunities and competitive advantage to areas such as business, education, health services, local government and agriculture.

Google Earth There is some discussion going on about linking Connect Chatham-Kent to Google’s new Google Earth service (http://earth.google.com/) as a way of letting more people learn about Chatham-Kent. However, data and data updates would still have to be supplied to Google (some of CK’s data isn’t owned by the municipality) and Google’s own business drivers suggest that those areas that are best mapped are the ones that are most desired by subscribers. Nonetheless there may be added value from the broad exposure and 3D tools associated with this new technology.

RECOMMENDATIONS BY PROJECTS FOR FUTURE CONSIDERATION

Portals • The design of these should be developed locally

Economic development No Comment

Small & Medium business No comment

Delivery of public services No comment

Community partnerships • These would have been very much more complicated to manage had there been more community involvement due to the provincial requirements. The provincial rules need to be consistent and simpler.

Technology projects

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• Use standards set by international technology professionals and have them written into contract, eg. W3 C’s standards for interoperable technologies (specifications, guidelines, software, and tools) on the Internet. • The CLASS software, in use by almost every municipality in Ontario, is much under utilized and could provide a broader scope of services than it does. These other municipalities could be encouraged to make better use of it.

Provincial relationship • Integrate the capital, operations and database development aspects of a project like this one with clear deliverables for each phase of the implementation. This would permit better business planning. • If there is specific information needed by the Province for the reporting process, then it should be defined and included in the contract up front. This would help make the administrative process routine, understandable and transparent. • Act as a good faith partner. • Due to the apparent mistrust between the Province and the Municipality, it is recommended that the Province make more use of unconditional grants with limited conditions rather than such an onerous undertaking such as Connect Ontario. • The Province should be able to be more of a resource pool. Initial workshops/ conferences were missed during the implementation phase of the first three funded projects and would have been quite valuable.. These should be a regular feature to encourage networking and knowledge sharing.

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2. ELGIN - ST. THOMAS PROJECT TITLE: ELGIN-ST. THOMAS CONNECTS

URL: http://www.elginconnects.ca Launch Date: September, 2005 Completion Date: October 31, 2005.

PART A – THE LOGIC MODEL

COMMUNITY PROFILE • The region has a small population of 81,553 and a low population density (43.4 persons per sq. km.) • There was no local stakeholder willing or able to undertake the project on their own. • There was little in the way of high speed internet outside of the city of St. Thomas at the centre of the region. Consequently the scope of the project was two-fold – develop a portal while developing an adequate level of connectivity in the region. • The collaborative process was complex because there were nine autonomous local governments. A neutral broker, the Elgin Community Futures Development Corporation, helped facilitate the partnership as the lead partner. • A close relationship between the public and civic sectors was typical of small towns. The capacity of community to work together was highlighted as the community’s greatest asset. • Despite this the region’s municipal players had little experience with big collaborative projects like Connect Ontario • The project administration was complex because there were five senior government funders involved in various aspects of the project. • The pre-existing municipal websites were unsophisticated

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Demographics

Coverage sq km 1881 Population 81,553 Population density 43.4 Total farms in region 1608 Total annual farm receipts $262,605,470 Total capital of farms $1,582,995,090 Median Age 37.2 Average household size 3.2 % Youth (< 25) 34 % students (5-14 + fulltime 15+) 15 % Seniors (65+) 14 % visible minorities 2 % Aboriginal 1 % Immigrants (since 1991) 3 % English 85 % French 1 % Non Eng or FR 16 % w/ degrees/diplomas (20-64) 15 Average earnings $28,893 Labour force 41,410 Participation rate 67 Employment rate 63 Unemployment rate 6.6 Median Income $22,290 % from Earnings 75 % from Transfers 13 % low income

Geospatial profile The County of Elgin, is located in South Western Ontario and covers approximately 1,880 sq. kilometres. It has a population of 81,553 and a population density of 43.4 persons per sq. km.

It is comprised of seven municipalities including, the Town of Aylmer, the Township of Bayham, the Township of Central Elgin, the Township of Dutton/Dunwich, the Township of Malahide, the Township of Southwold, the Township of West Elgin. The

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City of St. Thomas (a tier one municipality) is located almost in the geographical centre of Elgin County. The area naturally divides into three regions, East, Central, and West.

Elgin County has a rich natural environment. It bordered on the North shore of Lake Erie, has a temperate climate, and has a strong tourism draw due to the water. Each port on the North Shore has a tourist attraction. Port Stanley for example, has the deepest harbour. Transport Canada is trying to divest itself of the shoreline around Port Stanley and the Township of Central Elgin was considering in taking over the port and putting in ferry service to the US. Since it was only 100 kilometres across the Lake to the United States, It was expected that a ferry would attract a lot of traffic, especially commercial truck traffic. A ferry would land mid way between Detroit and Buffalo near the US city of Cleveland. Normally going to Cleveland would require a 6-hour drive, whereas a Port Stanley based ferry would require only two hours.

The industrial areas were located mainly in Central Elgin and in the City of St. Thomas. Most of the towns in the county were of equal size.

The County of Elgin was responsible for the libraries, the 3 Homes for the Aged, County roads, and any other regional business that the Council of Lower Tier Mayors agrees upon. The Lower Tier municipal services tended to be more specific to the local community and included parks and recreation, licensing, drainage, transit, and cultural facilities among others. There was a central County library with 11 local municipal branches. The City of St. Thomas was a municipal government separate from the County and looked after all its own local services including a library, Home for the Aged, Fire Services, water, sewage, etc.

Economic profile The major industry in the area was agricultural or agri-business. East Elgin was heavily involved in the agricultural industry where tobacco was the major crop and where Imperial Tobacco provided major employment.

There were over 1,600 farms in Elgin County and 19% of the local jobs were tied to agriculture in the County. The farming community contributed in large measure, over $262 million annually, to the economic base of the region. It was estimated that 90% of farm inputs were purchased locally.

Another major industry in the region was the automotive manufacturing sector, particularly Ford, which employed 2,600 people, Magna, and Sterling Trucks (formerly Freightliner).

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The trades, processing and manufacturing sectors account for 32% of the population.

Technology profile Originally, broadband existed only in the City of St. Thomas. The rural areas and towns outside of St. Thomas had only dial-up service, leading to low use of the Internet throughout most of the region due to this lack of high speed infrastructure. In a study conducted after the Connect Ontario project began, it was estimated that Internet penetration rates (including dial-up) were only about 53%.

Concurrent with the portal project, the team negotiated with vendors to develop a high speed fibre core to run the length of the county with wireless towers that could beam broadband into the rural areas. The team perceived that in order for the portal to be adopted and used, they needed to build out the infrastructure.

Most of the farmers in the area did not have high speed connectivity. An internet usage study commissioned by Elgin Community Futures Development Corporation19 found that although 59% of the agricultural community had used the Internet for business, only 12% were connected via high speed.

Social capital profile There are nine autonomous governments in the area including, the County of Elgin, the seven Lower Tier Municipalities and the separate City of St. Thomas. These nine did not have a history of working together, so the portal team elected the Elgin Community Futures Development Corporation, as its lead organization, because it had worked successfully with all the nine local governments. The concept was to have an independent body run the project to minimize any municipal competitiveness that have reduced the effectiveness of the project and distracted the players from satisfying regional needs.

A large percentage of the population was Mexican Mennonite, a group that has a long tradition of cooperation. There was a strong sense of community characteristic of a small town.

Needs Assessment Economic development • The need to stimulate economic development through a regional one window view that would provide more scale and aggregate the region’s offerings.

19

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• Need to encourage more participation by farmers in the county’s future as many farms were million dollar enterprises and farmers were the largest small business group • Need for more local broadband capacity to support new businesses and industries through increased development of both fibre optic and wireless access. • Need to provide more support tools for small businesses through the electronic provision of tools, education and business services.

Social service delivery • Consultations indicated that citizens and businesses were asking for “one door” access to information and services. • There was a need to provide services and information on an as needed basis to residents and to provide more delivery options for regional social services to be delivered. • There was a need to have better coordination between agencies, municipalities, townships and the City.

Municipal efficiencies • Need to improve customer response times of municipal officials • There was a secondary need to reduce municipal service delivery costs. • There was no seasoned County IT staff prior to the portal. • There was a need to improve upon the existing municipal web sites were viewed as immature. • There was a need to build a service infrastructure and delivery system with citizens as the priority, rather than municipal departments. • There were few online sources of information on or about the region.

Strengthen sense of community & regional heritage • Need to integrate community information that was largely scattered throughout the region and difficult to access, to have that information better organized using common calendars, county-wide directories and GIS tools. • Need to improve communication between stakeholder groups in the region • Need to have a more integrated “one window” approach to the community to reinforce the region’s already strong sense of community • Need to provide online access and sharing to meaningful community information. • There was an opportunity to build private sector partnerships and investment by leveraging public money.

Assumptions

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• Internet applications increase opportunities for connectivity within communities if there was adequate infrastructure in place. • A community portal provides opportunities for people to stay and participate in their community • A portal builds greater social cohesion • A portal should help promote community values • With service delivery quality as a first priority, migrating some municipal services to Internet service delivery over the will permit greater efficiencies. • Stimulating local Internet usage through the provision of meaningful applications will increase network demand and therefore support the area’s IT sector. • By encouraging more universal demand for and sophistication with the Internet, the area’s technological and community capacities will grow. • The Connect Ontario project will increase the awareness and marketability of Elgin County as a place to do business.

PROJECT PROFILE

Lead Organization: Elgin Community Futures Development Corporation (ECFDC)

Other Partners: Public Private County of Elgin Bell Ontario City of St. Thomas Amtelcom Communications Town of Aylmer EDS Canada Municipality of Dutton Dunwich Foundation Networks Township of Malahide St. Thomas-Elgin General Hospital Municipality of Bayham St. Thomas Economic Development Corporation Municipality of Central Elgin Agri e-business Municipality of West Elgin Largnet Township of Southwold St. Thomas and District Chamber of Commerce Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada St Thomas Energy Services Inc HRSDC Elgin Federation of Agriculture Industry Canada CAP Elgin Association for Community Living Industry Canada – Knowledge Based Fanshawe College Economy Fund Elgin-St. Thomas Health Unit Local Conservation Authorities County of Elgin Libraries St. Thomas-Elgin Tourist Association

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Public Private Employment Services Elgin Elgin-Middlesex-Oxford Local Training Board Ontario Library Association

Investment

Total Project Cost: $2,344,122

Provincial Funding: $1,090,000 Leverage: 2.15

Partner Funding: $1,254,122 Direct: $ 955,003 In-kind: $2 99,119

Applications to be provided

Prior Proposed via COPSC Gateway Portal (mix) Enhanced online social service delivery Secure payment processing, online booking of govt programs Online booking of parks and rec services Permits and licenses online Interactive information sharing Electronic data management systems e-Government forms developed Very basic tourism site Tourism web site for city and rural Online agricultural services Wide Area Network development Limited information about land in main Online Land Information services urban area Training for staff, and public online GIS capability User and statistical reports Financial reports IP rights, ownership of assets reports Transactional (info) & Registration Data storage Mapping (GIS)

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ACHIEVEMENTS

Outputs Today, the region has a fibre core down the centre of the region and three wireless towers beaming high speed access into the rural areas.

The ElginConnects portal features the following types of services and information:

Municipal Services X Agriculture Services X Municipal Information X Agriculture Information X Business Services X Youth Services X Business Information X Youth Information X Children’s Services X Senior Services X Children’s Information X Senior Information X Small Business Services X Employment Services X Small Business Information X Employment Information X Health Services X Recreation Services X Health Information X Recreation Information X Education Services X Library Services X Education Information X Library Information X Cultural Events X Community Services X GIS Mapping X Community Information X Gateway to Federal Services X Gateway to Provincial Services X Gateway to Federal Information X Gateway to Provincial Information X Spatial Database for hazardous X Gateway to News providers X materials

Outcomes • The ElginConnects portal has succeeded in becoming the principal online portal for residents of the region. • The area municipal governments, the main community health centre, the tourism promotion agencies, and the hospital have all migrated to their websites to the ElginConnects portal • Regional collaboration on the design, content, and most phases of the project. • The project has evolved from an online collection of web applications to become a vehicle for implementing region-wide economic development policies. • Preliminary discussions have taken place to revise and make more permanent the multi-partner nature the governing body of the portal to include the County, the City and the ECFDC.

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Impacts • There appears to be a stronger sense of a regional economy and an increased willingness among the various communities and MUSH sector partners involved in ElginConnects to cooperate on other regional initiatives.

ROI • While the project was currently being sustained by municipal funding and other public sector project funding, the next phase of the project will emphasize greater self sufficiency, through selling business access and increasing citizen usage. • It was believed by the partners that there was a lot of potential for municipal cost savings from the use of online service delivery, which would translate into more stable municipal support. • ROI was driving a move to make the portal even more service oriented and to include transactional services from which user fees could generate sustaining revenues.

PART B – THE ELGIN CONNECTS’ STORY

The ElginConnects project grew out of needs that were identified during a series of community consultations on the State of Information Technology in the Elgin area for the first few years of the project.

The ElginConnects portal was led by the Elgin Community Futures Development Corporation (ECFDC) and with a goal to create a “one window” portal for services and information for the entire region. The municipal partners included Elgin County, the City of St. Thomas and the seven lower tier municipalities in the county.

The ElginConnects project proposed to work collaboratively with the public and private partners throughout the region to develop and enhance existing online services and diminish the divide that existed between the rural and urban communities. As part of its plan it would develop and promote IT strategies and projects to enhance and sustain economic development, and electronically deliver municipal and social services.

The partners began the project with a series of community consultations – to determine what community residents needed -- and then they tried to build the portal around those needs. There was a very strong interest in community events in the region and so this became a focus. The value of “neighbours helping neighbours” was cited in all the interviews as being very strong in the region. As an example, a recent Christmas dinner

Invenire4 Ltd., Ottawa, Ontario 43 COPSC Cases Elgin-St. Thomas event drew all the local mayors, where they and others joined together to feed the less fortunate.

This capacity of community to work together was highlighted as the community’s greatest asset. The portal was designed this around this capacity. All the partners had input. The project team has observed made major leaps in the way community volunteers work together just through this portal. The portal project has been the first successful region-wide project of its kind to bring about such collective cohesion. This has spun off into other initiatives such as coordinated regional economic development something which had not previously existed in the area. The ElginConnects partnership helped facilitate planning for other regional community ventures.

This cooperativeness on the part of local partners has bred a strong sense of ownership in the portal. All the main municipalities, for instance, have migrated their own municipal web sites onto the ElginConnects portal. They viewed the portal as “community collaboration” from the start saying “they would not have designed it any other way.”

Prior to the portal, there was very little in the way of high speed Internet infrastructure. Therefore one of the unique features of Elgin’s portal development was that the design of region’s new broadband infrastructure was taking place simultaneously with the portal’s design. This led to a more flexible implementation approach.

To illustrate this flexible development process, at one point a decision was made to house the portal at the County administration building because the County had finished installing a large fibre optic conduit into the County building. Seeing that the portal would be better served by a new and efficient fibre connection, the ElginConnects portal servers were moved from the ECFDC offices and into those of the County where the County constructed a new server room to house them.

In order to move the project forward collectively, the partners needed to improve connectivity and increase high speed internet access across all the rural areas of the community. As part of the Connect Ontario Broadband Regional Access program (COBRA) the project was able to obtain $900,000 in matching funds for a total investment of $1.8 million.

Bell originally serviced only St. Thomas with high speed. When the project announced it intended to build high speed wireless in the rural areas, Bell responded by announcing that it too was also going into the rural areas. The portal team worked on

Invenire4 Ltd., Ottawa, Ontario 44 COPSC Cases Elgin-St. Thomas getting the region’s high speed Internet infrastructure running on wireless network that was based on a fibre backbone running from one end of the county to the other.

A great deal of time was spent in planning and development including the forward thinking initiative to improve infrastructure. Elgin issued an RFP for infrastructure development. The local telecom Amtelecom Communications of Aylmer won the RFP and invested substantial dollars - at least 1/3, and far more than any other respondent was willing. The municipalities expressed prior to the RFP that they did not want to own the infrastructure or be responsible for lifeline maintenance. At no time was there an expectation or intention to continue to publicly subsidize the project, and the telecom’s knew that from the start.

The new fibre-optic build added to Ametlecomʹs existing fibre presence in eastern Elgin, by creating new fibre running from Aylmer to West Lorne. Direct fibre connections were made to the Elgin County Administration Building, Elgin Manor, Bobier Villa, and the West Elgin Community Health Centre. Spaced along the route are three wireless transmitter towers to provide high speed wireless internet service to end users and residents; the towers are found in Aylmer at Amtelecom Communications, on top of the Cargil grain elevators just West of Talbotville and atop the West Lorne water tower.

Part of the desire for high speed came from the desire of the municipal partners for GIS enabled municipal and emergency services (GIS funding was obtained separately through another funding body.). The portal team GPS’d every single laneway for 911 services and so they could identify every building on a county map for Fire, Police and Emergency Services.

Once the wireless infrastructure was complete, wireless high speed services were made available for $56.66 per month, which included a dish that offered speeds of 1.5 mbs (much faster than DSL). In the ElginConnects solution, home owners paid $199 for installation then the monthly fee. As an added feature, ElginConnects was able to offer connection services at the same rates for residential and businesses. In contrast, Bell high speed business services were much more expensive.

The citizens became involved in ElginConnects due to grass roots community activity. The local municipal partners uploaded their own information content onto the portal and controlling its use and managing its maintenance. ElginConnects’ staff have provided training to all of its community partners for them to be able to do this. The Government of Canada Community Access Program (CAP) was helping to provide affordable public access to the Internet and the computer support and training skills needed by local residents to use it effectively. Through the combined efforts of the

Invenire4 Ltd., Ottawa, Ontario 45 COPSC Cases Elgin-St. Thomas federal and provincial governments, community groups, social agencies, libraries, schools, volunteer groups and the business community, public locations like schools, libraries and community centres have ended up acting as ʺon-rampsʺ to the information highway.

Seeing the important connection between user education and user adoption, the portal project leveraged CAP funding in order to build additional community buy-in of the portal. ElginConnects also managed the CAP funding and used the CAP centres to hold community workshops for training in the use of the portal.

The farming community was targeted as early adopters of the portal. Farmers needed information on weather, markets, new production trends, and multiple connections to services whether that was for milk composition tests or machinery parts. For example, farm machinery breakdowns costs thousands of dollars in production losses if it happens during prime planting time, or at harvesting time, so have access to repair services or new equipment was seen as an important value addition for farmers. Currently farmers can get crop insurance, access to government support programs and find equipment online.

The Community Health Centre was a member of the portal group and has moved its website to the portal as have two of the municipal Chambers of Commerce. As mentioned earlier, the municipalities have made ElginConnects their Internet gateway.

There has been very little competition from other portals. The St. Thomas Chamber of Commerce, the region’s biggest with over 500 members, has retained its own web site due to brand recognition and ongoing membership drives but there were discussions about having them join the portal in the future.

The collective participation of the communities in the region has enabled the partners to attract larger IT players, like EDS, into the project because of the larger scale and purchasing power represented by the partnership. “We have collectively invested much into the project in order to leverage larger players such as EDS.” Interviewees indicated that EDS became interested in Elgin County only after the project grew to a sufficient size due to the COPSC collaboration and the accompanying financial opportunity for them.

EDS Canada was selected as the preferred vendor out of several whom replied to the RFP to develop the community information utility portal application. They assisted in developing easy to use and rapidly deployed tools for accessing information across the region. This enabled users to search for area businesses and government offices;

Invenire4 Ltd., Ottawa, Ontario 46 COPSC Cases Elgin-St. Thomas provide information on tourism, roads and infrastructure; provide schedules of events in the County and individual municipalities; geographically based data, on-line registration for booking recreational facilities; agriculturally related e-business services, as well as e-commerce applications for payment of dog licenses, permitting, etc.

In terms of educational partners, the jurisdiction of the Thames Valley District School Board (TVDSB) extends beyond the county into London. This fact makes it inappropriate for their website to be hosted on ElginConnects. TVDSB was, however, interested in the idea of creating a student events calendar that could help capture student attention and build student user interest. Fanshawe College, which also has only a satellite campus in the area, was interested in participating the same way.

The project team wished to pursue a partnership with University of Western Ontario, and with schools locally to help provide additional Internet based programming for the schools. The Communication and Publication Committee was reviewing how the portal could best work with education authorities to be a resource for event scheduling.

Feedback loops and surveys and site interactions were regarded as critical to the success of the project. The interviewees indicated they didn’t want a [one way] ‘bulletin board’ but a [two way] ‘communication tool’. Since Bulletin boards were places where information was simply posted, it was only one-way information. The ‘communication tool’, envisioned by the portal stakeholders would solicit feedback, and discussions could have two-way information flows that would help residents to interact with one another, and to help content providers to gauge and improve upon their delivery.

Community members may interact directly with the site. For example, the functions of the Directory are available according to user settings -- guests may only view listings, registered users may view and add listings, and Administrators may do even more.

Supplying and updating content are intensive for portal administrators, and has been a central point of discussion among the partners in the project. The portal administrators were looking for an innovative way so that supplying portal content required less burden. Many of the stakeholders didn’t have the budgets to hire employees to manage their information content on the portal. Therefore they needed a system that would allow them to minimize the costs of maintaining information. Shifting the onus of maintaining content onto the various partners in the project was the option they used.

One of the main successes of the portal has been its ability to offer GIS, a feature that has added significant value to the municipal partners when broadband wireless became

Invenire4 Ltd., Ottawa, Ontario 47 COPSC Cases Elgin-St. Thomas available in the rural areas. The emergency services personnel will be able to use GIS and they have noted its effectiveness in helping with more accurate information.

The portal was described by one interviewee as “a great tool for public accountability”. As a case in point, the region’s archivist mentioned he has been putting information onto the portal, which will allow citizens to study the actions of local government and how their taxes were working for them. Maybe more importantly, since the portal has become a place where people now look to find local information, that information has to be kept up to date, and it must remain citizen centred. Otherwise, the perception was, public feedback will be quick and critical.

One next step for the portal will one of consolidation -- working out the application and the process ‘bugs’ that will permit the portal to have a solid document management system. The main advantage of an effective document management system, according to one interviewee, was in having the ability to search through 150 years of county information, land and environmental data through the use of key-word searchable engines. Again the archivist, a member of the portal management team, said they are “trying to open up all the old the boxes so the information can be published. This was going to be an extremely important tool.” This process will do much to strengthen the sense of community roots and common regional heritage.

One reason cited for the project’s successful collaboration was that the municipalities and wards all share much in common in terms of history and future challenges. One of those future challenges, for instance, was their growing need to link together as a region to deal with important issues and concerns. The increased web connectivity was seen as helpful in this regard.

They’ve already observed that with the advent of increased suburbanization, county residents are commuting more and more to their jobs, and therefore feeling less connected to their home communities. With this type of trend, people were becoming less attached to a specific locale and more to the region, and were willing to support the necessary regional partnerships to get better quality services. While “people may move to live in a little village, they want the access to services found in a big city” and a connection to the Internet facilitates this.

At the Community Health Centre, for instance, one of the partners in the project, 50% of its employees live outside the region. People commute from the cities into the area to fill the rural jobs in the area. Counter to what was often observed (rural to urban commuting), there was a shortage of skilled labour in the rural communities which was attracting urban workers to commuter to fill the void. While the Community Health

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Centre was not entirely representative, one or two other cases of the same phenomena were independently identified.

The project has been guided by a seven-member steering committee comprised of two representatives from the City (one elected, one staff) and two from the County (one elected, one staff). Also included was one representative from the ECFDC who was the Chair, one person from the community at large, and the Project Manager. The Chair of the committee held a senior management position at Dana Corporation, a large local corporation where he oversaw 1,500 employees. His experience and leadership was essential for building the collaboration necessary for the project. The project manager was also a member of a Federal Agriculture Assessment Committee and had insights into the farming community -- a large focus of the portal.

In the next phase of the project, the current management structure for the implementation of the portal will evolve to become a 6-7 member governing body elected by the stakeholders. This new governing body would oversee the maintenance of the portal and provide it with strategic direction.

The ElginConnects team has developed a marketing plan and were preparing to launch into their marketing activities early in 2006. They felt education was a key factor in getting more people involved with the portal and developing high usage levels.

Interviewees felt that one implementation area that could be improved upon was the administration of financial accountability which in their experience proved overly complex and time consuming. They recommended a more simplified process based on a more realistic understanding of the finances and the complexities associated with a project of multiple partners. Better communication with the Ministry and more consistent explanation would help to manage expectations on both sides better.

The ElginConnects team indicated that the provincially funded COBRA20, a separate sister program of COPSC, and the Industry Canada funded BRAND initiatives, were easier to administer than the COPSC project. First, the application process to obtain funding was easier and second, the reporting process required much less effort. In contrast, the COPSC reporting process was often challenging. They remarked that the difference between COBRA and COPSC was curious because COBRA was also funded through MEDT.

20 COBRA had its own distinct administrative/reporting requirements.

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The SME business community has yet to identify a strong relevance or opportunity associated with the portal. One interviewee indicated that “most small business owners were so busy running their business that they would not allocate much time to online ventures if they didn’t see a good potential return on investment or at least a positive impact.” Another remarked that a major next step for the portal “would be to properly engage the business community so that they can have to develop the right mechanisms to gain small business participation.” The assessments by the portal committee have indicated that there were a few thousand SMEs in the region, providing a sizable potential market base. The first step to include SMEs has been to build the county and city-wide business directory (which was not done before). They now have almost 3000 businesses listed. And all businesses can include calendar events, which is especially important if they are connected to tourism businesses.

The following tables, provided by ElginConnects, were obtained through the tracking mechanism they share in partnership with Industry Canada. The tables represent web traffic trends. It should be noted, however, that these tables cover a very short time period mid October to mid December 2005.

The following table suggests the degree of ‘stickiness’ of the ElginConnects site, as seen by the average length of stay per visitor.

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PART C – ASSESSMENT

FOCUS Elginconnects.ca is somewhat a model of focus and project design. The portal project was purposefully designed to be community driven in order to secure the widest possible participation.

In terms of economic development, the ElginConnects portal was the first major collaborative project undertaken in the region. It has helped them to develop a stronger regional economic perspective and they said it has spun off into other cooperative community projects.

The small business community was not a primary focus at this stage although it will be in the next stage and that focus will be strongly augmented by the farm community - collectively the largest small business group in the region.

Given the degree of MUSH sector involvement the focus on service delivery centered on improving service to citizens rather than extracting cost efficiencies and this perspective was built into the design. There was no online credit card payment function as yet but that was envisioned for phase II.

The main community health centre, the tourism promotion agencies, Community Futures Development Corporation and municipal governments have all migrated to the site and are using this as their main portal.

CHALLENGES

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The main challenge of the project was creating a complex funding model that incorporated the needs of a variety of funders. Interviewees mentioned that budgeting and financing were difficult to manage due to the changing landscape of the project. If they were to do the project over again, they would like to have had clear guidelines, and budgeting in order to move forward with less friction.

The need to concurrently upgrade the technical infrastructure was also a challenge. However, the necessity to complete the broadband / wireless infrastructure enhanced both the development and adoption of the portal. These two big projects – infrastructure and portal -- were dependent on each other so as to be synergistic. In the end, the installation of the wireless dishes and fibre optic cable has provided an alternative to Bell for rural connectivity.

The portal’s adoption will increase as public awareness grows, therefore, interviewees expressed a desire to see more ongoing publicity around the site. It was expected that marketing, fresh content, and the capacity for online transactions, will help to convey the value of the portal to end users and the continued participation of the stakeholders will help to push traffic to the site and encourage user adoption of other aspects of the portal. After the initial launch of the site the web traffic abated somewhat, reflecting a need for more education to connect the benefits of the portal more directly to residents and organizations in the region.

PROJECT STATISTICS

With the actual infrastructure construction portion of the project well underway, studies have also been conducted to examine the extent of broadband usage among rural businesses and to see what opportunities may exist to improve the business climate in Elgin through the portal and IT in general. These studies provided rich insights and information for formulating a plan for going forward.

Three phases of this new assessment were undertaken: a Baseline Assessment, an Economic Gap Analysis, and an Economic Development Plan for IT and agriculture in Elgin. Phase one baseline assessment surveyed 1733 businesses and organizes in the region concerning internet usage.

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The Economic Gap Analysis provided a profile of Elgin County and highlighted its economic drivers within the region. The data was used to compare how much more (or less) employment was being provided by industries in Elgin relative to what might be expected for this industry in a similarly sized Census Subdivision. The study revealed that many small business positions were most under-employed and that small business access to markets was a factor.

Phase three of the study looked at the agricultural sector as a basis for developing a strategic economic development plan. Using cluster analysis they looked at supply and distribution lines, among other things, that could be affected by IT.

NEW OPPORTUNITIES THAT EMERGED

In terms of new opportunities, ElginConnects has identified some new applications they would like to see built. While the portal was still incomplete, the experience with the site was allowing them to envision further applications that would of value to the community: • Streaming video was one such application that was being considered for use in education and health care as away of addressing the challenges associated with a large and much dispersed region. • Online health questionnaires also evolved. User surveys and targeted health questionnaires would help identify health problems which could then be referred to a physician for follow up.

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• Further online tests for learners who are audio or visual impaired, and then provide interactive coaching. • EDS has created a program that allows for online facility and program registrations specifically designed for rural areas. The EDS software can be used for facility booking and program registration for community groups and municipalities.

SUSTAINABILITY

ElginConnects has worked on a proactive approach to sustainability and has achieved a two year sustainability commitment. This size of the project requires careful financial analysis and budgeting to ensure they are doing the right things. The fact that they have this tremendous portal produced by cooperation of many organizations in the region that has attracted high levels of web traffic in just two months, was remarkable.

The stakeholder sub-portals would be sustained by their own organizations but the plan for the main portal is only just being finalized. At present, the members of the portal team were working together and contributing in a number of ways, including financially, to keep the content up-to-date, and to ensure ongoing portal growth and development. The Project Manager was moving to a half time position.

It was expected that long-term sustainability would come from a combination of municipal support, increased user fees for online services, and fees charged to SMEs for a for a web site on the portal once sufficient traffic was established.

The City of St. Thomas initially gave $130,000 for the construction of the portal, the County of Elgin gave $200,000 to the portal build and $150,000 for the construction of added infrastructure. These amounts were for capital costs associated with the development of the project, and not for its ongoing operating costs. However, since all the area municipalities were migrating their websites to the portal, the long term prospects for sustainability and longevity appear better. It was unlikely the municipalities will ‘walk away’ from supporting the portal. What they require was to be able to negotiate a clearer sense of roles and responsibilities.

A budget for the ongoing operational costs of the portal have not been made public yet as it was still in review. Elgin was currently developing a comprehensive marketing plan and to generate new sources of revenue through the next two years of its commitment to Connect Ontario.

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GOOD PRACTICES

The GIS application has been received as an extremely valuable tool that will help emergency and other services obtain a much more accurate picture of the region. This is useful for both emergency planning and for economic development.

The community-driven process of ElginConnects has allowed all the stakeholders in the portal to feel unthreatened by its development, to take a degree of ownership in it and to cooperate on its implementation. This process didn’t come completely easily: many community forums were held, as well as community polls and other collaborative sessions in order to establish both the need and the commitment from the various players. Despite the challenges, the leadership commitment and the management of the project had the necessary and broad vision of the benefits of collaboration to overcome them.

LESSONS LEARNED

The lessons learned by the project • Communication was critical. On a project such as this to achieve the necessary buy- in from all the partners required constant attention and relationship building. • Budgeting and planning were key. The fact that the portal team was uncertain about some of the hidden costs made the project difficult to manage. “You can only manage what you can measure.” • One recurrent issue with the project was the lack of IT human resources in the area. This reduced the project’s ability to manage the vendor and increased its reliance on outsiders. • Local politics was also a challenge. One interviewee mentioned he was not sure you can ever learn how to deal with the politics, so it just has to be managed. The County, the City and ECFDC were the three principal partners represented on the steering committee. The collaborative process was complex because of the need to coordinate among nine autonomous local governments. “It was a very fine balance that had to be struck by the governance group in order to move the project forward making constant communication extremely important to maintain this very delicate balance.”

The lessons learned by Invenire • Although there have been various organizational models used in the COPSC projects, the community based, client-driven approach proved very effective for ElginConnects. Both the partners and the users of the site had to believe it was relevant and useful to them for adoption to take place. The community driven

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approach emerged from a process that involved the right mix of leadership, collaboration, and compromise to allow it focus on the needs of end users. • In addition, connectivity was so critical at the outset, according to interviewees, that the project would have benefited from more competition between the telecom providers. • The provincial relationship could have been made smoother through a process that included more regular dialogue, better project planning (and discussions on things like budgets and expectations), more regular evaluations and the sharing of best practices21. • Sustainability is often a two-sided challenge for a project like this – with a need for finding resources both for the completion of the portal and then for its ongoing maintenance. The portal’s business plan was extremely complex due to the multiplicity of partners and public funders. Taken together, for the development of the infrastructure and the portal projects Elgin managed to secure $4.8 million of external funding through several proposals while requiring under $500,000 of direct community investment. Future sustainability regarding maintenance costs may not even reach ½ of their initial costs, and there are no ongoing costs for infrastructure. The project manager’s skills in identifying community needs and proposal writing will likely keep the portal funded for the next 2 years.

Elgin was hopeful that the commitment of senior governments extended beyond simply “buy it and forget it” in order to provide sufficient time for the regional partners to come to an understanding of how they can support the portal in the long run. This long term sustainability was seen as primarily dependent on the relationship among the municipal partners. Therefore, a review is currently underway on the appropriate governance structure to manage the ElginConnects portal over the long term.

• Given that farming was one of the most active and successful small business sectors in the region, a lot of thought was being put into achieving portal sustainability through additional support from the agricultural community. The farming community has been a key player in the economy with 90% of the expenditures made by farmers (or $260 million) being spent locally. As the farming community is involved in many transactions locally, there will be an attempt to capture some of these transactions online with e-commerce.

21 This is an interesting comment considering that relatively speaking the project officer spent a significant amount of time to help this group and kept in close touch with the project manager throughout the course of the project. The project manager for the Elgin project often sought and received assistance from the COPSC project officer.

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The collaborative process of ElginConnects ensured that the interests of farmers were being considered through all phases of the project. The project manager has been an in-house champion for the agricultural community. As President of the Elgin Federation of Agriculture, and Chair of the Rural Infrastructure Committee of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture, the Project Manager was able to draw input from stakeholders in the rural community and communicate to them the benefits of the evolving portal.

POTENTIAL NEW USES/NEW SERVICES

• The main new use has been the GIS capability for use in both land/property searches and emergency services. Utility infrastructure of water mains, sewers, hydro posts, lamps, etc have been GPS’d for 3 towns and a databases will be built to provide efficient utility management • Once the mapping application is complete, users will be able to ‘click on’ the addresses of the businesses in the business directory to view the accurate location • Tourist routes, featuring wine tours, museum tours, etc. will become available • A database will be built for potential site selectors for business relocation • Municipal partners were considering the use of streaming video to broadcast Council meetings. • An agreement with the company Farms.com allowed the portal to ‘screen scrape’ the recent information from Farms.com, so that the portal didnʹt have to duplicate farm information and it was always up to date through an automatic feed. Farms.com also expressed an interest in working more with the portal to help develop the agricultural sector further. The portal now provides up-to-date graphs of grain grown and marketed in the region. • Tools were being developed to send pictures of ill animals over high speed Internet to vets (to help ensure bio-security), and pictures of plant problems to crop specialists (who may be too far away). • Since the migration of the Elgin Federation of Agriculture’s web site to the portal an agricultural research and newsletter were being considered for the portal site. • The County archivist was planning to have all the County’s archive information uploaded and be able to conduct online transactions for historic photos, information etc.

NEW TECHNOLOGY DIRECTIONS

The project has partnered with Agri E-Services to build a loans/liens database specifically designed to provide practical benefits for farmers.

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RECOMMENDATIONS BY PROJECTS FOR FUTURE CONSIDERATION

Project planning • The interviewees felt it would have been very useful to have better advice on the challenges and pitfalls of a project like this, together with a good step by step template for going ahead with it. • This was one area where the community excelled through the use of its consultative process. The Project team recommended that similar consultative processes and the resources to support them be built into comparable projects in the future.

Delivery of public services • It would have been nice to be able to provide sample metrics to bolster the project team’s argument with municipalities on the potential cost savings to the communities • It would be interesting to conduct a study of Internet adoption by the farm producers and their use of the portal and its services.

Community partnerships • The project would have been more manageable if it was possible to instil the idea to build the project bottom-up from the community/user level. This implies taking time to build more grass roots support. • The project currently has no metrics to measure the cost saving impacts for the municipalities. They would very much like to know if there are any templates or best practices for tracking or measuring these types of benefits.

Technology • Having in place a broadband infrastructure for high speed Internet access was an essential first element. In future it was felt that the infrastructure and portal application initiatives be sequential rather than concurrent. • A better assessment of the technology needs of key players and ensuring that the technology being provided was what those players needed22 would be important to ensure their commitment. • As in Elgin there can sometimes be a need to bring in outside expertise due to a lack of expert local resources. This then leads to a technology transfer requirement to develop local experts and educate the public on an ongoing basis as to how to use the technology or there will be no adoption.

22 The needs assessment was a part of the COPSC business planning phase. The community’s recommendation is that more time and resources be dedicated to this crucial phase of the project.

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Provincial relationship • There needs to be a more open, clear relationship with the Province, with clear expectations • The Province has an important knowledge broker role. They could have been better at disseminating lessons learned from earlier projects, best practices, budgeting practices and other factors.

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3. Hamilton Project Title: Connect Hamilton- Create Community (now myhamilton)

URL: http://www.myhamilton.ca Launch Date: September 2005 Completion Date: January 31, 2006

Part A -- The Logic Model

COMMUNITY PROFILE This community is distinguished by: • High population density (438) and an overall population of approximately 500,000 • The newly amalgamated City includes a number of rural communities. • The economy is based mainly on manufacturing and service industries although agriculturally related industry accounts for $1 billion and 4% of the total. • The effective economic development region extends from Toronto to Niagara to Buffalo and Syracuse. • myhamilton was driven primarily by public sector. There are clear divisions between private, public and civic sectors although there have been many local initiatives where those boundaries have been crossed. • There are a number of important institutional and associative portals in Hamilton two of which have been integrated into myhamilton, others which might be later on, and still others which may never be integrated. • Although Connect Ontario catalyzed the portal in Hamilton, its evolution was not entirely dependent on COPSC. If COPSC had not existed, there would likely have been others to help.

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Demographics Project area coverage (sq km) 1,117.1 Employment All Industry sectors (2001) 243,710.0 Manufacturing 64,775.0 Population 490,268.0 Retail 39,940.0 Health 35,735.0 Population density 438.9 Education 23,710.0 Accommodation & food services 20,550.0 Construction 19,565.0 Regional GDP (millions) 25,926.0 Professional, scientific & technic 17,990.0 Wholesale 17,385.0 Regional GDP per Capita 52,881.0 Other services 16,255.0 Finance 15,500.0 Demography Transportation and warehousing 15,090.0 Median Age 37.8 Administrative, support, etc. 14,070.0 Average household size 2.6 Public administration 12,645.0 % Youth (< 25) 32.2 Information and cultural industries 8,005.0 % students (5-14 + fulltime 15+) 21.1 Real estate and rental and leasin 6,125.0 % Seniors (65+) 14.2 Arts, entertainment and recreatio 5,990.0 % visible minorities 9.8 Agriculture, forestry, fishing and h 4,320.0 % Aboriginal 1.1 Utilities 1,825.0 % Immigrants (since 1991) 6.3 Mining and oil and gas extraction 475.0 % English 76.8 Management of companies 340.0 % French 1.5 % Non Eng or FR 21.5 Internet Access (2003) % w/ degrees/diplomas (20-64) 41.1 Home 57.5 Average earnings 35,360.0 Business 35.7 Labourforce (2005) 391,700.0 School 26.9 Participation rate (2005) 67.2 Overall 66.1 Employment rate (2005) 63.2 Type (dial-up, wireless, cable, DS28.8bps dial Unemployment rate (2005) 5.9 # public internet access sites Median Income 24,987.0 % from Earnings 78.0 Eco-Dev % from Transfers 10.5 Local Venture capital % low income 16.7 Destination Trips by Canadians (2 1,766.0

# Firms Service Ontario Centre #1.0 LEs (> 500 empl) Kiosks 2.0 Distance to nearest #17.0 # employees Access to Revenue Airports % of GDP International 1.0 Local 1.0 SMEs (< 500 emp) Distance to nearest in 50.0 # Local Flights per mon 5,505.0 # employees ratio of Small bus employment to total empl Health Self employment Hospitals 4.0 SME Revenues Distance to nearest hospital % of GDP Primary Medical care

SME support Courts # C-OBSC 1.0 Distance to nearest court Distance to nearest Colleges 1.0 Patent Office Colleges w/in communting distan 7.0 Distance to nearest patent office Universities 2.0 Universities w/in communting dis 10.0 Invenire4 Ltd., Ottawa, Ontario 61 COPSC Cases Hamilton

Geo-spatial profile The geographic scope of the Connect Hamilton project is the newly amalgamated City of Hamilton that includes the old Regional Municipality of Hamilton-Wentworth and its local municipalities Stoney Creek, Ancaster, Glanbrook, Dundas and Flamborough. The new City comprises 1,117.1 sq. km. with an overall population of 490,268 and a population density of 438.9 per/ sq. km. 65 % of the City’s land is now rural with a population of 122,000.

Economic profile Hamilton’s $26 billion economy is primarily manufacturing based with over 18,000 businesses. While steel is the largest employer, the economy has also diversified into advanced manufacturing, biotechnology and healthcare. The agricultural sector contributes approximately $1 billion annually to Hamilton’s economy and port related activities another $1.5 billion annually. The effective economic development region extends from Toronto to Niagara and across the border to Buffalo, Rochester, and Syracuse.

Technology profile Basic infrastructure connectivity • Hamilton’s rural community has experienced gaps in service and low bandwidth. Initially, there was only one supplier that covered both rural and urban areas, Bell. Other carriers did not operate outside the urban areas. A wireless infrastructure was planned. • Myhamilton had its roots as an expanded version of a local business directory produced by the City of Hamilton - Economic Development Department, Services Canada (formerly HRDC), the Hamilton Public Library (HPL) and Community Information Services (CIH). • PICHamilton provided an online index to community information • Throughout the urban portion of the City there was a fibre optic network and high speed Internet access from the beginning of the project. There were also fibre links to MUSH sector buildings including the suburban and rural libraries. What tended to be lacking was the ‘last mile solution’ in the rural areas. The Hamilton Wentworth Information Network (HWIN) project in collaboration with McMaster, the HPL, Freenet and the school boards was concurrently developing a wireless solution to make high speed broadband available throughout the urban and rural parts of the City.

Internet penetration rate

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• In 2000 Statistics Canada estimated23 that 55% of Hamilton’s population had access to the Internet at some location or another. In 2003 that figure was 66% and today it’s more like 70%.

User / business sophistication • The Internet sophistication of users and businesses in Hamilton was moderate to high. Among the City’s population, those with no or very limited Internet access included seniors, unemployed, new Canadians, the disabled, the illiterate and some rural residents.

Social capital profile Private-public-civic interaction • Hamilton had numerous community networking groups which had very diversified experience, expertise and desire to champion the initiative. • The Library, a principal player, has a strong community orientation and history of community partnership. • The project had undertaken several public consultations, open houses and surveys to ensure public support.

Cross-linkages between organizations • Most key people had worked together on many community projects. “Hamilton is the biggest small town in Canada. We tend to support each other.”

Dominant player & relation to others • The City had mandated departmental participation in this project as part of its e- government strategy. At the outset, there were no local sites that enabled residents to transact with government over the Internet. • While the City of Hamilton was a big player in community life, it was not the only player. “We don’t presume that we are everything in this city. We don’t stand in front directing. We stand with key stakeholders.” • As the project lead the City was the one organization that was accountable for the portal project and responsible for meeting the obligations as set out in the agreement with the Province.

Role of champion • The HPL was a key player providing staff resources and financing. The Chief Librarian was Co-Director on the project and HPL staff participated on the Steering

23 Based the data of Hamilton CMA

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Committee. It became the principal champion (as opposed to the lead) because it was seen as a neutral broker amongst local stakeholders.

Culture/values • Hamilton has a strong community culture. “It’s easy to make big things happen.”

Maturity profile (demand and supply development) • Consumer demand for online information and services in the urban areas was high. In the rural areas, demand was more mixed. • While the supply of high speed access varied in the rural areas, competitive technical suppliers who could provide portal technology or software applications were all available locally. So much so that one interviewee commented that, “if Connect Ontario hadn’t done it [a portal], someone else would have.”

Needs assessment Stimulate economic development • Changes in farming practices and technology required rural residents to acquire new skills, new tools and new systems for implementing change. • Changes in societal and consumer expectations required adaptation to new regulations and legislation around agriculture and an ability to adapt to the global agricultural marketplace. • Need to encourage more rural participation in knowledge economy • Need for farmers and other small business people to access reliable quality information in a timely fashion. • Need to build a more uniform telecommunications infrastructure and provide more equitable service access between rural and urban areas. • Need to encourage the development of a tech savvy labour force

Social service delivery • Need to compensate for urban Hamilton’s attractiveness to economically challenged residents (urban Hamilton had more than twice the percentage of people in poverty as its surrounding rural areas) • Need to address the additional social burden of urban Hamilton which has a higher percentage of seniors and a lower level of post secondary education than provincial averages.

Municipal efficiencies • Need to improve customer response times of municipal officials and inter- departmental workings • Need to reduce municipal service delivery costs, especially to rural areas

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• The amalgamation of the City of Hamilton made some gaps in regional information more evident, creating a need to more fully integrate the City’s information with the online information in the community. • Need to improve citizen participation in consultations by City

Strengthen sense of community • Need to draw people together around a common focal point • Need to strengthen a sense of common identity across all areas of the new City • Need to improve communication between stakeholder groups

Assumptions • Increasing bandwidth will increase usage and reduce government costs of service delivery. • Internet applications will increase opportunities for connectivity within communities • A portal will help build greater social cohesion • A portal will help promote a wider range of community views and greater citizen participation in government decisions • The migration of some municipal services to transactional service delivery over the Internet will permit greater efficiencies at the local and provincial level. Cost savings will be redirected to support the ongoing costs of maintaining the portal. • Stimulating local Internet usage through the provision of meaningful applications will increase network demand and therefore support the IT sector in Hamilton. • Hamilton’s technological and community capacities will grow by encouraging more Internet demand and sophistication. • Webcasting will improve community feedback to the City. • The creation of an online payment process for the City will result in the same service being made available for community and non profit groups. • The Connect Ontario project will increase the awareness and marketability of Hamilton as a place to do business.

PROJECT PROFILE

Partners Lead Partner: The City of Hamilton

At the outset, the other partners included:

Public Private Hamilton Public Library Hamilton Connects

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Community Information Services Hamilton Community Network City of Hamilton, Economic FibreWired Hamilton Development Dept. City of Hamilton, IT Services Intermedium Mohawk College CLASS Software Solutions McMaster University Hamilton Agri-Rural Affairs Advisory Committee Hamilton Chamber of Commerce

The myhamilton team consisted of an 11-member Steering Committee that included the principal partners with many other groups participating through various sub portals and areas of interest, and it was led by the City of Hamilton. Originally the project was the inspiration of a local non-profit group, ‘Hamilton Connects’, the Hamilton Public Library and the City of Hamilton as a product of the City’s IT strategy. Towards the end of the business planning phase, the Hamilton Connects organization became insolvent (for unrelated reasons) and leadership passed to the City. The project’s main individual champion left Hamilton Connects and became myhamilton’s project manager and an employee of the City. The myhamilton steering committee was co-chaired by the Library and the City.

Investment Total Project Cost: $3,900,000

Provincial Funding: $1,000,000 Leverage: 3.9

Partner Funding: $2,900,000 Direct: $1,800,000 In-kind: $1,100,000

Information to be provided In general, the myhamilton project aimed to create a single gateway to all relevant sources of information on the community. The expectation was that myhamilton would blend and balance information and services for a diverse urban/rural population. The portal would not replicate local content. The project would focus initially on rural interests. The local libraries would provide training in the effective use of the Internet and online services. Among the proposed information and service resources were:

Municipal Services X Agriculture Services X Municipal Information X Agriculture Information X Business Services Youth Services Business Information X Youth Information Children’s Services Senior Services

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Children’s Information Senior Information Small Business Services Employment Services X Small Business Information X Employment Information X Health Services Recreation Services X Health Information X Recreation Information X Education Services Library Services X Education Information X Library Information X Cultural Events X Community Services X Virtual Tours X Community Information X Gateway to Federal Services X Gateway to Provincial Services X Gateway to Federal Information X Gateway to Provincial Information X Gateway to News providers X

Applications to be provided

Prior to myhamilton Proposed via COPSC PICHamilton – web links for culture, tourism, Gateway Portal (mix) community, education, government, health & social services Business directory Rural sub portal (possibly education, health & business portals) Tourism content Full integration w/ the City’s e-services Bitnet - community organization info Central data repository on the region Library resources Ecommerce transactions CISHW – order forms for purchasing info on Transactional (info) & Registration community organizations Hamilton-Wentworth Community Network – News services, notices, & alerts affordable Internet access Intermedium – info on events & forums Interactive multimedia Chamber of Commerce – info on local business Authentication Inform – database of local programs & services Search engine Content management & content registry Data retrieval and provision Mapping of local data (GIS) Web casting Online CRM Community Collaboration space Discussion groups Personalized calendar Threaded discussions Content sharing Online surveys & feedback

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ACHIEVEMENTS

Outputs Completed • The Community portal is fully functional. It has fully integrated and replaced both the previously existing library and municipal websites. It has also integrated access to the Tourism Hamilton website. It has completed most of the applications envisioned - including RecConnect; the business and community services directories; municipal e-commerce; and GIS functions - with links to almost every City of Hamilton department, childcare locations, locations of commercial property available for sale or lease, and even the tracking of public health risks. • It also completed portals for arts and recreation, education, health and business.

Incomplete • While all portal features and functionality have been developed into the portal application, there are several features which were not fully available on the portal because of a lack of a community lead to manage and maintain these services on behalf of the community. These included: community webcasting; community e- commerce; the community collaboration space; and one application related to the rural portal. The rural portal itself did not have the prominence proposed in the Business Plan. In absence of a clear community lead, the Steering Committee made a decision in early 2005 to focus on features that were both essential and doable by the September 2005 launch24.

Next phase • Mostly consolidation and evaluation. Within three years they feel the portal will be complete and solid. • There is a need to finish the development of outstanding features -- webcasting; community e-commerce; community collaboration space; the rural portal and its associated applications • There is a need to firm up sustainability plans for the non-municipal and non-library sub portals

Outcomes • myhamilton is encouraging not-for-profit organizations to communicate and coordinate among themselves.

24 The City’s perspective is that the choice not to proceed with these features was the choice of community representatives rather than the result of a pragmatic decision to do what was doable in the time that was available.

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• The portal’s integration with the City and Hamilton Public Library sites is driving web traffic to other areas of community interest on the portal and in some instances is driving additional traffic to the City and Library sites. • The existence of the portal is helping to drive an online Economic Development Information System for the City

Impacts • “The full scope of voluntary sector is becoming more visible.” • myhamilton is helping to lead to a restructuring in the not-for-profit sector. “As the smaller not-for-profits become more aware of each other, several are going the route of mergers and acquisitions as they consider how best to meet the needs of their clients.” Others are becoming more closely affiliated with business networks like the Hamilton Chamber of Commerce and other associations which can bring together entrepreneurs and civic entrepreneurs.

Indications of ROI

No comment

Part B – Hamilton’s Story

Before COPSC, the City of Hamilton, the Hamilton Public Library (HPL) and Services Canada (formerly HRDC), in partnership with the Hamilton Chamber had worked together to develop a local business directory and a directory of community service providers called the HWBIN (Hamilton-Wentworth Business Information Network. The Library worked with a number of community partners to develop a website gateway to community information and services called PICHamilton (Public Information Centre Hamilton).

The Hamilton Public Library’s involvement with the business directory was undertaken because it was undergoing a self-concept change, seeing itself in the business of information provision rather than in just the book lending business. The HPL saw community information as a social good and began working with businesses, schools, not-for-profits, and regional libraries to collect and disseminate it. And while the business directory was developed by the City of Hamilton - Economic Development Department, Services Canada (formerly HRDC) and the Hamilton Public Library (HPL) it eventually found a home with the Community Information Centre of Hamilton, a non profit, voluntary organization whose job is to link residents to services and resources in the community.

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The myhamilton project began with ‘Hamilton Connects’, a local non-profit organization, which was helping community organizations make better use of technology for achieving their goals. When the Connect Ontario opportunity became available Hamilton Connects submitted a Letter of Intent in September 2001 and received notice of funding for the development of a business plan in November 2001. In March 2002 the project received the ‘go ahead’ to proceed with a business plan. Towards the end of the business planning phase, Hamilton Connects became insolvent (for unrelated reasons) and the myhamilton leadership passed to the City. It was underscored to the reviewers that this was a community project and that the City only took leadership of it to bring it to fruition. “They took a strong stand in the face of strong financial difficulties at the time. It was a great leap of faith.” The principal individual champion left Hamilton Connects and later became myhamilton’s project manager and an employee of the City.

Hamilton City Council approved the project and Council’s commitments to it in February 2003. The business plan was submitted in March 2003 and approved in August 2003. The contribution agreement with the Province was signed in the fall of 2003. The project’s first step was to issue an RFP for services in November 2003, an RFP which closed in early 2004. The project manager was hired in February 2004 and Hamilton City Council approved the vendor selection in April 2004. The portal was launched in September 2005 after an extension from June. It is important to note that what was to be a two-year implementation project became a 16-month project because of delays due to partner agreements, contract signing, municipal approvals and the RFP process.

The City was seen as the main driver of the implementation process. Day-to-day operations of the project were run out of the City’s IT Division. The City and its team of senior managers together with Council were collectively responsible and accountable for the delivery of the portal. The City received much assistance from the Library and their staff. For some, the HPL was perceived to be the neutral broker to in this community partnership because it was a quasi-municipal and quasi-community organization. The Library further cemented the partnership by encouraging common progress on such non-threatening projects as the events calendar. “Through the calendar each member of the community could begin to see themselves and others.” The project office was housed in the City’s ITS division which is physically located in the Central Library building as are the offices of Community Information Hamilton, the current maintainers of the business and community database.

Administration

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One of the major issues for myhamilton was their relationship with the Province. “The administration of the project was a difficult adventure.” According to the interviewees, reporting guidelines were regularly (and seemingly-arbitrarily) changed by the Province. “The guidelines were draft guidelines and they still are. It’s like they wanted to keep their options open, seeming to commit while not committing to anything.” From the perspective of the steering committee “there seemed to be no rhyme or reason” to those changes.

As a consequence, there was uncertainty among some interviewees about whether the project would be repeated if given the chance. “At this stage no one at the City believes the myhamilton project was worth $1 million because of all the unrecognized in-kind costs associated with the partner agreements, with the burden of quarterly and annual reporting, and the lack of consistency on the part of the Province.” The myhamilton team also complained that the relationship with Ministry staff kept changing with each new person having a different interpretation of what was required. “We were fortunate that the City did in fact take over the lead role and the responsibility for accounting because the City had its own staff of lawyers and accountants and budgets independent of the project. Otherwise, we would have crumbled under the weight of the Province’s demands.”

The challenges associated with the role of the project manager as a leader of a collaborative team did not seem to be appreciated. “What the Province clearly didn’t seem to understand was that they were not the only master in this collaboration. We were trying to produce the best product and keep everyone happy at the same time – City Council, City administrators (including the Library), community partners, vendors, steering committee members as well as the Province.”

The situation was further complicated by what appeared to be an additional misunderstanding about how a municipality operates. “First Council has to authorize the legal agreement and related expenditures -- a time consuming process in itself. But any amendment to an agreement has to go back to Council for approval as well.” Then “second, the City doesn’t audit programs, it audits business lines. The City had to set up a completely parallel accounting system. One person estimated the parallel reporting structure cost to be approximately $500,000 in unbudgeted, in-kind expenses25. “The Province should take into consideration who is leading the project.”

“With the Partner Agreements everybody’s legal department had to get involved,” making things more difficult and delaying the project further. The conditions and

25 An amount considered very high by the Province.

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policies attached to these agreements all had to mesh with the City’s internal policies and, if they didn’t, it required the City to develop and have approved by Council any new policy26. “It’s sad because the challenges of the COPSC administration made many people lose sight of why they were doing the project in the first place.”

When the portal was launched in September 2005 it completely supplanted the websites of both the City and the Hamilton Public Library. There was a reaction from some quarters at the City that the Hamilton Public Library had hijacked the City’s website. “They were concerned about losing their departmental brands and identities.” Interestingly, there were others at the Library who felt that the City had hijacked the Library. In the end the support of senior management in both organizations was crucial. The City’s City Manager and the Chief Librarian apparently communicated messages to their subordinates saying essentially “we’ve decided this is the way we are going, so get over it and move on”. This was an important ‘failsafe’ mechanism.

Despite a recent launch, there is some anecdotal evidence that the community is embracing the portal. In the first three months there were 1,305,455 unique visits to the portal (averaging 435,000 visits per month) with those visitors averaging seven page views per visit and spending on average about six minutes each time on the site. In addition, the HPL has had 300 new Library members generated from the portal. Hamilton’s McMaster University was impressed enough to want to develop a research partnership with myhamilton and has already received a grant to assess the portal’s impact on the community. One element of the McMaster study will explore whether the data generated by portal – how many people are seeking what kind of information and services – can be leveraged to understand the dynamics of the community better.

Rural Communities27 The myhamilton business plan had as its primary focus serving the needs of Hamilton’s rural communities. This rural focus was encouraged by the Province as a condition for acceptance. COPSC program was not designed to be municipally centric. According to the interviewees, the importance of this rural focus in the portal was embraced by all the members of the steering committee.

It is evident from a review of the portal that this rural emphasis did not translate itself well into the portal implementation. Although there are other sub portals (referred to as ‘channels’) clearly present on myhamilton (education, health, business, arts and

26 The Ontario Municipal Board already monitors municipal policies 27 The City and the portal management do not agree with these observations and comments

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recreation), by comparison, the link to a rural channel is diminutive and the proposed suite of rural applications has yet to be launched.

Several reasons have been suggested by interviewees. One was that it took much longer to work with rural stakeholders than expected to develop services for them. Since there was never any thought of doing the rural applications without input from rural stakeholders, so when it came time to decide on what or what not to complete prior to the portal’s launch, the rural channel and applications were just too far behind.

Another reason suggested was that it was difficult to engage the rural communities. “The problem is that the rural population is much more spread out and there’s not much cohesion among them. Farmers tend to either lack the technical knowledge and/or be very busy, having little time to invest in the meetings needed to develop the type of applications we considered at the outset of the project28.” Still another suggestion was that there was a generational divide among those younger farmers who were adept at using technology and the older ones who were not because they didn’t see the benefits.

These realities were also spoken to in other rural communities, but by comparison what Hamilton really appeared to be missing was a clearly identifiable rural champion and a clear statement of what rural needs the portal would address (“what’s in it for them”). None of the interviewees suggested that the non-rural partners didn’t care about the rural communities. From the interviews what seemed to emerge was a sense that the non-rural partners were just preoccupied with their own tight deadlines and when the time came to set priorities there was no strong voice to advocate for the rural communities. Interviewees made the point that the work with the rural communities is still ongoing and we were told it will eventually be completed.

Community engagement The primary tool for engaging the general public has been the embedding the City and HPL websites into the portal and encouraging those users to explore other elements of myhamilton. “The foundation of our success will be the [portal’s] volume of traffic.” The portal team also gave over 100 community presentations to educate various community groups of on the portal’s potential benefits in terms of reduced time, cost savings, increased profile and traffic for their own sites, and increased overall business. It was strongly felt by the portal’s leadership that engaging the community on the portal had to go beyond typical users. Among the 40% of the City’s population which has limited or no Internet access are seniors, unemployed, new Canadians, the disabled,

28 These included a rural sub-portal with web casting, an event calendar and e-commerce applications

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and the illiterate. These people also happen to be part of the ‘high needs’ population with regard to public sector service provision. It was suggested that increasing the number of online services would do little to improve service quality for these people since they generally don’t have Internet access in the first place, and especially if over- the-counter services were withdrawn.

“Previous experience [in Hamilton] with infrastructure projects funded by government has shown a tendency on the part of senior levels of government to assume that a one- time capital investment will purchase on-going delivery of services.” This “build it and forget it” attitude was seen as by several interviewees as extremely short sighted. “Once a technology implementation is complete only then does the real usage begin and only then does the real demand for staff become apparent.” With more usage, the demand for information increases, help and support services increase, equipment needs replacing every 3-4 years, and the threats of viruses and hacking also increase.

Service delivery While the City has been successful at creating an e-commerce facility for the payment of fines, licences and recreational registrations, the original proposal included extending this resource to the voluntary sector. This has not occurred because of a lack of “community champion” to lead, drive and maintain this service on behalf of other community agencies. Thus the community e-commerce tool has not been made available to the public as has the idea of a “Show and Sell” application for the rural community which would require the same resource to support it. Community e- commerce was awaiting a collective decision about what organization might be the new ‘anchor tenant’ to collect, distribute and account for online transactions. The City was taking an arm’s length position in this regard and leaving it up to the new Community Portal Advisory Committee (CPAC replaces the Steering Committee) to decide.

In addition, myhamilton has not launched its ‘collaboration space’ for voluntary sector organizations. The proposal envisioned threaded discussion forums and chat rooms, but other ideas in the proposal included web hosting, the use of calendars, webcasting, and polling features. “We didn’t know quite how to define this,” said one interviewee and so as the launch deadline approached a decision was made to postpone the development of the collaboration space until sometime after the September launch. According to another interviewee, “the not-for-profits feel disappointed and left behind. From their perspective myhamilton is only 75% completed.”29

29 The project manager does not agree with this statement.

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There was a clear concern expressed to the reviewers that the Province might wish to use the portal as a vehicle for providing provincial services. “Many of the community partners at the table have had experience with the “downloading” of service delivery from senior levels of government without appropriate consultation or compensation. The myhamilton partners delivered e-services through the portal [but] they also provided the resources to support those services, including end-user support to service clients.”

In contrast, it was pointed out, “the Ministry of Education announced curriculum changes not long ago and that the changes would be available through the local libraries. Only the Ministry didn’t consider talking to the libraries. The result was that when a flood of people came to the libraries, Internet, computer and customer service support for accessing the curriculum changes were provided by the libraries not the Ministry and no attempt was made by the Ministry to compensate the libraries for doing the Ministry’s work.” Nor could library staffers provide adequate answers to citizens in an area for which they had no training.

This is a problem that is apparently not unique to the Province for it was also pointed out that a similar thing happened with the federal government’s gun registry. “Libraries in rural areas where gun registry interest was great had the dual task of showing a great influx of people how to use computers and the Internet as well as advising people about the gun registry law. This ‘downloading’ of customer service to voluntary organizations and libraries does not save costs, it merely shifts them elsewhere while reducing the quality of service.” “Previous experience with infrastructure projects funded by senior levels of government has shown a tendency on the part of government to assume that a one-time capital investment will purchase on-going delivery of services.” This “build it and forget it” attitude was seen as extremely short sighted. “Once a technology implementation is complete only then does the real usage begin and only then does the real demand for staff become apparent.” With more usage, the demand for information increases, help and support services increase, equipment needs replacing every 3-4 years, and the threats of viruses and hacking also increase.

Small Business The business directory was developed by the City’s Economic Development Department, HRDC and HPL. Local companies will be able to update their own information in the directory and the onus will be largely on them to keep it current. However, annually a survey of companies will be conducted to ensure completeness.

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One interviewee suggested that a driver for developing the directory was public sector cost reduction around information collection. There was an assumption that the directory would be good for small business but, according to one source, little was done to understand the business case around what information to compile, why businesses would use it or why they would make the effort to update their information. Said one business leader, “No one ever asked why small businesses needed a business directory in the first place.”30

Several interviewees suggested that getting small businesses owners to use the portal might prove difficult because many of them felt that the use of the Internet for their businesses was unnecessary given that they had done well enough using phones and faxes. Therefore for SMEs, the adoption challenge centred on whether there were sufficiently clear and immediate benefits provided by either the portal or the tools on the portal. “The effort that’s needed is to provide more education to SMEs about the potential benefits of the portal. You need almost one-to-one education.” It was anticipated that over time, the adoption levels among small businesses will inevitably change as young students familiar with the Internet become themselves small business owners. Yet in the meantime, “a lot of ground work would have to be done first to understand what the benefits for SMEs are, the proportion of SMEs that might benefit and the return for the Province for doing anything about.” The cost benefit of all this was uncertain.

The Hamilton Chamber of Commerce was a member of the Steering Committee initially but the individual representing the Chamber withdrew because of a conflict of interest and was replaced by the Chamber’s CEO but who eventually withdrew as well. It was explained that the Hamilton Chamber was small with only one unattached resource, the CEO, to do everything. From the Chamber’s perspective myhamilton was a great tool for the community and they continue to support it. However, the Chamber continues to publish its own member-generated business directory on which they earn a significant amount of revenue each year. Consequently they have no plan to abandon it in favour of myhamilton. In fact, if myhamilton were to compete directly by charging member fees or seeking advertising, then the Chamber would likely resist. While the portal no longer has Chamber representation on CPAC, the portal has representation on the Chamber’s science and technology committee.

One interviewee remarked that “if Connect Ontario hadn’t come along someone else would have done it. That may or may not have been the City.” As an illustration, there

30 This may also be explained in the low level of involvement by small business organizations such as the Chamber of Commerce in shaping the directory

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was a local IT firm that initially appeared to be a portal competitor and that undertook extensive market research on developing a local portal. But that firm decided it couldn’t compete with the public sector dollars invested in myhamilton.

Economic development Although economic development was not a priority when the myhamilton project was proposed, the business and industry area on the portal included links to several business directories, including those of three local Chambers. The economic development section of the myhamilton site is managed and maintained by the economic development department of the City. It is expected that the portal will play a role in economic development by driving web traffic to access more online utilities and information such GIS mapping, site selector, and local statistics.

One interviewee, however, suggested that economic development for Hamilton was a function of regional and cross border concerns as demonstrated by the Canada – U.S. BorderNet Alliance. The BorderNet Region extends from Toronto, to Hamilton, St. Catherine’s, and Niagara Falls, and to Buffalo, Rochester, and Syracuse in New York State. Although there may be an opportunity to use the myhamilton site to promote the region by coordinating among regional partners, the BorderNet Alliance has as yet been unable to accomplish this. Given this, Hamilton’s needs for economic development may require more federal than Provincial assistance.

Marketing & Adoption The most important and successful marketing decision for myhamilton was to imbed both the City’s and the Library’s websites into the portal. Given the city’s size, it would have been impractical to depend on educational efforts alone to move people onto the portal. Instead, the large volumes of web traffic to both the City and the Library appear to be attracting people to other facets of the portal.

Nonetheless, providing education about the portal, its uses and benefits was an important adoption strategy for myhamilton. The portal team gave over 100 community presentations to educate various groups of potential users how they might benefit from the portal in terms of time, money, increased traffic to their own sites, and increased business. Their key slide was always “It’s about me [the user]”.

The education sessions were also used to derive feedback from the community to help ensure the portal’s development was on track to satisfy people’s needs. This was done in addition to the usability tests that were conducted. The team believed the portal’s development would evolve continuously through their ongoing learning about what people want, what the technology can do and what people will accept. “We can build a

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Cadillac but if people only want and will use a golf cart then we need to build something less sophisticated and build up their expectations over time.”

Governance The myhamilton team was led by an 11-member Steering Committee that included the six principal public partners along with other community representatives. In addition, there were other groups who participated in steering groups for the various sub portals and areas of interest. Representatives from the HPL and the City co-chaired the steering committee.

The governance of the portal’s steering committee was very much influenced by the organizational mandate of the partner representatives. “If they valued partnerships and community capacity building we were more successful. If not, we were less so,” said one interviewee. “It was relatively easy to hold the partnership together,” said another. “Sometimes there were challenges trying to get the ‘right person’ on the steering committee and the ‘right person’ changed over time. Initially we may have needed more IT people and now we need more policy people.”

It was suggested that the new governing body of myhamilton, CPAC, needed to ensure that there was stronger involvement by civic groups in that governance. A more arm’s length relationship by the City has been proposed to facilitate more voluntary sector organizations playing a role. Many of the implementation challenges were a direct reflection of the demands being made on the time of decision makers. The public sector in general has been experiencing increasing demands and has fewer resources to meet them. This puts huge pressure on the time of senior managers. Securing effective cooperation required that senior people participate but the value of that participation was not recognized. “While MEDT wanted us to account for every bit of our employees’ time nowhere was there recognition of senior staff time.” Yet it was the dedication and commitment of these senior people that really made the project work. This was illustrated by a story of Steering Committee members photocopying the final business plan in the middle of the night before its submission deadline in Toronto.

Looking Ahead Hamilton was one of the COPSC communities that became interested in the Seniors’ Portal after being approached by the Ministry of Citizenship and Immigration. The Seniors’ Portal was developed as a joint venture between the province and the federal government. It was developed for a community (Brockville) which had no portal and few resources to create one. According to several myhamilton interviewees, the assumption by the representatives of the Seniors’ Portal was that other communities

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should adopt it in toto. There was no option to obtain database information or portal code to be able to integrate it with the myhamilton solution. Worse (for Hamilton) they wanted Hamilton to supply the Seniors’ Portal with their data, duplicating the local effort. After investigating it, myhamilton decided to pass on the Seniors’ Portal because it was too centrally driven -- telling communities how the service ought to be provided, not helping the communities provide a local service. However, Hamilton has committed to participating in this initiative post launch sometime later in 2006.

With respect to potential new roles for helping small business, the Province could, for instance, help in the sourcing of opportunities and products, but “they would need to provide us with a data map and indicate how they could deliver that data to us. myhamilton could easily collaborate on such an initiative and could potentially work to sell such a service to small business in Hamilton.”

Compared to other community portals, students have made a big contribution to the success of myhamilton.ca. A lot of Mohawk College’s in-kind contribution came from the use of coop students and summer work term placements. “It was more than just inexpensive labour.” Marketing students at the College under the direction of one of the professors developed the marketing plan. Media students did sample webcasts establishing the processes and the costs. The students were exposed to a real life community technology project and interfaced with real people who developed aspects of the portal site or were part of organizations that would use the site. The College was very hands on with myhamilton’s development, particularly in 2005.

In contrast to some comments about a possible misalignment between the portal and the community, one observer commented “myhamilton has been very sensitive to people’s needs. It is clearly a community portal – not the portal of the City, Mohawk College, the Library, or the University.” What made it this way, according to one steering committee member, was the policy standards it operates under. The rules for participation in the portal are simple. First, people are liable for what they say; and second, people have to say things in a positive way. That is, people can express any opinion they want so long as it doesn’t denigrate someone else or cause them harm. “For some organizations this was very unsettling because they saw this as a loss of their public brand. Now their opinion had to compete with those of others.”

What people learned, and are still learning, was that “public debate is OK” and that the process of debate can move their ideas to the top of the reputational mountain much more powerfully than branding ever could because people will have compared alternatives first. “That is, if the ideas merit such recognition in the first place.” Said

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another interviewee, “I think it is very promising that we are creating a community structure where competing viewpoints can coexist.”

Several interviewees suggested that “the Province still needs to put some attention on recognizing what has already been achieved. Even at this stage, most provincial ministries have little idea of the successes of Connect Ontario.” Another put it succinctly, “From our perspective, the Province started it, the Province funded it, the Province has been part of it and it should remain a part of it. It can’t just walk away.”

To conclude, myhamilton is now, after its launch, going through a new period of reflection and reorientation. “We’ve done a lot of things on our list. The software is all in place and we understand what remains to be done and how to do it. Now what we need to do is consolidate.”

Part C – Assessment

FOCUS Municipal vs broader community Despite the focus on rural communities and the voluntary sector organizations contained in the original business plan31 the City’s commitment to them is not obviously demonstrated in the project’s implementation.

It turned out that some of the aspects of the portal’s implementation related to these groups were far more complex than initially understood and led to project delays. This in turn led a need to make some tough choices in order to make sure that the basic things got completed by the deadline. Some portal features for the voluntary sector and the rural communities got postponed, as a result.

The tough choices that were made resulted in the project’s inability to complete the applications directed towards the voluntary sector (except for the ones that were being completed by that sector itself). In addition, only a narrower rural channel was included on the portal with no launch (as yet) of the full suite of rural applications that were proposed.

There was some discouragement and disappointment among the not-for-profits with the slow process of getting a partnership agreement, and then some resentment at the

31 The City and the portal management disagree with this assessment

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removal of their ʺpartnerʺ status32 when partnership agreements were finally put in place.

Nevertheless the tough choices did not stem from ill will. For example, the project team worked hard to address the issues of the voluntary sector group and to bridge their needs with the City’s. And we were told that “the biggest strength of the project was the degree of cooperativeness, neighbourliness, civility, trust and mutual support exhibited by the steering committee members.” With respect to the rural communities, interviewees stressed that there was just too much to do.

Economic development • A study released in 2000 by the US site location-consulting firm Whittacker & Associates, found that 84% of American companies now use the Internet to gather preliminary information on the communities under consideration during their site selection process.33 One of the outcomes of the portal is that the City’s Economic Development Department is working with the City’s GIS and Websolutions divisions and myhamilton to formulate a web based information system that can respond to the economic development needs of business. Such a system will change, maybe fundamentally, the way economic development is done in Hamilton. That system will eventually include: − GIS Real Estate Inventory (done) − Community Profile − Business Directory (done) − Labour Force Profile − Economic Development Newsgroup/Electronic Newsletter − Client Tracking System

Small business • The portal business directory database includes almost all the small businesses in the area and the portal has links to this database as well as to the three local Chamber of Commerce databases. Further focus on small business was limited due to an absence of a small business champion at the steering committee level. This absence was not due to any kind of exclusivity on the part of the steering committee but the existence of too many other local opportunities competing for the attention of small business leaders. Consequently, the criticism heard in the interviews that some small businesses felt the portal represented “unfair public sector competition”

32 This was a legal requirement that from the City’s perspective helped protect the not-for-profits but from the their perspective seemed to lessen their role. 33 City of Hamilton, Economic Development Strategy, Hamilton 2005: pg 102

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may be attributed to their limited contribution to shaping the outcomes of the portal for their own benefit.

Service delivery • The portal provides a complete list of online City services, Library events and services, public health and social services, how to access educational institutions, access to help for starting or running a small business, registration services for recreational activities, and a community events calendar. And, as was so strongly underscored by the steering committee, they deliver these e-services along with the resources to support those services, including end-user support to service consumers.

Other (e-gov., health, agriculture, tourism, etc.) • The portal infrastructure has been applied to tracking West Nile disease. • Arts and recreation, business, health, and education sub portals (referred to as ‘channels’) were added to myhamilton. • “Find a doctor” was a new service that allowed residents to identify doctors who were accepting new patients in various areas of the City.

CHALLENGES

Changing environment • One of the principal challenges identified by interviewees was the challenge of civility. How do you balance freedom of expression in an online community with a need to do no harm? myhamilton addressed this by adopting acceptable and fair use policies that were converted from standard library practice and into portal policies. • It would have been tough to persuade Council to undertake myhamilton on its own. COPSC was an important and necessary catalyst. It brought together all the necessary stakeholders in a community of practice.

Technology (Infrastructure) • The infrastructure challenge was the limited high speed access in the rural areas. That was/is being corrected with various wireless solutions.

Technology (applications) • The application challenge was largely one of working with the vendor and understanding the implications of the choices offered by them. myhamilton addressed this by consulting regularly with mySudbury, the Connect Ontario project in Sudbury, which generally had a six month advance lead time over myhamilton in working with the same vendor.

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Implementation • One of the major implementation challenges appeared to be a lack of time, although this shortness of time was explained as being more the result of the project’s complexity -- of different initiatives, of different scope, with different partners and different resources all being delivered in a common timetable. In the end, the steering committee made the choice to cut back on some of the deliverables in the short term to meet the launch deadline.

Adoption • The strategy of myhamilton has been to address the challenge of creating a critical mass of website visitors by thoroughly integrating the City and Library websites into the portal in order to drive web traffic to other sites and resources available there. For a City of Hamilton’s size, this appears to have been an effective strategy.

Local Governance • “The biggest challenge was managing the expectations of various stakeholders while ensuring there was sufficient communications between the partners so that they could see the whole picture and how their piece fit in.” • The portal steering committee dissolved in December of 2005 and was replaced by the Community Portal Advisory Committee (CPAC) which will begin to function in February 2006. • From the perspective of one interviewee, the steering committee seemed to be dominated by technology people34. Long technical documents about various decision topics were provided only at board meetings and when a decision was also required. This led to feelings among some community representatives that they were just window dressing. The new governing body of the portal, CPAC, will be comprised differently (more policy and strategy type people) and will attempt to improve the corporate governance process. • According to one interviewee, the group was slow to put partnership agreements in place. When they did turn their attention to the issue, it was sent to the City’s lawyers to handle. The result caused some discord among some partners, especially the not-for-profits. “It was all you will do this, this and this. It was not a partner agreement at all.” The problem became moot in the new context of CPAC. • The new governing body of the portal, CPAC, will be comprised of policy and strategy type people and will attempt to improve the corporate governance process.

Provincial partnership

34 This view is not supported by all members of the steering committee.

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• Although “they [the Province] considered themselves as a partner, they didn’t act like one.” For the local portal partners, the challenge was in needing the Province to act more like a partner. • To comply with what were perceived as arbitrary Provincial timetables, the project had to short circuit good business practice. • The Province had an important role as a facilitator of knowledge but “where were they between 2003 and 2005 when the project needed that knowledge the most?” • “When all is said and done, where is the recognition from the Province? Where are the 11 projects showcased by the Province? We feel like we’ve been disowned.”

PROJECT STATISTICS

The project was launched in September 2005. In the first three months of it operation there were 1,305,455 unique visits to the portal (approx. 435,000 visits per month) with those visitors averaging seven page views per visit and spending on average about six minutes on the site. According to Community Information Services, one of the project’s principal partners, “public traffic [involving community organizations] has gone through the roof”. That said, much of the high levels of myhamilton traffic may be associated with pre-existing City and Library traffic35.

Beyond the web traffic data, there has been no real assessment as yet. “What we really lack now is an ability to explain how the new portal capacity is contributing to the community and what that means.” This shortcoming should be addressed through CPAC which has been mandated to develop an overall evaluation strategy in 2006 and then implement it.

Concurrently, researchers at McMaster University were proceeding with a two-year study to investigate the adoption and use of myhamilton by community members through the use of surveys and web metrics. They will explore how and why certain individual and technology characteristics, together with utilization behaviours, impact the ability to carry out online tasks and to promote portal adoption and a sense of community.

NEW OPPORTUNITIES

• Hamilton was one of the COPSC communities that became interested in the Seniors’ Portal that was developed as a joint venture between the Province and the federal

35 This seems a safe assumption because of the integration of the City and HPL web sites but there are no statistics separating City and HPL users from other portal users.

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government. myhamilton will be pursuing the development of a Senior’s sub portal in 2006. • It was pointed out that there are several provincial ministries that are developing or have just recently developed portals -- MTCU, MAH, MHLTC -- in addition to the MCI’s Senior’s portal. It was observed by the interviewees that the ministries don’t communicate with one another and were developing their portal ideas (like the Seniors’ Portal) completely independently. “The Province needs to get the horizontal relationship between its own departments right and be thinking about what information and services communities need not what new product can be pushed on them.

SUSTAINABILITY

The current view is that the City is only a temporary owner of myhamilton which is expected to evolve into a separate community not-for-profit under the governance of the new CPAC structure. The City was willing to contribute without question to the municipal portion of the portal but it is uncertain about whether Council would be willing to continue contributing to the other portions of the portal indefinitely. Consequently, myhamilton will have to demonstrate a variety of values for a range of stakeholders to permit either member fees or user fees or advertising to recoup their ongoing costs. Therefore sustainability challenge for myhamilton becomes articulating “what’s in it for them”.

If CPAC fails to demonstrate that value or is unable to generate the level of resources needed to sustain and grow the portal, will the portal then fail? That is an unlikely scenario given the investments the City and the Library have already made. Because of the full integration of the municipal and public library sites into the myhamilton project, “the City will not walk away from the project”.

However, the business and community database is one of the successful areas of the portal that may be in jeopardy without stable core funding. This resource is run by a not-for-profit with very limited resources to renew equipment and provide staff to do updates and customer service. The HPL might be able to incorporate this task but certainly not at the low cost of Community Information Hamilton.

Therefore, depending upon how the City manages their relationship with their community, small business and rural stakeholders, the portal may evolve into a broad community utility or simply into a more effective municipal site.

Short term

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• Spin off myhamilton as a not-for-profit organization under CAPC. Demonstrate value for users and stakeholders. Long term • Implement cost recovery charges (memberships, user fees, advertising, etc.) to sustain the project.

GOOD PRACTICES

Applications • The use of the Community Information Online Consortium36 (CIOC) database has proven to be a very cost effective basis for the business and community services directory, requiring only one tenth of the cost of the alternatives and because it offered a mix of centralization and de-centralization. It was centralized in the sense that it was developed by a province-wide consortium and decentralized in that it was modified to suit Hamilton’s specific needs including allowing information updates to be produced by the individual organizations themselves. Thus, actual control of the data remains local not central.

Process • “The biggest strength of the project was the degree of cooperativeness, neighbourliness, civility, trust and mutual support exhibited by the steering committee members.” • The level of integration that has been achieved in Hamilton that drives visitors to the City and the HPL through the portal creating a large critical mass of portal viewers. • The well developed acceptable and fair use policies (based on similar use policies in effect with the Libraries) which have provided a means for an extremely heterogeneous community to interact in a civil manner. • The large number of community presentations that were conducted to educate various groups of potential users on how they would benefit from the portal in terms of time, money, increased traffic to their own sites, and increased potential business.

LESSONS LEARNED

The lessons learned by the project • “The foundation of our success will be the volume of traffic we are able to generate.” To do this they are integrating a variety of portals. Currently only the City and the

36 A not-for-profit consortium originally comprised of community information centres in Ontario who collaborated to produce software for data retrieval, storage and dissemination purposes.

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Library are integrated on the portal. Later it may include McMaster University or Mohawk College (the interest is apparently already there). myhamilton continues to expand upon its ‘no wrong door’ policy for local citizens. With 1.3 million unique visits in three months, Hamilton’s integrated structure seems to be successfully driving attention to the portal where citizens can also learn about other opportunities and tools. For a large City like Hamilton, this ‘portal of portals’ strategy seems an effective one to quickly develop critical mass. • Public debate is OK. The apparent loss of an institutional brand can be more than compensated for through a competition for user attention and the provision of useful quality information. • The combination of a community directory and the portal has made the entire scope of voluntary sector in Hamilton much more visible. • In terms of community groups, many of them needed real encouragement. We could have really used 4-5 people who were hired to go out and talk to groups, do the education thing and help them get onboard.” The team felt they needed to conduct more training in order to help people use the website tools more effectively. They frequently taught people how to navigate the portal but not frequently enough on how users could use the web site to achieve their own ends. This latter element was the value adding piece for most people in the community. It was suggested that more coop students or more internships would have helped, but dedicated staff would have been best. • One of the few areas of internal conflict that was identified in the interviews was around partner agreements. The partner agreements should have been done up front. “The relationships should be defined at the outset as well as the relationships you might need down the road. And they should document all the contributions each partner is making.” They don’t have to be long, said one person, just a couple of pages. As myhamilton discovered, preparing these documents after the fact (in Hamilton’s case four months before the end) could be a recipe for conflict. • According to one source, the community partners were “woefully lacking” in technical knowledge. The steering committee was “inundated with overly technical information”. “There was a feeling,” according to one member, “that we were only window dressing since we really couldn’t contribute, especially when documents upon which we were to make a decision were not made available until the time of the meeting.” This discouraged some members of the steering committee from asking questions. It was therefore suggested that for a governing body of mixed expertise, a more simplified version of the technical steps was needed to facilitate discussion and create the links with the business plan and the goals that were set. • One of the offshoots of creating the business directory on the basis of the CIOC database has been a greater appreciation of the business community by the not-for- profit sector developers of the directory (including Community Information

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Hamilton, Ancaster Community Information Services and Volunteer Hamilton). “We’ve learned that supporting business is part of a community’s social services because it leads to better jobs, more prosperity, and an improved capacity to help those that need it.” In part this is leading to closer connections between the not-for- profits and the business sector in Hamilton. • One interviewee said that almost all of the community groups have computers by now but for most groups those computers are old and stale. Many wouldn’t be able to run the portal. They needed to be refurbished. The use of the portal by community groups therefore will be limited by the age of their computers. “A 386 computer won’t do it.” Unfortunately, the funding for new computers has stopped and most community groups when faced with a choice of spending money on computers or spending money on their clients will almost invariably choose the latter.

The lessons learned by Invenire Portals • In larger cities like Hamilton, the achievement of a critical mass of attention in order to promote community adoption may be best achieved through an integration of existing portals. Trying to achieve such critical mass on the basis of one-on-one educational efforts is far too impractical.

Economic development • See recommendations.

Small & Medium Business • Small business is motivated by clear benefits that address issues that are ‘top of mind’ to them. Without this there are too many distractions in the day-to-day operation of a small business for small business leaders to participate in shaping a portal solution or in making use of it. For them the best relevant marketing tool is not advertising but education.

Delivery of public services • The assumption that a one-time capital investment will purchase on-going delivery of services will prove short sighted and lead to depreciated technology and applications and a poor quality of citizen service.

Community partnerships • As the case reading suggests, a collaborative partnership is messy. If the material in the case study doesn’t seem consistent it’s because it isn’t. The real people involved in the partnership were not consistent. As the myhamilton interviewees revealed, the

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partnership was a coexistence of different opinions, skills, perspectives, resources and agendas all struggling for some kind of equilibrium. It worked and it didn’t work, but most importantly it’s still working. What has sustained them is their “cooperativeness, neighbourliness, civility, trust and mutual support”. This is an expression of tremendous good faith among the partners and of the confidence that they can eventually work things out. • The rules of effective corporate governance remain important.

Provincial intervention • This case presents a practical example of where more active provincial participation might have secured better results. While COPSC did offer opportunities to communities to determine their own portal solutions, it was also constrained from simply augmenting a municipal portal37. In its attempt to secure funding, Hamilton emphasized its desire to support rural communities but did not have the necessary champions in place. Without those champions (and these could also have been provincial representatives) acting to shepherd the rural initiative through development, there was a risk of not meeting its objectives -- simply because the attention of the other champions was elsewhere. Ex officio participation by the Province might have served to remind the team of its obligation to the Province and to champion the rural initiative.

Technology projects No comment

Other No comment

GAP ASSESSMENT

Things they failed to do • The suite of services and applications for the rural portal. These lacked a champion, they lacked a clear statement of need, and they lacked a ‘hook’ to galvanize adoption. • The community collaboration space and the community e-commerce. Because the City and the HPL didn’t want to own these, there were many basics that had to be in place first, including finding a financial anchor, establishing acceptable use policies,

37 Pursuant to its program objectives, COPSC funded broad, regionally-based portal projects -- not municipally centric portals. COPSC did suggest a possible rural champion but the project group did not follow up on this lead.

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developing training materials and staff, and undertaking pilots in addition to the basic technology. “It was more complex than we thought.”

Missed opportunities • Engaging the small business sector and partnering with local firms who had an interest and market research on the portal to contribute. The lack of a champion for the small business sector meant that that sector did not influence the outcomes of the portal as much as they could have (benign neglect). • Engaging the rural communities • At the outset the steering committee agreed to identify channel managers with a vested interest in a sub portal (education, health, business, etc.) and these people, together with a sub portal advisory committee, would be responsible for creating content for that sub portal. “In practice this was not always done.” The missed opportunity was that some sub portals ended up more developed than others. With the new CPAC structure it was hoped that the channel manager idea would become a standard part of myhamilton’s operating procedure.

POTENTIAL NEW USES/NEW SERVICES

• The HPL has created an online book club for people to exchange ideas and opinions around. • The provision of text in languages other than those requiring Roman script, ie. Chinese, Arabic, Urdu, Punjabi or Hindi is being developed. • A new application that will introduced in early 2006 will be a facility for the City and the HPL to conduct teaching labs

NEW TECHNOLOGY DIRECTIONS No comment

RECOMMENDATIONS BY THE PROJECT FOR FURTHER CONSIDERATION Portals • “We should try and build a resource library for technology and applications options; for policies on privacy and acceptable use; and for case studies on how others did it.” • A centralized approach doesn’t seem to work well as observed by the resentment generated around the portal skin developed by the Province. • The Province should make better use of RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds. The federal government uses them extensively.

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• The Province should permit links to specific sites within the Ontario portal. “It’s of no use to people to link to the Ontario homepage when trying to obtain specific information.”

Economic development • The dynamics of the natural economic region have a significant impact on development. In Hamilton’s case that natural economic region is a cross border region. In such a case the linking of relevant regional partners for development may go beyond the sphere of Provincial incentives or interventions. The non-local character of the portal may enable it to meaningfully contribute to this type of regional development but how it would do so is not currently clear. It may be useful to study this.

Small & Medium business • Help support the education of small business to the clear and immediate benefits of the technology and Internet applications.

Delivery of public services • Don’t use online delivery as a means of downloading the cost of service delivery. It only shifts the costs of customer service (someone has to pay) and reduces the quality of service. • Some mix of centralization and localization is needed. • “The real challenge in service delivery is the need to remove the integration barriers at the Provincial level.” The Province needs to get the horizontal relationship between its own departments right.

Community partnerships • Since the biggest challenge here was managing the expectations of various stakeholders and their co-learning, ensuring the members of the governing body understood the same good governance practices would have helped.

Technology projects • Do the infrastructure piece first. The Province should have done COBRA first and then COPSC. • The funding of a technology project shouldn’t be limited to the implementation but also include funding for adoption. • The provision of new capital and equipment funding is easy. The operating money is a lot harder to come by. The province might try a rethink a better balance.

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• Province might want to encourage funding of grants for internships and coop students. The Job Creation Partnerships are fine but their administration makes them hardly worth the effort.

Provincial relationship • Must clearly identify their expectations • “The Province should stand behind the communities [and support them] not stand in front of them.” • The Province should get out and visit the communities before they launch a program and certainly before they sign a deal. Then they could be real partner during the implementation phase. • The Province should create forums where people and expertise can be brought together to share their experiences and knowledge throughout the implementation process. • The Province should showcase the results of Connect Ontario. • Listen.

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4. HASTINGS-QUINTE PROJECT TITLE: HQNET – SMART FROM THE START

URL: www.mywindow.ca Launch Date: January 2006 Completion Date: March 6, 2006

PART A -- THE LOGIC MODEL

COMMUNITY PROFILE • The region covered by HQnet involves 8,054 sq. km., a population of 150,816 and a population density of 19 people per sq. km. • There are two modest sized cities among a large expanse of rural territory • Technology infrastructure varies from high speed in the urban centres to party lines in some of the rural areas which are unacceptable for even dial-up connectivity. • Social capital tends to be weak across the region but is strong within the various communities • While the economy was generally considered strong, the over reliance on agriculture and a few companies like Sears has made the creation of economic alternatives an important issue. • Because of the large geography services are widely dispersed • Support for small business is dispersed as well • Strong perception of a need to develop a more integrated approach across the region • The project partnership was more like a joint venture where partners continued doing developing their own unique portal solutions while cooperating with each other on their mutual interfaces. Consensus driven.

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Demographics Prince Edward County Coverage / sq km 1049 sq km. Population 24,901 Population density 23.7 Median Age 44.3 Average household size 2.8 % Youth (< 25) 32 % students (5-14 + fulltime 15+) 31 % Seniors (65+) 16 % visible minorities 1 % Aboriginal 1.4 % Immigrants (since 1991) 1 % English 95 % French >1 % Non Eng or FR 1 % w/ degrees/diplomas (20-64) 16 Average earnings $20,852 Labour force Participation rate 58.4 Employment rate 54.9 Unemployment rate 6.0 Median Income 19,465 % from Earnings 65.1 % from Transfers 15.9

Hastings County Coverage / sq km 7,000 sq kms Population 125,915 Population density 21.1 Median Age 39.6 Average household size 2.61 % Youth (< 25) 32 % students (5-14 + fulltime 15+) 31 % Seniors (65+) 16 % visible minorities 2 % Aboriginal 3 % Immigrants (since 1991) 1 % English 93 % French >1

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% Non Eng or FR 5 % w/ degrees/diplomas (20-64) 16 Average earnings $27,183 Labourforce Participation rate 61.3 Employment rate 51.7 Unemployment rate 7.6 Median Income 20,135 % from Earnings 69.1 % from Transfers 16.1

Technology profile Technology in the region was mixed. The major urban areas are very strong due to DSL and high speed. This was offset by low rural build out. The farthest extreme was that they still have some party lines in remote areas. Party lines make it unable to have connectivity in those areas. The urban area rating of the project among interviewees was that it was “quite connected.”

There were residents that were connected to the internet, and a many of the area’s small businesses had a web presence.

User sophistication was viewed as mixed. Many of the rural areas were very deficit in high speed internet access which has resulted in an impediment to portal adoption. The library system had Internet terminals and they did a lot to try and educate the population on computer use. The local appraisal was that seniors were less willing to try the technology. According to the project members, residents with limited income rarely used the Internet at home. They gained access at schools and libraries where it was free.

Most municipalities had a web presence and many already had tourism sites that were quite advanced. As an example, the City of Belleville, Quinte West and Bancroft had rich web portals, primarily developed through the COPSC program.

The County of Prince Edward Public Library had six branches, and the most Southerly branch was able to get a high-speed service provider only in last few weeks. Two of the library branches were using wireless. However, the library had the only connectivity in that area, and even that was not reliable. In some areas, Bell offered DSL reliable high speed. There were large libraries in Quinte West and Belleville and several small ones scattered throughout Hastings County that also had access.

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The overall assessment according to the technical person overseeing the portal development was that the region was still under-serviced as far as high speed Internet access. There was limited broadband north and south of Highway 401. Bell has installed DSL in the larger centres which have provided service up to 6 km from a CO and independent wireless providers were attempting to fill in the gaps between Lake Ontario and Bancroft. The area north of Bancroft will always be a challenge because of the terrain and the low population density.

Social capital profile Hastings-Quinte was a mix of smaller towns and villages as well as two mid sized cities, Belleville, and Quinte West. Bancroft was also included in the region.

The City of Belleville (pop. 46,000) was enlarged by an amalgamation with the Township of Thurlow. Quinte West (also pop. 46,000) recently amalgamated with a number of smaller townships. These two urban centres along with Prince Edward County were generally known as the Quinte Region. Hastings County, on the other hand stretched from the 401 as far as Whitney near Algonquin Park, and made up the balance of the Hastings-Quinte region.

This larger region had an estimated population of approximately 150,000 people. The City of Belleville’s population was projected to increase by 7,500 people by 2021 to approximately 54,000 inhabitants, a growth rate of roughly 7% per year.

The area appeared to attract young retirees, young professionals and a strong artistic community. There was not a lot of local industry to support the population. The social economic fabric has a wide gap between upper and lower middle class. Therefore property values were rising and it was becoming hard on seniors and those living in the area to keep up with the increasing property assessments and taxes.

It was reported that the Chamber of Commerce has generally not been that strong a driver for local economic development.

Since Belleville was the location with the main employers, such as Sears, so transportation across the region was a challenge.

Nine municipalities were amalgamated in Prince Edward County. The general sentiment was that there was more capability to promote the region with one central government. However, being small they tended to find it difficult to get things done.

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Needs assessment Economic development • This is the largest geographic area for COPSC projects in southern Ontario and in it there was a need to share costs of infrastructure and marketing for the regional economy • The rural areas were in need of connectivity to the urban community and there was a need to encourage more rural participation in knowledge economy • Need to build local technology capacity as most rural areas were either on dial up access or even party lines • Need to provide support for small businesses through electronic provision of support tools, education and business services

Social service delivery • Need to be able to provide services and information on an as needed basis • There was a need to encourage better coordination between agencies and to improve overall service delivery throughout the region

Municipal efficiencies • Need to provide alternative for municipal service reduce distance and driving times etc.

Strengthen sense of community & regional heritage • With a common heritage as a strong component of local culture, the portal was seen as a means to help share information and build the region’s sense of community • Need to improve communication between stakeholder groups, and provide a means of sharing resources. The population was so spread out and so small that no part of the region could afford to undertake the project alone. • Need to have an integrated approach to the region and the local communities • Need to provide online access to meaningful community information through a common access point in order to provide an opportunity for one stop shopping • The region has the collective resources to realize the full potential of leading edge Internet technologies. The COPSC program was an opportunity to extract private sector investment by leveraging public money. • The region had a strong retired community and they were bringing demand for online services that they are used to having in urban centres such as Toronto.

Assumptions • Internet applications increase opportunities for connectivity within communities • A community portal provides opportunities for people to stay and participate in their community

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• A portal builds greater social cohesion and sharing of information and ideas • A portal helps promote community values and tie the community together • The migration of some municipal services from over the counter to Internet channels will permit greater efficiencies at the local and provincial level. • The universal demand for broadband Internet and online services suggested that the region’s technology and community capacities would grow through the development of a portal. • The Connect Ontario project would increase the awareness and marketability of region as a place to do business, and would also serve to increase tourism, a strong economic driver in Prince Edward County.

PROJECT PROFILE

The HQnet project would provide a full suite of tools with which to conduct business, deliver e-government, enhance social service delivery, and encourage citizens to use the Internet.

Partners

Lead: HQnet Community Broadband Network, a not for profit corporation

Other partners: HQnet and Bell Canada worked together to create the community Web portal for the Hastings-Quinte-Lakeshore region. Other partners in this project included:

• Algonquin & Lakeshore Catholic District School Board • City of Belleville • City of Quinte West • County of Hastings • County of Prince Edward Public Library • Hastings & Prince Edward District School Board • Town of Bancroft • Loyalist College

Investment (direct & in-kind)

The region’s Community Futures organization provided interim funding for the project while the Province got its process in place. It took two years for provincial structure and financial support to solidify so in the interim Industry Canada played a bridging role.

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Connect Ontario was however the primary catalyst in getting the project going and building the partnership through its initial program announcement in 1999.

Total Project Cost: $2,284, 270

Provincial Funding: $1,092,932 Leverage: 2.1

Partner Funding: $1,191,338 Direct: $395,800 In-kind: $795,538

Information/ Services to be provided

General Features • one-stop shopping – community resources, online applications, and ecommerce in one convenient location • local information/ weblinks for business, agriculture, industry, government, education, health, libraries, arts, entertainment, recreation, tourism, community living – provided by eight public sector organizations and HQnet.

Business Features • Add a business listing • Subscribe to banner advertisements • Page hosting (can include link to current website) – ecommerce capability will be added in phase 2 • Become a member (and save money on advertising) • Respond to tenders and bid opportunities • View and Map industrial properties for sale and lease

Community Features • Post a community event in the calendar • Reserve a library book • Sign up for Alerts to receive email notification when a new item was posted on the portal • Sign up for Mailing Lists to receive newsletters via email • Personalize your own page • Respond to job postings • Respond to community surveys and polls • View local transportation schedules • View local entertainment and events • Current and 5-day weather forecasts

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Municipal Features • Pay parking tickets • Cab & Limo drivers license renewal application • Pay & renew dog licenses • Apply & pay for tax, zoning, & work order certificates • View property and tax information • View industrial properties for sale & lease • View/download minutes, agendas, by-laws, reports

Mapping Features • Map your property • Map community locations such as schools, fire stations, parks, municipal buildings • Map industrial properties for sale

In varying degrees, the seven portals have built out the following information and services:

Municipal Services X Agriculture Services X Municipal Information X Agriculture Information X Business Services X Youth Services X Business Information X Youth Information X Children’s Services X Senior Services X Children’s Information X Senior Information X Small Business Services X Employment Services X Small Business Information X Employment Information X Health Services X Recreation Services X Health Information X Recreation Information X Education Services X Library Services X Education Information X Library Information X Cultural Events X Community Services X Virtual Tours (bandwidth issue) Community Information X Gateway to Federal Services X Gateway to Provincial Services X Gateway to Federal Information X Gateway to Provincial Information X Gateway to News providers X

ACHIEVEMENTS These seven sub portals listed below would be brought together within the gateway “myWindow” portal. While the main portal window itself had a rich infusion of content in January 2006, the project design envisioned build seven smaller portals and which would be connected through the larger portal (an 8th portal). The seven portals were

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currently functioning and their stakeholder members were also the HQnet project partners.

HQnet was a not-for-profit organization and each of its Stakeholder Members was required to provide a representative on HQnet’s Board of Directors. Stakeholder membership offered a structured forum for sharing network applications, exchanging information technology expertise and tapping into network resources often not readily available. Further, stakeholder members benefited from the aggregated buying power of the group with vendor partners, government funding programs, and others. In addition, only stakeholder members made decisions regarding the strategic directions and network development of HQnet.

Sub portals • Business & Industry - agriculture and local economic development as well as business and industry. • Community Living - resources for those living or moving to the community i.e. family care, shopping, employment, etc. • Education - educational resources from pre-school to post-secondary including training and apprenticeships. There will also be direct links to the portals of the Algonquin & Lakeshore Catholic District School Board and the Hastings & Prince Edward District School Board. • Government - local, provincial, and federal government resources plus emergency services information. Once the portal interface was developed there will be direct links to the portals of the City of Belleville, City of Quinte West, County of Hastings, and Town of Bancroft. • Health & Wellness - local resources such as hospitals, clinics, crisis services, and community health; also includes alternative and natural health. • Libraries & Culture - local libraries, art, entertainment, museums, and heritage. There will also be a direct link to the portal of the County of Prince Edward Public Libraries. • Recreation & Tourism - local accommodations, attractions, parks & recreation, sports, and visitorʹs guide.

Completed/ incomplete

• Both the main portal and the other seven stakeholder portals were up and running but the main umbrella portal was more richly populated with content than the other sub portals in January 2006.

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• The portal project evolved with a strong component of risk management. If the main portal was not able to sustain itself, the other portals could continue on their own merit through the financial structures they had in place for themselves. • In one interview, it was indicated that the main portal may be competing with some of the other portals, which were working toward drawing tourism, or business to their areas. While it was not the intention of the partner portals to remain isolated, there were some cross partner issues that will need to be addressed

Next phase • The next phase of the project would be the launch of the myWindow.ca gateway portal for the region. • The design for myWindow was in process; however, the figure below suggests how the portal window was envisioned.

Impacts

The impact of the stakeholder portals has not been measured yet. The impact of the myWindow portal will be determined after its launch.

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According to one interviewee, the collaboration on the project had helped successfully tie the various community and technological needs together.

Indications of ROI

According to interviewees, the return on investment for the other portals has suggested various degrees of self sufficiency. The gateway portal does not as yet appear to have found a financial model for its sustainability. In interviews it was suggested that advertising SME business registrations, and other services not yet outlined would provide the necessary funds for it to continue.

The seven stakeholder portals will be sustained by their various home public sector organizations. The myWindow team indicated it does have a well thought out sustainability model but not all the interviewees had read it yet. The myWindow project has a budget and a revenue plan for the first two years after its launch, and a six month advertising campaign that would start in February 2006. They have also contracted a firm to deal with marketing.

While it was true that the other portals could survive without the gateway portal, this would be a last resort.

PART B: HQNET’S STORY

HQnet originally came together to promote the development of broadband in the region. HQnet Community Broadband Network was formed as a not-for-profit corporation and community owned consortium of information technology users in Hastings County, Prince Edward County, and the Quinte and Lakeshore region of Eastern Ontario. The HQnet board consisted of representatives from the Algonquin and Lakeshore Catholic District School Board, the County of Prince Edward Public Libraries, the County of Hastings, the City of Belleville, the City of Quinte West, the Hastings and Prince Edward District School Board, Loyalist College and the Town of Bancroft.

The actual development of a regional portal came at a later stage and the evolution of the project has made it unique among the COPSC projects. It was originally envisioned as one single portal window but that became too complex to manage. With Bell as the lead partner, the project migrated from being hosted with their own servers to using an Application Service Provider (ASP) model where Bell would host the portal application.

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The ASP model had the advantage that for a single ongoing fee hosting, maintenance, software upgrades, security, and built in system redundancies Bell provided solid, uninterrupted service. The disadvantage was the need to pay ongoing residual fees under a service provider contract. Due diligence was done to compare the cost of owner maintenance to the cost of Bell’s ASP advantages. The Board chose Bell after weighing the options.

A main reason cited by interviewees for the switch was security. There were eight sub- portals including the umbrella. The concept was that the umbrella portal - www.mywindow.ca - would be the central focal point to get information and to provide a gateway to the other seven stakeholder portals, each of which would use exactly the same technology as the others.

Another advantage of this system, they indicated, was that it provided an alternative to having a common look and feel throughout all portals. It was very important to the individual stakeholders that they be able to continue to have their own unique web presence for themselves.

Each stakeholder portal had a working group that would report to HQnet and Bell Canada. HQnet had signed a 5-year agreement with Bell that included a commitment by Bell to deliver on training as well during the project implementation phase of the agreement.

At present, the municipalities and the school boards are in the process of migrating content from their older technology websites onto the portal.

The Prince Edward County Chamber of Commerce and the Prince Edward County Tourism office have provided support to the portal from the beginning, as has the firm Taste the County. Trenval Business Development Corporation offered to provide the project work space and paid the project manager’s wages for 18 months prior to the Connect Ontario funding. These were community partners and will continue to be involved. There are a number of other supportive Chamber offices in the area as well.

The HQnet project had their ‘hard’ launch on January 6th, 2006, and all the portals soft- launched the week of December 12th, 2005. The stakeholder portals will go to a full launch at the end of January 2006.

The local Community Futures organization provided interim funding while the Province tried to establish its process for the project. It took two years for provincial structure and financial support to solidify so in the interim Industry Canada played a

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bridging role. Connect Ontario was however the primary catalyst for getting the project going after the COPSC announcement in 1999.

The HQ Region was one hour from Kingston, and well positioned along the Highway 401 corridor to provide good market access. The location was very supportive of tourism and trade. There were four hospitals in the area and a number of learning institutions, with even satellite campuses in distant towns.

Agriculture has been a foundational industry for all the communities in the region. The wine industry and tourism are both strong and growing industries in the area. Many of the smaller towns in the region (ie Bancroft) significantly increase their size during the summer tourist season.

HQnet was in a unique demographic location. The economy appears to be strong. The largest employer in the region was Sears. There were also a large number of small businesses. Many residents have retired to the area and started up small businesses and for them connectivity was a critical issue. Recreational opportunities were cited as extremely good in the region. It was also positioned as source of opportunities for firms to locate in an area that had easy access to major centres while capturing the lower operating costs of a small town. There appeared to be opportunities for skilled labour in such industries as the automotive sector as well as secondary industries, such as climate control. Protector and Gamble was identified as having large local plants providing manufacturing jobs.

The region has seen an increase of 32% in property assessments, one of the largest in Ontario, especially for waterfront properties in Prince Edward County.

The library was one of the strong partners in the project. They sell permits, and the branches reported it was much easier to do transactions online, saving travel time and energy for residents. In the past people would pick up a form, return the form with missing information and therefore have to make frequent trips to have complete information. Now online permitting can ensure that everything gets done in one step.

At the time of the interviews, the library was in the process of putting together an online catalogue of permits. The library processes the application for the permit providers and saves them the costs of time, paper, information processing. The library has also noticed increased efficiencies with regard to their online exchange of information. Burn permits, for example, are automatically relayed to the fire department for their records.

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The SMEs have not yet engaged in the portal development process. The logic for not engaging them was that the project was six months behind on its launch and they didn’t want to raise expectations in case they could not meet the revised launch date.

Due to the delays involved in the launch of the main portal, the Hastings and Prince Edward District School Board has halted further development of their sub portal and resorted to a wait and see mode.

While the project portal continued to evolve from the start, the initial expectation for the technology changed over time because certain functionalities were not feasible in early stages. For instance, the technology was not mature enough to manage so many specialized areas in a secure environment. The migration to the ASP model with independently built out portals was a direct consequence. Interviewees indicated that new software was developed to allow them to handle the functionality of seven stakeholder portals and the main myWindow.ca portal in an integrated secure space.

Despite some of the technology challenges, collaboration was one of the most cited challenges. It was felt that many of the partners had to compromise their own objectives for the sake of harmonizing on the project. In some instances it was perceived that each area may have done better if they had been allowed to develop their own portal according to their own needs. For example, some municipalities were concerned about access to information. There was a sense of protectionism in regards to the confidentiality of municipal information. While no statistics are currently available, the web logs appear to indicate that many people have been attracted to the site and that there was lot of demand on current web sites. The next phase of the portal development hoped to increase web traffic through improvements to user interactivity.

Another sentiment expressed by interviewees was that some leaders would like fuller participation as a regional portal which they feel would make it more helpful to draw more industry to the area.

Once the gateway portal was built it will have a number of advantages:

• Information - it offers anyone interested in looking at a community as a place to do business with reams of information in terms of building availability, regional demographics, workforce potential, industrial properties for sale etc,

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• Central advertising - the portal can be a good source of advertising for businesses, directory of retail establishment, industrial, or small business as the user traffic increases.

• Services – the portal improves local services by providing linkages without increasing costs. The municipality indicated that they tend to get a lot of inquiries and the portal can help people research things for themselves and save a lot of staff time.

The model chosen for HQnet has enabled every stakeholder to get what they wanted. Belleville, in their analysis of the portal, finally decided to join the project because they looked at their exposure, discussed the risks of partnership failure, looked at the price Bell wanted in the ASP model, and then decided they could afford the cost if they had to go their own way.

Online transactions were seen as key to the sustainability of the site. The municipalities were particularly keen to see this functionality. Their use of the Tax Certificates system illustrated how beneficial this might be. Prior to the City’s sub portal, Tax Certificate letters had to be sent out from a lawyer and the process was very cumbersome. Now Tax Certificates can be ordered online, and there was much less paperwork and administration. Doing so also represented to them a sense of being a modern municipal government, an important distinction for them.

The general consensus among the interviewees was that the partners have gotten to know each other more thoroughly through the process of portal development. The fact that it has now started to materialize was considered “remarkable” given the earlier challenges. Developing a capacity for consensus and cooperation for the sake of the larger project has been a strong indicator of progress. “People have worked together in faith and hope that it will be good for everyone.”

When asked about their satisfaction with the project interviewees tended to agree they were satisfied more and more but they could not gauge the real effectiveness of the project until the launch of the gateway portal. One of the main partners said, “It has been a long hard grind. It was difficult due to the many stakeholders and the many needs and expectations and the further requirement of bringing them all together. Municipalities historically don’t tend to work together but in this instance they did sit down and start doing things together.”

One of the main obstacles has been financing - mentioned as “hard to assess” or predict the financing needs. Another was the legalities associated with collaboration.

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With the delays in starting the project, several structural changes took place such as the merging of the GeoSmart Program and Connect Ontario programs and then their disconnection; a several of the key partners dropped out, including the four hospitals (QHC), two large libraries in Belleville and Quinte West, and the County of Prince Edward.

The new site, www.myWindow.ca was populated with a great deal of content in January 2006 where much of the original design and content elements are in place.

PART C – ASSESSMENT

FOCUS

Currently the focus has been the development of the seven stakeholder portals and then the design of the larger umbrella portal. The structure of the Connect Ontario supported portal with its emphasis on creating community collaboration and helping citizens in the community to get connected appears to be well in process.

The seven stakeholder portals were still major independent “web sites” which will be linked with the gateway portal. The stakeholder portals will retain their original URL’s as originally planned so that previous website users will still be able to find them. Users can access the new portals via the gateway or by entering the old URL of the stakeholder. Loyalist College, on the other hand, although it was a stakeholder member of HQnet, did not build its own portal. However, myWindow will still provide a direct link to the College’s website.

The portal project was very much community driven in the sense that each of the seven partners was able to drive the project to best of its abilities to suit the audiences they were serving.

CHALLENGES

Maintaining the seven stakeholder portals and the myWindow portal could pose a challenge, however, the compartmentalization may also make it easier so that each area is only responsible for updating their own content.

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Expertise was a challenge: There was a lot of time and expertise required to design, develop and manage the ongoing needs of the portal. The partners felt they required more help and expertise.

Finances were a challenge. The gateway portal was seen as a financially challenging. “If it [the portal] doesn’t fly commercially on its own, it will be hard to keep it going,” reported one key stakeholder.

Bell reported they had a challenge with both security and the technology. Although the portal concept has stayed the same, it has evolved. Originally it was envisioned as one large portal, but mechanics has evolved it into eight separate sub-portals. Bell Canada mentioned that they have never developed one with so many stakeholders that are so diverse, and they felt the original set up wouldn’t work. So they changed to eight separate sub-portals. Bell representatives from Toronto came down regularly for consultations and training and they worked extensively with the project manager throughout project. Another challenge discovered by Bell was creating independent value for each of the member organizations. They experienced a difficulty in dealing with the concept of separating content from design. They had difficulty designing the portal in order to showcase the needs of each stakeholder.

Migrating content from each of the partners was also a challenge. Although obtaining new content was not seen as a challenge, migrating it from one portal to another was. To get past the content issue, Bell developed a technology to allow each stakeholder to put up their respective content themselves. In addition some of the partners had built their own custom applications, such as paying for parking, as well as building a local database for industrial properties, etc. that had to be integrated into the portal.

While it was explained as an “8 for 1 sale” the cooperative design was created so that each stakeholder portal will have the opportunity to market itself and generate its own sustainability. The HQnet project manager will have the responsibility to keep the umbrella portal going which has presented a challenge of financial viability.

NEW OPPORTUNITIES THAT EMERGED

The region was generally regarded as an attractive location for industry- particularly being on the 401, and in an area with excellent access to the larger markets of Ottawa, Montreal and Toronto. The interviewees felt that the portal will provide opportunities for business connectivity and be a good method to attract industry to the area. This feature of the portal was mentioned as a tool to showcase more than just a single city,

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but a region bound together by diverse industry, attractive location, financial strength, and municipal cooperation.

SUSTAINABILITY

Short term

In the short term, the project was sustainable from the fact that there were seven stakeholder portals all meeting their own respective needs and financed independently sharing the one ASP cost through Bell. The umbrella portal has just launched and has therefore not proven its sustainability yet.

Long term

Information: The project leaders hope that the information present on the portals will drive people and their participation as well as driving commercial success.

Fees: Membership fees will help sustain the portal. Stakeholder membership fees are $5,000 annually, and there are also Community and Consortium memberships available at $1,000 and $250 annually. Stakeholder members are also considering fees for online transactions within their individual portals.

Advertising and Page Hosting: Local businesses will have an opportunity to have a presence in myWindow by placing banner ads and/or having their own web page on the portal. These services will run anywhere from $25 up to $1000 and HQnet will also provide additional design services to their customers.

Other: The library was seeing the portal as a vehicle to push information to its patrons. The library was hoping to see a promotion of the portal’s information content and access to information. The Library’s portal membership fee was lower than the other stakeholder members, however, because it was important to the partners to have the library’s participation even if it meant a lower member fee. The library was also providing office space to the HQnet staff to compensate for their lower fees.

Development and marketing may require a lot of effort to make the portal sufficiently well known and used to warrant the hoped revenues. One city was already offering the payment of parking tickets online and many others see more of that type of transactional services as helping finance the project on an ongoing basis. “Our job is to get the word out and build usage. Then we can build revenue streams.” To do this they have a distinct marketing plan in place.

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In terms of managing the financial risk, if the umbrella site www.mywindow.ca cannot sustain itself then the others will most likely remain as independent stakeholder portals.

The involvement of small business was also seen as important to the portal’s sustainability. However, online small businesses require capturing viewers and making sure there is enough fresh content that they will come back and visit regularly. Once they get visitors coming regularly, they hope to have something to offer to small business, such as incubators, advertising, etc.

GOOD PRACTICES

The ASP model may prove to be valuable, particularly when the costs are shared among the partners. The cost of server upkeep, IT people, security, software and other factors make it a challenge on an ongoing basis. The only challenge with the ASP model is the user fees, but the fees have been paid upfront for the first five years of the contract with Bell Canada.

LESSONS LEARNED

The lessons learned by the project • They felt it was a slow process and that it was good they did not know how long it would take from the outset as they would have reconsidered the project. They have yet to see all the outcomes, and so they are still unsure of its success. • We were told that there were many delays but our observation is that these were inevitable delays due to the scope of the project. With seven major partners all having various needs, the need for consensus took considerable time. • Finances were considered the most important lesson learned. There was a provision for guidelines and governance from the Ministry that was good. The Ministry gave them a proper charter, proper governance, papers to sign agreements among the players, and guidance on how the funds were managed. The Province recommended not doing a project like this cheaply for fear it would not work. • Having a good project manager helped keep things running smoothly and having that person work on this full time to stickhandle the needs of the various players and the province. • The biggest issue was in understanding the differences among the partners. Education and municipal services did not share a lot in common so they had to build some common perspective on how a project like this should be designed and built.

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• There was a need to separate design and content. This project would not have looked at all like it does now without this separation nor would the partnership have succeeded so well. • Technology changes suggest that myWindow could now be done with off the shelf software. Today a project like this would not need $2 million. • Don’t reinvent the wheel. One of the project leaders indicated he was a strong believer in not reinventing the wheel. Many of the service features did not need to be duplicated in each area. • According to one interviewee, the Province could have initially set up COPSC as a centrally run portal builder and then made available common portal services to communities. Bell wanted to help the Province undertake that role. The belief was that if the Province had set up a division for community portal development, Bell could have saved them a lot of money38.

The lessons learned by Invenire • The ASP model is attractive. With the high cost of servers, software upgrades, issues over security and hosting, the ASP model in the context of HQnet seemed to work well. Since the project partners were not in the business of creating portals, but of delivering services, it made sense to them that a trusted technology firm be the lead on the technology side and that the municipalities, businesses, NFPs, or tourism groups provide only the content and identify the service requirements.

The significant potential danger in this approach was and is that in the context of the distributed governance and loose partner collaboration used in HQnet, if the tasks that were jointly conducted were given over to a single technology firm then a degree of co-learning would have been lost. This loss might jeopardize the stability of the partnership and the initiative may not be as successful.

GAP ASSESSMENT

The project has come a long way in developing the services required for the people in the area but they are still missing a centralized place in order to meet people’s needs on a larger scale.

One interviewee mentioned that there could be a risk that the project will devolve into separate stakeholders all doing their own thing. It might not take much for the gateway portal to loose its sustainability and then organizational competition, time and energy,

38 This comment flies in the face of almost uniform project belief and COPSC experience that the communities wanted to determine the look, feel and capacities of their own portals. Even the ‘portal skin’ idea was rejected by the projects.

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costs, different value propositions, and staffing requirements may all contribute to the gateway portal’s demise.

The HQnet project was one of few COPSC projects that didn’t have a lead public sector organization. HQnet was an organization comprised of independent, multiple stakeholders, and therefore it didn’t have project a governance structure that could be independent of the stakeholders. This meant that more effort was expended in order for the partners to reach consensus on any issue.

POTENTIAL NEW USES/NEW SERVICES

• The ASP model should be more broadly considered for its merits. • One interviewee suggested COPSC might do more to create a provincial community of practice where best practices, software, ideas, links, etc. could be shared. • An intranet from portal to portal could be launched.

NEW TECHNOLOGY DIRECTIONS

• Originally the project was designed to be locally hosted, but Bell offered an ASP space and it was adopted. While the ASP technology had its headaches in building the portals those difficulties have been worked through. • Would like to see the portal have an environment that would be suitable for teachers and educators including professional development, and curriculum planning.

RECOMMENDATIONS BY THE PROJECT FOR FUTURE CONSIDERATION

• One of the partners commented that it was better to not to stay too localized. There were political advantages to doing things separately but many financial advantages for doing things together. • Another recommendation that came forward was to consider the local and provincial mix. In certain instances there was a need for local information, and local services but if the costs were prohibitive why try and do things locally when they could be done regionally or provincially, such as the coordination of police services, licensing, permits, or federally mandated elements, such as birth certificates, water safety etc. • The design of the project came out to be an “8 for 1 deal”, where the technology, software and much of the ideas were shared. The partners of Hastings-Quinte ended up with a main portal www.myWindow.ca and seven stakeholder portals with the content they needed in each. The process of portal development resulted in a software upgrade from Bell, which they felt was so much better.

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5. Kenora Region Project Title: Faster Lake of the Woods

URL: www.kenora.ca Launch Date: December 1, 2005 Completion Date: October 27, 2006

PART A – THE LOGIC MODEL

COMMUNITY PROFILE • The Kenora region is a vast territory encompassing 407,167 sq km., and has a population of 61,802, and a population density of 0.2 people per sq km. • In addition to the City of Kenora there are two smaller townships within the region, Minaki, Sioux Narrows/Nestor Falls, Morson, over 50 Indian reserves, and a few smaller townships. Aboriginals make up over 35% of the population. • Kenora is only 200 km or two hours drive along the Trans-Canada Hwy from Winnipeg, its closest major city. By contrast Toronto is 1,900 km away. • The unemployment rate for the city was 8.5% low and 11.1% for the region both of which were high compared to Ontario at 6.1% • Tourism is a main industry and the City of Kenora population grows substantially in the summer. • The large geographical reach which touches upon the Great Lakes makes the region sparsely populated. • Technology infrastructure varies between good in the City of Kenora and sparse in the rural areas. • The portal project, while championed by Lake of the Woods Business Incentive Corporation (LOWBIC), has effectively continued through the City of Kenora’s ongoing investment and labour as well as the strong community collaboration.

Demographics

Coverage sq km 407,167 Population 61,802 Population density 0.2 Median Age 39 Average household size 3.2 % Youth (< 25) 39 % students (5-14 + fulltime 15+) 13 % Seniors (65+) 10 % visible minorities 1

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% Aboriginal 35 % Immigrants (since 1991) 5 % English 74 % French 3 % Non Eng or FR 23 % w/ degrees/diplomas (20-64) 23 Average earnings $29,642 Labourforce 27,605 Participation rate 66 Employment rate 59 Unemployment rate 11 Median Income $20,291 % from Earnings 77 % from Transfers 14

Geo-spatial profile The District of Kenora region covers 407,167 sq. km and has a population of 61,802. By comparison this is four times the size of Thunder Bay region and 50 times larger than the largest of the southern Ontario COPSC regions. The City of Greater Kenora was main city in the region with a population of 15,838 and was located approximately 200 km east of Winnipeg along the Trans-Canada Highway. The City is second in size only to Thunder Bay in north western Ontario and its population triples in the summer due to tourism. The focus of the Kenora.ca project was designed to cover those communities in a 80 km radius of Kenora including: Sioux Narrows-Nestor Falls, Minaki, Grassy Narrows and Stewart Lake. However, outside of the City of Kenora the outlying communities were still in a discussion phase as to their participation.

There were also 50 First Nations communities in the District including eleven in the neighbouring area of Kenora.

Kenora residents tended to look to Winnipeg as their closest urban centre as it is only two hours distant vs. six to Thunder Bay. Many people read the Winnipeg Free Press.

Economic profile Kenoraʹs primary industry was the forestry products sector. Over 900 people were employed directly by local mills and plants. Tourism was the second major employer. Over 200 resorts were located in or near the City of Kenora, mostly on Lake of the Woods. Lake of the Woods was one of the areas main tourist attractions with over 65,000 miles of shoreline and boasting almost every type of freshwater fish.

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Because of its remoteness and low population, the infrastructure and municipal costs for the region were large. For instance, although local dams produce inexpensive electricity, the local energy price was determined by open markets and Hydro 1, resulting in the City’s unit electricity costs being quite high39 (which was a point of frustration with the Provincial Government because the community could not benefit from local advantages even when they did exist). Similarly, the costs of technology were a little higher than most other places in the province, due to the remoteness of some of the towns. For example, in Laclu, which was recently brought online with funding from COBRA, the access costs were quite high.

The main employers in the region were Weyerhauser, Lake of the Woods District Hospital, the City of Kenora and the Provincial and Federal Civil Service. However, small business has continued to dominate the economic scene.

Technology profile High speed Internet access was available in the city through the City-owned Kenora Municipal Telephone Service (KMTS) and Norcom Cablevision which had a fibre/coaxial hybrid network. Bell Canada also serviced some of the smaller Townships in the region. Outside of the city, there was wireless Internet service for some of the rural areas including: Kendall Inlet, Pellatt, Laclu, and Sioux Narrows but in most of this vast region, users were restricted to dial-up Internet or party line phones. It was estimated that the rate of Internet access among the population was about 50%.

According to interviewees, the Internet sophistication of Kenora area users covered a broad spectrum from very sophisticated to those that had no interest or desire to use the Internet. In the latter group, the reason for their lack of interest was not generational but that they saw no practical reason for doing so. Many of those in the forestry industry, for example, did not feel the need to be connected because they did not see any difference it would make to their work or way of life.

In terms of competition, there was “mykenora.com” which was co-owned by KMTS and the Kenora District Credit Union and promoted as community portal, and “gokenora.com” which was owned by one of the cable companies. Both of these competitors were considered “limited web sites.” gokenora.com was not considered a portal as it had no links to community groups and mykenora.com had only limited links to community groups.

39 They are in fact two and a half times higher than the price in neighbouring Manitoba. Ref. ”Power to Kenora”, Editorial, Winnipeg Free Press, Thursday, Aug 4, 2005

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Social Capital Profile Kenora is a close, tight-knit community which often pulls together on projects. LOWBIC was the main partnership organizations, bringing together groups from across the region to address a variety of regional development concerns.

It was felt that the community groups within the Kenora region worked very well together and frequently formed various kinds of partnerships. For instance, the City is currently in collaborative discussions with another community group, the Kenora- Rainy River Community Care Access Centre to link the CCAC through the portal.

Since Kenora was a small city located along the Trans Canada Highway many people often looked either west to Winnipeg or east to Thunder Bay for entertainment, cultural or employment opportunities.

Kenora looks so strongly to Winnipeg that a grassroots movement to separate from Ontario and join Manitoba has been underway in Kenora for years. After the closing of the Abitibi mill, the Mayor of Kenora was quoted as saying that “it might be time for the community to say goodbye to Ontario and join up with Manitoba”40. The Mayor had previously told CBC “the mill might have stayed open if Kenora were a part of Manitoba. Obviously if we were part of Manitoba, this wouldnʹt be happening, because the energy costs are less than half for this industry and a lot of other things are different,ʺ he said. Mayor Canfield said people in Kenora were growing increasingly frustrated with the feeling of alienation from the politicians in Toronto.41

Needs assessment The portal group spent a lot of time focusing on community needs: examining what the community was looking for in advance. The public forums were held on four major areas of community interest, and included a diverse range of comment: • Tourism - people were looking for different things, different sectors of tourism, and tried to accommodate as best possible, fishing, hunting all wanted their sections highlighted • City - internal departments needed to figure out what content, and ideas were needed • Residents - representations from a variety of residents from high school students to seniors all wanted a variety of things showcased. Some wanted to see more not for profit organizations, others wanted only groups such as the Lions’ Club or Rotary, some wanted to see more services for seniors and the disabled, some wanted to see

40 “Ontario city wants to secede, join Manitoba”, CBC News, August 4, 2005 12:13 EDT 41 “Ontario to blame for forest industry problems, lobby says”, CBC News, July 29, 2005

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ways of purchasing a house, others asked for ways of paying for things online, and a few mentioned wanting methods for providing community feedback. • Business - wanted to identify suppliers or customers either in the area or outside it; others wanted to be able to encourage people to move to the area; and still others wanted better online real estate services.

Through these forums and through presentations to organizations, the LOWBIC was able to identify the following community needs.

Stimulate economic development • There is a need to encourage more rural participation in knowledge economy • Need to build local technological capacity especially in the rural areas. • Need to provide support for small businesses through electronic provision of tools, education and business services • Need for youth retention and providing more opportunities for youth to keep in the region. • Need to market Kenora globally as a forward thinking, modern, well worth doing business, investing or living in.

Social service delivery • Need to be able to provide services and information on an as needed basis especially due to large travel distances between communities • Need to encourage better coordination between agencies • Providing agencies with tools they need to do business and to encourage participation in their services

Municipal efficiencies • Need to improve customer response times of municipal officials • There was an interest in reducing municipal service delivery costs, but they unsure if they would get enough pick up to reduce those costs. • need to demonstrate to residents the municipal government could be responsive to their needs on a 24-7 basis

Strengthen sense of community & regional heritage • Need to improve communication between stakeholder groups • Need to provide services and meaningful community information such as recreation centre times, events and other community services through a common access point • Need to have an integrated approach to the region’s communities and to build community cohesiveness through a common community window

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• There was an opportunity to extract additional public and private sector investment by leveraging Connect Ontario money.

Assumptions • Internet applications increase opportunities for connectivity within communities • A community portal provides opportunities for people to stay and participate in their community. This is part of the mandate of the City toward the business community. • A portal builds greater social cohesion • A portal helps promote community values • Stimulating local Internet usage through the provision of meaningful applications will increase network demand and therefore support the IT sector. • By encouraging more universal demand for and sophistication with the Internet, the technological and community capacities will grow. • The Connect Ontario project will increase the awareness and marketability of the region as a destination place for tourism.

PROJECT PROFILE

The objectives of the project were to improve and enhance electronic information and service delivery, and participation and portal visitors and mitigate the geographical barriers experienced by residents of more rural and remote communities. Another goal was to better market and promote the Kenora region globally as a destination eco- tourism location while strengthening the local economy through people and firms attracted to Kenora’s quality of life.

The project proposed to develop a community portal that would act as a single-window for access to the municipal and businesses services and information on the community.

Partners

Lead partner: The Lake of the Woods Business Incentive Corporation (LOWBIC), working through its Faster Lake of the Woods (FLOW) Committee, developed the planning for the portal. It has also acted as the portal project manager. LOWBIC was a regional not-for-profit organization.

Other partners: • The City of Kenora was the principal organization responsible for managing and maintaining the portal.

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• Mississauga, Ont.-based Imex Systems was the lead vendor in the implementation of the project using its iCity suite of e-government products • The Township of Sioux Narrows-Nestor Falls has been an interested partner (although still tentative) • OD Design Labs Inc.- conducted the preliminary design for IMEX

Investment (direct & in-kind)

Total Project Cost: $1,856,056

Provincial Funding: $816,915 Leverage: 2.3

Partner Funding: $1,039,141 Direct: $175,000 In-kind: $864,141

Information/ Services to be provided The Smart community applications would provide interactive/seamless tools with which to conduct business, deliver e-government, enhance social service delivery, and encourage citizens to use the Internet.

General Features • Gateway Portal (mix) • Online tourism marketing • Lake of the Woods virtual tour • Shared web site resource and collaboration tools

Business Features • Business Directory • Centre for e-Business Excellence • Job Mart

Community Features • Community Directory • Community calendar of events • Online program registrations (events, parks and rec will be up end of January) • Electronic meeting places, chat and forum

Municipal Features • Online municipal content which is more enhanced from previous site

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• Online forms • Online payments, tax, hydro, water, sewer • Internet Mail

Mapping Features • Mapping (GIS) and opportunity for paid mapping services

Kenora.ca promised the following content and services: Municipal Services X Agriculture Services Municipal Information X Agriculture Information (very X limited as not applicable to area) Business Services X Youth Services X Business Information X Youth Information X Children’s Services X Senior Services X Children’s Information X Senior Information X Small Business Services X Employment Services X Small Business Information X Employment Information X Health Services X Recreation Services X Health Information X Recreation Information X Education Services X Library Services X Education Information X Library Information X Cultural Events X Community Services X Virtual Tours X Community Information X Gateway to Federal Services X Gateway to Provincial Services X Gateway to Federal Information X Gateway to Provincial Information X Animal control and licencing X Gateway to News providers Access to local statistical info X Building permits X Emergency services X Cultural arts facilities and programs X

ACHIEVEMENTS

On December 1, 2005 the portal was launched with a great deal of interest locally -- 80 email inquiries had been filed since the launch and the time of our interviews. The portal averaged 300-400 hits per day since the launch. Much of the 1100 content pages on the portal had been added as a result of various community collaborations and contributions from the public.

To date 27 online services were listed on the site, including 12 that were oriented towards small businesses. There were 730 listings in the Business Directory and 130 in the Community Directory.

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Completed/ Incomplete The portal has launched and completed almost all of the application areas it set out for itself, although some were more mature than others. There were some online transaction services and new content that were still being uploaded.

Next phase While the site has only been up for two weeks, there have already been requests to purchase advertising space. The portal committee did not feel ready to begin offering advertising yet, as they wanted to offer it to a wide range of advertisers and not have it appear as if the portal was being lead by one single advertiser.

They would also like to boost the business section as a next step and increase the focus on economic development. In order to get more local businesses online they felt the need to conduct more advertising and get the new ‘portal advocate’ (a person hired to educate the community on the benefits of the portal) out in the community. Additional promotion of the site will also increase web traffic levels.

Outcomes • Both the LOWBIC and City of Kenora web portals have been subsumed by Kenora.ca. • The City began using the portal to obtain public feedback on its 2006 budget deliberations.

Indications of ROI • It was reported that the turn around time on portal inquiries was less than a day • No other indicators of return on investment were being monitored.

PART B: KENORA’S STORY

Originally Kenora.ca was conceived of as a one stop information shop for the region, and the portal was anticipated to provide regional information, conduct online transactions, have two-way communication, be robust in tourism, have a strong focus on native communities, and be attentive to the outlying areas. The original layout even included specific pages for each Native group.

As the portal project progressed, however, it was became difficult to obtain all the necessary collaboration, trust and information from the non-Kenora communities and the portal took on a more city centric character. However, efforts are still being made to

Invenire4 Ltd., Ottawa, Ontario 122 COPSC Cases Kenora engage those stakeholders and develop more broadly based regional partnerships. The new portal advocate position has been charged with this mandate.

The Lake of the Woods Business Incentive Corporation (LOWBIC) was the lead partner on the Kenora.ca project. It is a not-for-profit organization that is jointly funded by the federal government under the Community Futures Program and by the City of Kenora in order to deliver economic development services. LOWBIC has delivered business and community economic development services, including tourism related services, to a diverse clientele centered in Kenora and extending outward for a radius of 80 kilometers. LOWBIC is governed by a volunteer Board of Directors representing business, non-profit organizations, municipalities, education, labour and First Nations groups in the region. LOWBIC has often acted as the catalyst for new projects or initiatives to help develop the region’s economy or encourage tourism. Such was the case for the Connect Ontario program. LOWBIC saw this project as solidly in their mandate.

While the forestry products industry was the biggest in the region, Kenora suffered from the Abitibi pulp and paper mill closure. Since 2001, over1,200 jobs at the Kenora plant alone have been lost (not counting spin off jobs) due higher energy costs and a stronger Canadian dollar. Abitibi itself suffered a $355 million loss in the fourth quarter of 2005. The impact on the City is expected to result in a loss of over $1 million in revenues from utilities and direct taxes out of a $26.9 million service budget. This put great pressure on the City to improve efficiencies in service delivery to avoid increasing taxes a pressure that helped motivate the City’s involvement in Kenora.ca.

The decline in forest products has forced the community to try and diversify its economy. The City of Kenora has positioned the community as a small city with a lot of the amenities that a big city has to offer. It is well located along the Trans-Canada, and only 2 hours from Winnipeg. CP rail runs through the City and CN rail runs a little north of Kenora. Kenora is equidistant from Thunder Bay and Minneapolis (about six hours).

More importantly the City is trying to reposition the region’s natural resources as a great asset not just for extraction but for eco-tourism. Kenora was trying to leverage its environmental advantages to attract new residents and business that may be captivated by access to the ‘great outdoors’. Kenora was considered a safe and open community. It had a well established hospital and 32 physicians including specialists, which is unusual for such a small city. The provincial government also had a Family Health Team in the region.

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Implementation The priority of the portal team was to add a variety of online services. To date 27 have been listed on the site and three more were scheduled for launch early in 2006. “Any service where people can walk in and pay at any office should be available online,” said one interviewee.

Helping the City to offer its municipal services online was a driver for the portal’s development, although not the only one42. The original nature of the partnership was to affect a region-wide portal. Nonetheless, the expectation of local stakeholders was that the migration of some municipal services to an online delivery format would be a big part of the effort because of its potential to improve the quality and convenience of service delivery.

However, some informants were unsure about the degree of efficiency gains that might be achieved for the region with more online services because of the limited size of the local audience. For the City these service delivery efficiencies were very important to achieve, especially with the prospect of the declining revenues from companies like Abitibi. One of the issues Council remained concerned about was whether the portal would result in staff reductions.

The City was anticipating that an increased number of people transacting online to enjoy reduced costs, better service quality and more convenience would lead to new revenue being generated. However, several interviewees questioned whether the portal would be able to generate enough online transaction volumes to provide sufficient returns to make the investments made in the portal cost-effective, particularly given the resources required to manually do the data input necessary to create those online services. In order to encourage more online transactions the City is offering incentives, including offering the e-commerce tool for free to small businesses for two years up to August 2008. Despite this, one member of the steering committee believed that they were being overly optimistic, given the size and number of potential portal transactions. He hoped that if efficiencies were to be achieved, the resource savings would be diverted to other areas.

A GIS tool was developed that had seven mapping functions that included Economic Development; Official Plan, Zoning, Property; Bus Routes; Recycling Zones; Waste Zones; Trade Directory; and Address Finder. There was also a plan to link the GIS tool with the Business Directory to help locate businesses in the region.

42 Improving municipal service delivery was an important driver but not the sole driver in this case. Approval of the Kenora portal project was conditional on the project group including other services/applications and other areas in their proposal.

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Content management has been a large undertaking. Currently that content has been added by the City’s IT staff. Obtaining and maintaining that content has proven to be an onerous task. There were approximately 1100 content pages produced for the site at its launch. In future the IT people feel that as the site becomes increasingly adopted by the community, more community members will take on the burden of adding their own content, freeing up time for the IT staff to take on other challenges and evolve new features. They have already developed a Content Management System (CMS) tool so that not-for-profit organizations can go online update their own information.

The business directory has about 730 listings including not-for-profit and governmental organizations. Only 40-50% of those listed an email address and fewer than 30% had web pages. In addition, the portal offers small businesses a variety of online tools including: • Business support services • free web site builder, e-commerce tools and free web hosting • Conduct online sales in Kenora e- Mall for free. • Classifieds section. • Advertise jobs in the Jobs section. • Discussion forums and chat facilities to help interact with peers and partners. • Post business related events in the Event Calendar • Some events are web cast and archived in the Kenora Interactive Media section. • Subscribe and contribute to e- Bulletins and Newsletters. • Order City Property Tax Certificates online • Business information

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Kenora was working hard to populate the business directory. To provide an illustration for other small businesses, they chose one business to feature on the portal called Uncanny Comics. Uncanny Comics had developed an online transaction capability. The business has been adding content to their section from the start of 2006. Due to its Internet exposure on the portal, the business has begun receiving orders from as far away as Nigeria (for $800), and has generally noticed an increase in traffic in their physical store as well.

The portal links to the Northwest Business Centre is an Ontario Business Enterprise Centres. It serves the entire Kenora Rainy River District and is located in downtown Kenora. The Northwest Business Centre provides free one-to-one professional confidential consulting. The Centre offers one-on-one support that connects small business with resources from all levels of government – municipal, provincial and federal.

The site has only been active since December 1, 2005 so web traffic statistics did not reveal much, although when bench marked against myKenora.com which has been operating since 2001, Kenora.ca had generated approximately 80% of the traffic volume of the more established site.

unique visitors by Dec 20, 2005 3,725 new visitors 961/1000 North American visitors 78% Australian visitors 17% Europe 2% Section most viewed Tourism Next most viewed Living Next most viewed City

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Ranking of the most used online services: 1. parking tickets 2. dog licences 3. burning permits 4. purchase of ‘ice candles’ in memoriam 5. genealogy tracing 6. the City e-store – for purchase of bus passes, garbage tags 7. perform address changes online

Other portals A privately supported community portal had been in operation since 2001, when KMTS, the local phone company, in partnership with the Kenora District Credit Union, launched MyKenora.com. MyKenora was dedicated to providing community information, services and content of specific interest to the residents and businesses of the City of Kenora and the surrounding area. While jointly owned by the City it has its own board that governs its activity. It featured local news, sports, weather, white page listings, TV directories, postal code lookups, listings of hosted businesses and community organizations, community calendars and refuse collection calendars. In 2004 the portal had over 90,000 unique visitors and an average of 121,237 hits per day. Despite the traffic, the portal was not as robust as the Kenora.ca portal regarding local information such as restaurants, tours, etc., and offered no municipal services.

MyKenora linked to three portals: the City (Kenora.ca) portal, the KMTS telephone company portal (KMTS.ca), and the credit union portal (KDCU.on.ca). KMTS did offer online payment for its telephone services through the City and the application belonged to the City of Kenora.

Another portal, gokenora.com was provided by the local cable company and focused on community services. Gokenora.com also linked to mykenora.com.

LOWBIC originally attempted to bring all these stakeholders together in the initial phase but wasn’t successful due to the fact that the stakeholders wanted to protect their own unique offerings and wanted to reduce any competitive threat by placing restrictions on the COPSC portal’s development. This lack of collaboration, even with facilitation provided by LOWBIC, resulted in kenora.ca being developed separately.

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Because of the difference in vision between the City and myKenora, the City decided it didn’t want to build on myKenora despite its partial ownership of the portal through KMTS.

The Community Care Access Centre (CCAC) had begun working in collaboration with kenora.ca and was contributing access to its CIOC database of community, health and human services. The Kenora CCAC had a local health portal, one that was part of the larger network of provincial CCAC portals.

The kenora.ca portal had several competitive advantages over the others principally because it is now the portal of the municipality and it drew all the municipal web traffic. It also has a number of services and tools, such as e-Store, the recreation program booking and online bill payment, which the others did not.

The Kenora portal team was still considering how they could work better with these other portals. They neither wanted to compete directly with them nor to put them out of business. However, bridging the relationships with the other portals was being postponed until after the new portal advocate position was filled.

Community engagement Engaging the community was proving to be an important step. This was why the City decided to hire a ‘portal advocate’ to do necessary education about the portal within the community. ʺFirst of all, it was a new concept, and there were a number of people that were either not on computers or the Internet and theyʹre not interested, so thereʹs a knowledge hurdle to climb there,ʺ said Don Cameron, chief administrator of LOWBIC43.

One of the reasons attributed to the project’s success was the degree of intra-community collaboration that was present, something often referred to as Kenora’s “greatest asset” during interviews. Members of this tight, close-knit community often pulled together on projects.

One interviewee mentioned as a case in point the fundraising done for a CT scanner at the local hospital, which raised many millions of dollars and was seen as a tremendous success for this community of 16,000 people. “At a volunteer event it is easy to get a couple of hundred people to contribute time or money. There is also a lot of generosity among the summer residents in addition to the local year round residents,” they said.

43 Kathleen Sibley (2004) “Kenora partners with Imex Systems for online portal”, Technology in Government, May/June, Vol. 11 No. 4

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Interviewees generally felt that community collaboration and the feedback from the community was key to their success. The portal uses an online survey right on its home page and others are located throughout the portal to encourage feedback. There was also a customer service coordinator to ensure that that inquiries were responded to quickly. The turn around time on questions was within a day or less, they said.

There are over 50 native communities in the Kenora District, and eleven in the immediate vicinity of Kenora. These included: Asubpeescho-seewagang Netum Anishnabek English River; Iskatewizaagegan; Shoal Lake; Northwest Angle Onigaming; Ochiichagweʹ-babigoʹining; Anishinabe of Wauzhushk Onigum; Wabaseemoong; Obashkaandagaang Bay; and Washagamis Bay. Although only seventeen aboriginal services were listed in the business directory, the portal team expressed an interest to work more closely with the native communities to increase their participation. Some of those communities had very advanced IT services, but so far not much has been done to build the needed relationships.

Partnership The Kenora project lead was the Lake of the Woods Business Incentive Corporation (LOWBIC). The City of Kenora and IMEX (the technology partners) were co-developers of the project’s design and its implementation. According to LOWBIC, the distribution of workload was IMEX 50%, the City 40% and LOWBIC 10%.

LOWBIC originally developed the Connect Ontario proposal but then was contracted by the City to act as the project manager. There was great staff turnover on the project with LOWBIC which is now on its 5th project manager (the most recent having joined the project in December 2005). This has caused delays as each new project manager had to adjust to the administrative requirements and partner relationships. Despite this turnover, the commitments of the City and IMEX together with those of other partners have kept the project going.

According to the interviewees, IMEX was a good technology partner. The deciding factors in choosing them included that IMEX would allow the municipality to host the portal itself and that they provided a number of services for an excellent price. Other solutions required the vendor to host the site, in which case all the technology problems would have been solved but it would have cost the City money any and every time they wanted to make a change. “I think we wanted more control,ʺ said Don Cameron of LOWBIC.

According to our informants the relationship between the City and LOWBIC was somewhat problematic, apparently due to low staff levels at LOWBIC. As an

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organization, LOWBIC had a total staff of six people, only one of whom, the project manager, was focused on the portal. The others worked on different community development projects. The City apparently felt LOWBIC was too distracted on other activities and insufficiently resourced to fulfill its COPSC roles as project manager, partner manager and collaboration facilitator. (This view, however, was not supported by COPSC staff.) During the transitions between the five LOWBIC project managers, it was City staff that filled in and maintained project continuity but also gave them a taste of running the project itself. The City ultimately felt they could have done the project better on their own44.

Another key funding partner of the portal project was FedNor. FedNor contributed funding during the crucial fourth quarter of the project towards some of the staff positions for the portal project when Connect Ontario money was insufficient to cover them. The result was that half of the wages for IT specialists in that quarter were paid for through FedNor and the other half through Connect Ontario.

A prospective partner for the portal was the Kenora Chamber of Commerce which was considered a “very active” Chamber with a large membership of 200. Although the Chamber was not yet involved, it did appear to be interested. It has twice scheduled presentations on the portal, only to have them cancelled due to scheduling conflicts. In particular, the Chamber liked the ‘e-store’ function because it enabled online selling and the web builder tools that would enable local small business to develop and maintain their own websites.

The Chamber saw the portal as potentially playing a major economic development role in the region. So too did the City’s new Economic Development Officer. The Officer saw the portal as a key tool for providing the types of information needed to encourage new businesses to the area and was generating lots of ideas on how to integrate the portal across the various sectors of the community.

In a region where distances can be hundreds of kilometres, the project’s marketing plan called for positioning the portal as a more convenient place to do business with the City, with community organizations and with area businesses. Since high speed access was available to only the 25% of the region’s population which was concentrated in the

44 None of this was ever communicated to COPSC staff. Changes currently underway mean that as a community futures organization it LOWBIC will no longer be responsible for tourism or special events and will focus on its core services in support of small business. The City will now assume full responsibility for the delivery of tourism services as of April 1 2006 and will not renew its funding agreement with LOWBIC for 2006. The relationship between the municipality and LOWBIC will continue through regional and community economic development initiatives, committees and the Northwest Business Centre.

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urban areas, the convenience argument was framed differently in Kenora than in other communities. Instead of spending hours driving to the city to pay for services, it was still faster to find information or pay for services online even at dial-up speeds of 56 kps.

According to the interviewees, maintaining an ongoing relationship with the Province made a lot of sense. They felt a lot of provincial information could be integrated with the portal. But while there was an interest in future collaborations they wanted to underscore the need to be sensitive to local demands and conditions. As one person put it, “the key business and tourism information is locally driven, and what makes sense for Toronto does not work for Kenora.”

Now that the portal has been launched many community stakeholders were taking notice and trying to understand how they might benefit are onboard to see it grow now that it has been launched.

PART C – ASSESSMENT

FOCUS

The focus of the site has been on four main areas -- municipal services, tourism, business, and the community – with the City being predominant to the extent of its earlier website being subsumed by the portal. While tourism seemed so far to be the big draw to the site this was likely to change as residents and community organizations made better use of the portal’s tools.

According to some interviewees, there has been a lack of focus on both business and education. In part this may be because the portal leaders have not yet worked extensively with either of these groups. The business community has also had competing online alternatives with yourKenora.com, the Chamber site and various tourism related sites. In terms of education, while there was a satellite campus of Confederation College in Kenora, its decision makers resided in Thunder Bay so there has been little interaction to date to involve them in the portal.

Of 130 small community organizations listed in the Community Directory, only three had emails and only two had web sites. This suggested that there may be a lot of work needed to persuade the community organizations to participate in the portal and build their capacity to use it.

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CHALLENGES

Infrastructure There was a big challenge to provide an adequate broadband infrastructure, due to the region’s large geography, bedrock formations and forests. To continue to overcome these challenges the interviewees felt that more wireless networks were needed. Although there were some wireless infrastructure already in place, “they are not as good as could be and need to be made more effective. They are running a hybrid line- of-sight system [unlike the newer technology being explored in such areas as Elgin].”

Data collection There was a collaboration challenge that arose with different community groups with respect to their submission of information that would be posted on the portal. Obtaining content that was in a useable form was seen as one of the larger obstacles in the portal. Interviewees mentioned that it took a long time to get the information and then, because some of that data being submitted was hand written, it also took more time to manually upload the content into databases, which contributed to delays in the project’s schedule.

Appearance An interesting challenge centred on decisions about the appearance of the portal – its actual look and feel. The comment we heard was that “no one wanted to make a decision.” While the development of the technical applications and content seemed to move along comparatively smoothly, determining the look and feel took a lot of time. Even now after the launch they were unhappy about the site’s colour scheme but have hesitated to do anything right away because they feel it would involve too much work. Instead, since they had already planned a number of portal releases, they will phase in new colour scheme changes along with content and concept changes.

Partnership A main point of frustration for the City was the regular changes in project management and leadership at LOWBIC. The project manager changed five times during the portal’s development and these changes were cited as the main reason for the project’s delay. The inconsistency of leadership meant that relationships and administrative protocols had to be continually re-learned. This led to cash flow delays and miscommunications between the partners and COPSC.

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NEW OPPORTUNITIES THAT EMERGED

Two features that have emerged out of the online user surveys being conducted on the site was that citizens wanted to see local birth, death, and marriage notices online. This information falls under provincial jurisdiction but is generally handled by the municipality. In Kenora this was still very much a paper process, for instance, they still do marriage licences on a typewriter! By contrast, Thunder Bay was computerizing this entire process. Kenora will have to do the same in order to comply with this type of request by its citizens and then link to provincial registries. The City’s IT people would like to tie this process into the provincial government back-end data systems in a two- way relationship that would allow this notification to be provided to citizens on the portal.

SUSTAINABILITY

Kenora.ca appears to be quite sustainable economically because it has now become the official City of Kenora website. Whether the site can become a regional portal from a social sustainability perspective was more in question. The proposed partnership with Sioux Narrows-Nestor never materialized and remains questionable45 for after the two years of the project, the extent of the partnership remains a commitment to include them. The private and not-for-profit sectors seem at this stage to be only nominally engaged as does the education sector. The existence of alternatives may further reduce the pressure on these sectors to collaborate regionally. The assessment of the reviewers is that Kenora.ca will become a good municipal portal but not necessarily (if the engagement of other communities and other sectors proves unsuccessful) a good regional portal. That said, the Tourism section represented all the communities not just the City of Kenora.

Short term In the short term sustainability is assured, with the City agreeing to sustain the portal for the next two years.

Long term The City was hoping to get the public to buy into the transactional services on the portal, so that user fess from those transactions can help the portal be more financially sustainable. However, the average user today tended to be looking more for information and not transacting services.

45 This comments conflicts with the messages received by MEDT that the Kenora group was trying to expand its partnerships.

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City Council has made a commitment to hire an IT specialist to maintain the portal and an Economic Development Officer who will explore how to use the site as a key tool to attract businesses to Kenora. The City also recently announced that it will assume full responsibility for Tourism which it had previously shared with LOWBIC. This consolidates three of the four focuses of the portal within the City.

They have hired a portal advocate to promote the portal across the community. They have also developed a marketing plan, a marketing budget, advertising plan which covers the next two years and identified key marketing events, including contests and other activities to draw interest. They have done a media release and conducted presentations for local groups.

GOOD PRACTICES

The interviewees felt the collaborative approach among the City, IMEX and LOWBIC was a best practice because of the way it sustained the project over many changes.

LESSONS LEARNED

The lessons learned by the project • They could have used more feedback from the public and should have held additional public forums in mid project to get feedback on what they were developing. • Ensuring ongoing content updates was considered key to the credibility of the portal as a reliable source of information. • So too was getting representation from as many areas of the community as possible. Not-for-profits were not as well represented as they might have been nor was the business community. A proposed relationship with the CCAC and the e-store application should help attract more attention and participation from these two community sectors. • Developing the portal has helped the City to reach out and understand better the needs of the community. According to one interviewee that feedback has already had an impact in other areas. • The volunteer sector has proven important for the development of the portal, and allowing them to post their own content posted was important for attracting and retaining users and building ownership within the community. The portal included a section for people to volunteer for the hospital. • The portal team felt they understood the importance of market research and meeting user needs. This is why they constructed the portal with its four focuses of

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municipal services, tourism, business and community. In future they would like to extend that range to include health. “If the portal focuses on areas that benefit citizens, such as health care, then it will be even more useful to the community.” For instance, they felt that the portal could be useful for telemedicine or for public health management46 (ie. managing a pandemic).

The lessons we learned by Invenire • While leadership is important in a project like this, the willingness of the partners to collaborate together is even more important. This was demonstrated in the discontinuous leadership provided by the project manager who changed five times during the course of the project. Despite some delays in the project, it continued -- due mostly to the relationships between the other partners and the desire from the community at large to keep the project going. This was also aided by the fact that the number of active partners was few. • In a project that requires significant community collaboration, it is important that the local capacity to support that collaboration is present. In Kenora’s case it appears as if LOWBIC became too distracted and under resourced to fulfill this task. This experience suggests the need for better prior and ongoing ‘on the ground’ intelligence47, possibly in the form of some ex officio status on the board. Then if it became apparent that the lead partner was getting in over its head, some additional support may have been offered to help them not only to administer the project but also to ensure the broad collaboration goals of the COPSC program were met. • The project seemed to understand how to modify its position on what could realistically be done as the project unfolded. With the differences in the region, they focused on getting the City of Kenora in place and using it as a hub in order to attract attention, users and other partners. This strategy has provided them with the central means for ensuring their sustainability. Conversely, it could be argued that it may be more difficult to secure future buy-in from other potential stakeholders with such strong municipal focus. In the end, however, the municipal focus has provided Kenora with a solid foundation and backbone of continuity amidst the changes and lack of focus at LOWBIC.

GAP ASSESSMENT

• Desire to get the project completed were offset by project management turnover

46 However, these health areas are not areas in which MEDT has a mandate to organize responses to. 47 Kenora was one of the projects that involved the most attention from ministry staff. The project officer kept closely in touch with this project group throughout the course of the project. In addition, a consultant was put in place to assist the project group. The group did not communicate the need for additional support to MEDT.

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• Project was project managed by LOWBIC, however, the City felt opportunities were missed by it not taking more of a lead role. • The original design was to be more inclusive of outlying communities, however, the outreach and inclusion of other communities has been minimal due to difficulties encountered in establishing collaboration. • There appears to be a missed opportunity with myKenora.com. Given that City owned KMTS, which had a lead role in myKenora, it seems like there was an opportunity to build on what was there instead of starting from scratch.

POTENTIAL NEW USES/NEW SERVICES

When the portal was originally conceived, webcasting was too expensive and not feasible for this type of project. Now with prices dropping, there was interest to include webcasting in the Site Builder package for the not-for-profits. With lower hardware prices in they were able to acquire the additional servers for webcasting, storage and encoding.

Several people felt that online educational services and online scheduling of children’s groups would be useful for parents. Youth could also use the scheduling tool to post and announce events for them. The interviewees felt the portal tools would enable residents to be more informed about the things going on around them and help them coordinate better their own activities and those of their families. People in Kenora are just as busy as their metropolitan counterparts, as one person reminded us, “people in small towns don’t live in igloos - they have busy lives.”

Another potential new portal feature would offer the services of the small business Self Help Office that is currently being run as a joint venture between LOWBIC and City. The City was pushing to add this suite of services to the portal and to encourage the Chamber to sell its use to their members.

NEW TECHNOLOGY DIRECTIONS

The portal group has been attracted to the suite of business support tools that are offered at Wired Wessex would be helpful. Those services included: • Conferences and training workshops • Informal networking evenings • Opportunities to promote and market business services via the website • Support in sourcing and applying for public and private sector funding • Discounts on industry magazines

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• Access to work placement students for support on short term projects • Online networking via its Bulletin Board • Discounted rates for training and business development courses • Business Growth Groups aimed at helping entrepreneurs start and/or grow their own business • Support with marketing and PR • Access to a free legal helpline

Another new technology that has captured the interest of the project participants was the ePresence software that has proven to be a promising webcasting tool for portals. ePresence was created at the Knowledge Media Design Institute of the University of Toronto. It was a content capturing, archiving, and webcasting system that delivered video and presentation media over the Internet using multiple streaming formats for multiple platforms. ePresence also supported text and voice interaction among event participants.

RECOMMENDATIONS BY THE PROJECT FOR FUTURE CONSIDERATION

• Better due diligence regarding the choice of project manager48 to ensure more stability and consistency in project leadership before commencing. Some criteria for selecting a good project manager may have helped. • Better information exchange: several of the interviewees mentioned they would like to see an ongoing relationship with the Province, where there could be a capacity to exchange information directly with the Province. (This recommendation does not apply to the LOWBIC project managers who were frequently in contact with COPSC program staff). This recommendation suggests that the local partners were not getting the information they needed when they felt they needed it from the Province49. This comment also supports other suggestions that the project manager’s effectiveness could have been better. • They would like to see more assistance from the Province to help with their backbone infrastructure. There remains a need to look concomitantly at technology infrastructure as well as information and data sharing with the Province. • Given that good data underpins the credibility of the entire portal, it was recommended that more support be given to the building and maintenance of

48 By contrast one could look at Elgin, Oxford, Sudbury, Windsor or HQnet for the effect of a committed stable champion as project manager on the portal’s development. 49 COPSC staff were in communication with the Steering Committee as well as with LOWBIC. It is, however, COPSC program policy to have a non-profit organization assume legal responsibility for the project and act as the lead partner. In this case, LOWBIC had that role.

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databases. Database development will be major cost in sustaining the portal. Perhaps there are ideas for database development that can be share among the portal projects. • They recommended obtaining more feedback from the public throughout the implementation phase to permit ‘course corrections’. In Kenora’s case, they launched the portal with only limited review: they did not undertake a public review but only a review by the steering committee with representatives from each sector. In retrospect they see the feedback they are obtaining now with the online surveys would have been helpful earlier on.

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6. NIAGARA PROJECT TITLE: CONNECTING NIAGARA—BUILDING SMART NIAGARA

URL: http://www.yourniagara.ca Preliminary Launch: November 2004 Launch Date: March 2006 Completion Date: March 3, 2006

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PART A – THE LOGIC MODEL

COMMUNITY PROFILE • The region covered by Niagara is 1,144 sq kms, has a population of 410,574 people and a population density of 220.4 people per sq km. • The area consists of 12 municipalities, including the cities of St. Catharines, Niagara Falls, Port Colborne, Thorold and Welland; the towns of Fort Erie, Grimsby, Lincoln, Niagara-on-the-Lake and Pelham; and the townships of Wainfleet and West Lincoln. • Connectivity is quite strong in the main cities because a large part of the fibre core that connects Canada and the US goes through the region. The less populated areas are not as well connected. • As a focal point between the United States and Canada, Niagara is centrally located and interconnects Canada and the US with rail, water and land transport, and airport facilities. • Niagara’s economy is primarily resource-based although tourism as a service-based industry is a large economic generator. • While it was difficult, the diverse interests of the 12 municipalities were able to work together and build consensus on the regional portal.

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• While tourism is a large economic driver, there are other well-established industries such as agriculture and horticulture. The portal team consciously decided to not make tourism its main focus but rather focused on local residents needs.

Demographic Profile Niagara Region Coverage sq km 1,144 Population 410,574 Population density 220.4 Median Age 40 Average household size 3.1 % Youth (< 25) 31 % students (5-14 + fulltime 15+) 15 % Seniors (65+) 17 % visible minorities 4 % Aboriginal 1 % Immigrants (since 1991) 3 % English 81 % French 4 % Non Eng or FR 14 % w/ degrees/diplomas (20-64) 3 Median Income $22,166 Labour force (2004) 161,700 Participation rate 63.8 Employment rate 60.2 Unemployment rate 5.8 Average earnings $30,750 % from Earnings 73.4 % from Transfers 13.2

Geo-spatial profile The Niagara Region covers 1,144 sq. km. and is bordered by Hamilton, Haldimand- Norfolk and the U.S. border along the Niagara river and consists of 12 municipalities, including the cities of St. Catharines, Niagara Falls, Port Colborne, Thorold and Welland; the towns of Fort Erie, Grimsby, Lincoln, Niagara-on-the-Lake and Pelham; and the townships of Wainfleet and West Lincoln.

Economic Profile The region had a $14.13 Billion GDP (2000) and according to a 2000 study by the Bank of Montreal, Niagara’s business environment was forecasted to have a long period of

Invenire4 Ltd., Ottawa, Ontario 140 COPSC Cases Niagara strong economic growth. An emerging advanced technology manufacturing sector was gaining momentum led by small to medium sized manufacturers with niche market products in specialized microelectronics, photonics and ceramics.

Tourism was the driving force of Niagaraʹs economy including attractions like Niagara Falls, the Welland Canal, the Niagara Escarpment, the Shaw Festival Theatre, drawing on a global audience and attracting 17 million visitors a year (2002). The Niagara region received 50% of all travellers entering Ontario and accounted for 40% of the Ontario tourism industry or $2.1 Billion.

Niagara’s manufacturing sector has been the backbone of Niagara’s economy. Although manufacturing employment in the region has declined in recent years, Niagara’s manufacturing sector still employs approximately 25,700 people (2004) or 16% of the workforce.

Agriculture in the region has been on the upswing in recent years. It has reversed provincial trends with a 117.7% growth in employment between 1989 and 1999. The region has been the centre of the Canadian wine industry and is the anchor of a high profile, agri-food strategy for the region. According to the Wine Council of Ontario, the wine industry was estimated to reach $1.5 billion dollars by 2020. Niagara was also home to more than 30% of Ontarioʹs greenhouse floral production.

The region was a funnel point for trade between the United States and Canada due to excellent communications links, as well as rail, water and land transport, and airport facilities. Over 18% of United States and Canada trade passes through Niagara. In addition the region itself exports some $3.6 billion annually while importing $5.1 billion.

Technology profile The Niagara Region was very well off in terms of technology infrastructure as several of the main fibre optic trunk lines for telecommunication transit the Region linking Canada to the US. The infrastructure was considered one of the best in Canada.

That said, there were rural pockets in the Region that did not have high speed Internet connection relying on dial-up connectivity.

Most interviewees felt that the range of computer and Internet experience of local residents was mixed. Overall, their assessment was that Internet sophistication and demand for Internet services was growing steadily.

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Despite the infrastructure access, in 2003 Statistics Canada reported that in the overall Internet use in the region was only 55.5 % as seen in the following table:

Household Internet Use 200350 (St. Catharines- Niagara)

Location % Home 45.8 Business 30.0 School 17.9 Overall 55.5

When compared with the eight other census metropolitan areas in Ontario tracked by Statistics Canada, household Internet usage in the Niagara region was the lowest. Elsewhere, usage levels ranged as high as 78.9%.

In addition to the yourNiagara site, the region contained several prominent regional portals including ones for the Niagara Economic Development Corporation (business), Tourism Niagara, Niagara Peninsula.com (general), the Niagara Bed and Breakfast Association, Information Niagara (community information) and DiscoverNiagara.com (entertainment).

Social capital profile Niagara had a population of 410,574 in 2001 and was growing slowly at 0.8% annually and was expected to reach half a million within 25 years.

Over the next two decades it is estimated that the Niagara Region would experience unusually high rates of retirement from its labour force resulting in new opportunities for those entering the workforce, and replacement challenges for those companies looking to bring large numbers of inexperienced workers up to speed quickly.

According to one interviewee, Niagara Region was a “Great place to live because it allows for a lifestyle and availability of easy access to the metropolitan centre of Toronto arts and culture, as well as good access to the U.S. There is also opportunity for a rural lifestyle when living in Niagara.”

Needs Assessment Stimulate economic development • Need to use technology to create trade specific portal for Niagara

50 Source: Statistics Canada

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• Need to better integrate logistics, telecommunications, customs brokerage services, within the business supply chain.

Social service delivery • Need to be able to provide services and information on an as-needed basis

Municipal efficiencies • Need to improve customer response times of municipal officials • Need to reduce municipal service delivery costs • The need to integrate the services of the many municipalities in the region, while maintaining the brand and integrity of each.

Strengthen sense of community & regional heritage • Need to strengthen the region’s sense of community • Need to have an integrated approach to the community • Need to provide online access to meaningful and broad community information through a common access point. • There is an opportunity to extract private sector investment across the diverse regions by leveraging public money.

Assumptions • Internet applications increase opportunities for building bridges among the diverse communities • A community portal provides opportunities for people to stay and participate in their community • A portal builds greater social cohesion and understanding • A portal helps promote community values • Migrating some municipal service delivery to electronic transactional service delivery over the Internet will permit greater efficiencies at the local and provincial level.

PROJECT PROFILE

Connecting Niagara is a multi-sector, regionally focused initiative designed to facilitate progress in Niagara toward a “connected” or “smart” community. Originally the project was initiated in 2000 through a collaboration between Niagara College, the Business Education Council of Niagara, HRDC and Industry Canada.

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Partners

Lead: The Business Education Council of Niagara (BEC)

Other partners

• Niagara Region • Town of Pelham • City of St. Catherine’s • Township of Wainfleet • City of Niagara Falls • City of Port Colborne • City of Welland • City of Thorold • Town of Fort Erie • Town of Niagara-on-the-Lake • Town of Grimsby • Brock University • Town of Lincoln • Niagara College of Applied Arts and Technology48 • Information Niagara • District School Board of Niagara • Niagara Economic and Tourism • Niagara Catholic District School Corporation51 Board • Niagara Training and Adjustment Board

Investment (direct & in-kind)

Total Project Cost: $2,198,130

Provincial Funding: $1,023,695 Leverage: 2.1

Partner Funding: $1,174,435 Direct: $744,658 In-kind: $429,777

Information/ Services to be provided The Connect Niagara applications would provide interactive/seamless tools with which to conduct business, deliver e-government, enhance social service delivery, and encourage citizens to use the Internet. Among those applications were:

General Features Municipal Features • Gateway Portal (mix) • Content sharing • Central data repository on the region • Service Request Manager (service tracking) • News services, notices, & alerts • social service delivery complaints tracking • Authentication • E-commerce and secure payment

51 No longer a partner

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transactions • Interactive multimedia • facilities booking and program registration • Collaborative workspaces Community Features • Content management • Recreation services online including GIS services • Membership management • Newsletters Business Features • Discussion groups • job posting tool Mapping Features • GIS mapping for co-op placements • Data retrieval and provision • Proposed BizPal business service • Mapping (GIS)

The portal was to develop the following information and services:

Municipal Services X Agriculture Services Municipal Information X Agriculture Information Business Services X Youth Services X Business Information X Youth Information X Children’s Services X Senior Services X Children’s Information X Senior Information X Small Business Services X Employment Services X Small Business Information X Employment Information X Health Services X Recreation Services X Health Information X Recreation Information X Education Services X Library Services X Education Information X Library Information X Cultural Events X Community Services X Gateway to Federal Services X Community Information X Gateway to Federal Information X Gateway to Provincial Services X Gateway to News providers X Gateway to Provincial Information X

ACHIEVEMENTS YourNiagara’s development plan was based on specific application contributions from individual partners or groups of partners. In addition because of the variety of initial conditions among those partners not all applications were desired by all partners. Thus while almost all the applications were developed they are not equally available across the region. It was suggested that over time the diffusion of these applications throughout the region would become more complete.

Outputs

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Most applications had been completed, although not all. In particular, the e-commerce transaction service and the facilities bookings service were incomplete as yet. The links generally passed the user to another site rather than keeping them under the yourNiagara banner. Although the site launched in December 2005, it remained a work in progress with a number of the links that didn’t work.

Next phase The next phase will be eliminating the bugs to make the site more stable and getting the transactional services online. This should be completed relatively soon in order to facilitate facilities booking and payment for arena rentals. Other e-commerce applications were in an initial phase of being set up as well.

Outcomes The portal project required the collaboration of all of the 12 municipalities which had a wide range of interests geographic, economic and cultural. This often led them to competitive relationships with each other. However, the project successfully achieved a degree of cooperation unseen among them before and it has laid the foundation for further regional cooperation in the future.

Impacts None identified so far.

Indications of ROI No sense of return on investment yet.

PART B: NIAGARA’S STORY

The goals of yourNiagara were to improve and enhance the delivery of electronic information and services and to help remove the geographic barriers to that delivery that were being experienced by the area’s rural and remote communities. Therefore the project developed a community portal that would provide online access to information and services to people throughout the Niagara region.

The region of Niagara is more concept than reality as the map illustrated earlier demonstrated. That image suggests a ‘patchwork’ of smaller communities of roughly equivalent size. In 2000 when many communities in Ontario were amalgamated these communities remained independent because of a failure to reach any kind of a regional consensus.

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According to one interviewee, the region’s history of municipal competitiveness was best illustrated by the recent wrangling over the building of a large regional hospital. Each municipality wanted the hospital, but the size and scope of the project required that all the Regional players work together cooperatively. Municipal competitiveness over the hospital location resulted in long delays. With cutbacks to emergency services to the smaller local hospitals, the residents of these more rural municipalities wanted the new hospital to be closer for access. Doctors got involved in the debate as well, for many reasons including the need to lure prospective doctors out to the region rather than to a single city. In the end, the new hospital, to be built in St. Catherine’s, will replace two aging hospitals in that city and reduce the need for people to go to Hamilton for treatment.

“The Niagara Health System had many fractious issues. We can’t even get a world-class hospital in the region due to territorial battles. It’s more about political will than what will work best for residents of Niagara. The political way is not always driven by deep thought.”

However, residents and tourists tended to see the regional picture more. They saw a successful economy strategically placed on the U.S. border, with major manufacturing operations, a world class wine industry, and the largest regional contributor to Ontario’s flower industry. They saw a region rich in culture and history and an environment so unique UNESCO has designated the Niagara Escarpment as a World Biosphere Reserve.

The communities in the Niagara region have over 300 years of shared history: Fort Niagara was one of North America’s earliest outposts established by the French in 1679; Niagara-on-the-Lake was the original capital of Upper Canada; the War of 1812 saw significant battles here; Laura Secord was from the area; Old Fort Erie is a famous landmark; the Welland Canal was one of Canada’s first major engineering achievements; and, the Underground Railroad came through the region.

History Industry Canada was the initial sponsor of the project beginning in 1999, helping it to develop a plan and then in 2001 the project came under Connect Ontario funding. The lead partner in the project was the Business Education Council of Niagara (BEC), which was seen as an independent, neutral broker among the project’s municipal partners. Since the region’s municipalities have had a history of working competitively rather than collaboratively, an alternative to a municipal lead was necessary to offset the trust issues which existed, especially between the Niagara Regional Municipality and the other municipalities. One interviewee remarked on this rift saying “In the region we are

Invenire4 Ltd., Ottawa, Ontario 147 COPSC Cases Niagara smaller than Hamilton in size but we have twelve municipalities which fight the regional government.” BEC was chosen as the lead because it had previously worked with all of the governments in other initiatives and so was invested as the trusted intermediary.

Each of the twelve municipalities participated in the project solely on the basis of its own locally defined benefit and not on the basis of any regionally defined benefit. There was little in the way of common vision or purpose, resulting in their bonds of cooperation being very weak. In fact, there were three occasions when the governance group, comprised mainly of municipal CAOs, formally considered breaking up and ending the project. The perspective this brings to the project is that there was not a single portal project but twelve projects co-habiting within the same funding envelope.

According to one interviewee “there seemed to be a difference of viewpoint between the Province and BEC about what in fact was going on in Niagara. The Province appeared to believe that there was one project with different elements to it whereas in reality there were 12 independent projects that BEC was trying to coordinate on a regional level. Each decision, change or modification had to be ratified by twelve municipal councils -- a time consuming process that competed with other community priorities.” For BEC, this meant that the costs of partner management and partner compliance with the COPSC reporting process were much more demanding than they initially anticipated. They estimated that BEC assumed an additional $100,000 in non- recoverable, in-kind expenses to manage the project52.

With reference to municipal competitiveness and the portal project, the implementation of the BookIT/PayIT e-commerce tool, for example, was slowed down immensely because each of the municipalities had to examine whether they would accept the proposed central banker or not. When they decided that they could not, each had to consider how they would use the tool independently. Then the tool had to be modified for use by each partner. Sorting all this out took over 6 months.

“At least two municipalities are talking about seceding from the project.”

The development strategy for the Niagara portal was to encourage each community to develop one or more features as a template for the others. Once that template was proven successful it could then be rolled out in the other communities if they so

52 BEC did not have to file 12 separate reports, one for each municipal partner. However, it did have to get approvals from twelve different and competing municipal governments. This made the project management job more complex than say Chatham-Kent, or even Oxford.

Invenire4 Ltd., Ottawa, Ontario 148 COPSC Cases Niagara desired. According to BEC, all of the contracted features were expected to be delivered in at least one community by the agreed upon delivery date.

However, not all municipalities want all the features that are being developed. Some communities had a pre-existing commitment to an alternative online service or technology and consequently did not wish to switch to something new (coordinate yes but not switch). Some communities just don’t see the need or couldn’t justify the expense. In the end, each community will have its own unique suite of services developed but a suite of services coordinated with the other communities in the region. There was a belief that over time public pressure would encourage a more uniform distribution of the services.

Despite their competitiveness the municipalities proved to be solid partners. Together they had already passed the necessary budget measures in their respective councils to support the project over the next three years. However, to really sustain the program will require increasing the estimates on technology, manpower and partner management than were initially budgeted.

There is more emphasis in the Niagara region than in other areas on revenue generation from the portal. For instance, while there was no cost for listing a business the group was thinking of charging for displaying corporate logos, perhaps for as low as $25 per year. This reflects an underlying belief that the portal should be self sustaining and not dependent on public money. In fact to some in the project governance group the project was viewed as a potential business opportunity. That is, while it was being developed by a not-for-profit group, it might ultimately be turned over to some private entity to maintain and run.

It would seem like an odd perspective given what appears to be a minimal involvement by private sector stakeholders (manufacturers, winery, tourism or casino businesses) in the portal’s early stage of the development. One person argued that the partnership management challenges were already great enough with the 12 municipal partners without adding private partners. It was felt that adding private partners to the mix would have made it wholly unworkable. In addition, there was a belief that the business sector, and other public sector organizations not initially involved, represented post-development market targets to generate the necessary revenues to make the portal sustainable.

One interviewee felt this was a big mistake in the project design. To exclude the largest community and economic drivers in the region from the portal project did not make sense to them. “The project design,” they felt “should have been driven more by the

Invenire4 Ltd., Ottawa, Ontario 149 COPSC Cases Niagara community, and not the municipalities or the BEC.” The project manager, on the other hand, mentioned that a focus group comprised of local citizens spent a lot of time in the initial stages defining what they felt should be provided on the site. “Perhaps these residents wanted to be broader in scope than just providing more of the same information already available to tourists. This portal was intended to serve the entire community since it was funded by their tax dollars.”

An important administrative challenge arose from a fundamental difference of opinion between the Province and the local governance group on BEC’s role. The governance group believed BEC was the agent of the partner group rather than the Province. BEC saw its role like that of a CEO to a board of directors and saw the Province as funding partner but not a directive partner. The leadership of the project was a “by the community, for the community” approach. According to interviewees, the actions of the Province, on the other hand, suggested that it saw itself as the primary authority to which BEC and the other partners needed to adjust themselves. As an example, the start date of the project was back-dated three months from the signing date meaning that there were three fewer months in which to complete the project by the original deadline53.

From the perspective of the governance group, the administration of the Niagara COPSC project was oriented to protect the Province, not to support the actions of the community. The governance group believed this cost taxpayers much more than was needed. It was estimated that the unanticipated and unbudgeted in-kind costs absorbed by all the partners in order to comply with the COPSC reporting process54, were in the $100,000-$200,000 range, not including the opportunity costs associated with not doing more productive things with those resources.

Considering the development of the portal itself, there were many well regarded and outstanding features. For example, a lot of senior citizens support the services. The

53 According to the Province, the contract was backdated 3 months from the signing date at the request of the BEC to allow them to recognize previous expenditures. MEDT also extended the contract term end date on three separate occasions to provide BEC with the additional time needed to complete its portal project. 54 BEC was subject to the same reporting requirements, as were all the other COPSC project groups. It did not have to file 12 separate reports, one for each municipal partner. From the ministry’s perspective, BEC was lax in its financial reporting, accounting and documentation procedures. This resulted in repeated requests for data/information and long delays in processing their requests for payment. The challenges that BEC had in dealing with its portal vendor also created additional delays and costs for the project group. This led the project officer to request an internal audit of the project. The audit report advised COPSC staff to work closely with the BEC to ensure that it maintain proper accounting records, supporting schedules, audit trails. The audit report’s recommendations were subsequently implemented. The auditor also identified the Niagara portal project as a project at high-risk of failure, although the portal has launched and is likely to be completed.

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seniors groups seem to be continually adding more information to portal events and databases.

It was estimated that over 3,000 businesses were currently listed on the portal. The process of validating listings has been painful because of the need to conduct phone surveys to validate the input. The municipalities and Chambers of Commerce were reluctant to contribute names due to proprietary or privacy concerns.

The region was considered a perfect location for the over 12,000 SMEs that resided in the area because it was a hub between Canada and the U.S., close to several large urban markets and a prime location for tourism. Interviewees felt that many small businesses were Internet savvy citing their use specific services such as Verisign in e-commerce transactions.

The business section of the portal was linked with mapping. A example of a benefit will be that placement services for co-op students will be able to use the GIS mapping to assign their placements to businesses.

There was a clearly expressed desire for a shopping cart feature on the portal. Some features, like BookIT, exist on the site but there is no shopping cart to enable multiple transactions (this will be available in March 2006). The Niagara Navigator will also be providing a shopping cart service to integrate online payments for GIS services. It was also felt that the idea of providing an inexpensive shopping cart would make sense for those in the SME community.

The region has several strong educational institutions. Brock University and Niagara College exist in the region; McMaster University is in nearby Hamilton; and Niagara University, University of Buffalo and the State University of New York are nearby in the neighbouring New York State. As a result many classes, according to one interviewee, were beginning to use the mapping tools on the portal- they teach GIS programs and used the GIS section of the portal.

The mapping tools were also useful in a health care context. While there was a hospital in almost every municipality, finding one nearest you was an important concern especially with the large influx of tourists each year (17 million) which put a big strain on the system.

The portal is developing several user feedback tools to monitor their progress. There was a survey tool in place on the portal but it will be replaced in mid-February 2006 with one more capable of cross-referencing detailed data. There were feedback and

Invenire4 Ltd., Ottawa, Ontario 151 COPSC Cases Niagara harvest points on the site. They did have a log-in feature on the portal to help monitor usage and a user satisfaction survey was coming soon.

In marketing the portal, there was a budget to hire a marketing person in late winter or early spring 2006. Currently utility bill payments have been used to send out marketing notices about the portal. A year ago, marketing efforts to create awareness of the portal included information placed in mall kiosks, handouts given out in malls and parades, and media associated with its official launch at the Niagara College. However, the preliminary public launch of the portal in November 2004 when it was still very much under construction did, according to some interviewees, dissuade some users from returning.

One interviewee felt that to improve marketing, the portal should be marketing to Niagara businesses. It was suggested there were a lot of stakeholders in the area that could promote buy-in, particularly the municipalities which could promote it on their websites and through their public communications, e.g. letters and bills.

Currently, tourism visitors frequently find the yourNiagara portal but leave shortly afterwards because the focus of the site is mainly for the residents. While the service locator or the business directory on the portal could be of interest to tourists, the information is not up yet. The design of the site is strongly weighted towards municipal information and not tourism. “Tourism is a different ball game and the residents want to get on the portal and find what they need.”

Another area where there was not consensus with the governance group was with respect to online payment for parking tickets and other municipal fines. According to the ministry, the online payment of parking tickets application was dropped due to privacy issues. However, one interviewee questioned that view telling us, “The municipalities don’t appear to want to put parking tickets online because if people don’t pay within two weeks the fee collectable doubles.”

Looking forward there was interest in several other additional features for the portal. These included:

• The City of Niagara Falls was in discussion with Cogeco Cable to video stream its Council meetings live to cable Internet subscribers. Since many people cannot view the meeting live, so they also planned to archive the information and were considering attaching a user poll to provide feedback from the public on policy and ideas. Eventually the City may provide some added interactivity to allow instant feedback on issues and Council debates.

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• The portal will provide the option of submitting service requests online. For example, requests for municipal service (e.g. for a pothole to be fixed) are presently phoned in. For the municipality handling phone calls tends to consume more time than online requests – plus a resident can obtain the added online service of seeing the progress of the request and tracking repair dates without subsequent calls being made.

• The online form to be used for building permits has mandatory fields to help with compliance. There is now legislation that stipulates that the permit or licences must be completed within 10 days. The clock starts ticking when a person first submits so every day counts. Online functionality will speed the process and reduce mistakes. Online forms also provide the opportunity to make online payments as well. Eventually, dog licences and other licences and permits may be purchased this way.

• A proposed job posting tool will allow small- and medium-sized businesses to post positions and manage them while interested candidates can submit resumes for consideration.

• The governance group would like to produce webcasting of parades and other major regional events.

• BizPal is another feature that is being considered for the portal in the future. BizPal is a collaboration between Industry Canada and the Ministry of Government Services. BizPaL is an online service that aims to simplify and coordinate the process of applying for business permits and licences for businesses, entrepreneurs, governments, and third-party business service providers. It was seen as having advantages for government by providing the assurance that business clients will have the information they need to meet all permit and licence requirements.

BizPal is currently being run as a pilot project by Industry Canada in partnership with the Province of British Columbia, the City of Kamloops, the Province of Ontario, the Region of Halton, and the towns of Halton Hills and Milton; as well as Yukon and the City of Whitehorse. The key is in obtaining municipal buy-in to link all their business permitting and licensing processes to the BizPal site as only a few permits require federal or provincial approval.

• The portal was hoping to provide RSS feeds from local media, once they are in a position to provide this service. This would provide almost instant news updates. However, this may be a challenge due to the competition to redirect web traffic to

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specific communities. Currently, when traffic is re-directed the yourNiagara frame is lost.

One of the major outcomes of the project has been the success the partners feel in collaborating on the GIS tool. The GIS project was housed in the same building as the portal but the linkages to things like the business database have proven helpful to residents. There has been a lot of cross promotion of the portal and the GIS sides of the project- it’s been symbiotic. The maps have overlays with property lines, cemeteries etc.

The Niagara communities did learn to work together (and this will be utilized for future collaborations). Recognizing that a unified regional voice would better serve them with the Province, the municipalities worked cooperatively to apprise/inform the Province of their requirements/needs/concerns which has had the effect of creating the first step in the production of a sense of regional identity.

In addition, it was acknowledged that alone each municipality would not have the means to build such an extensive portal. “GIS is a good example of how it can work and is affordable. With our GIS system if anyone that wants to know anything about the region then it is all in a one-stop shop”.

Given that the First Nations population in the region is sizable, yourNiagara would like to begin working more closely with native groups. Additionally, there are large multi- cultural sectors of the community they wish to collaborate with as well. They felt the first step was to conduct a needs assessment.

On the technology side, they host the information instead of using an ASP model. They have a web farm, where six computers were linked and took care of load balancing.

Another area of collaboration for cost savings and mutual benefit that was being explored was the building of a community organization feature. It was estimated that there were more than 5,000 community human services organizations in the region, including everything from not-for-profits, service clubs, athletic organizations, etc. “Many of them do not have the money for building and purchasing separate websites but the Content Management system used on our portal would allow for areas to be set aside for each organization to use. They would maintain their own content. It would be great system for informing their members or the public.”

Additionally, one interviewee felt this could also be an effective income generator. Not all fundraising organizations had the financial means to conduct online transactions and donations, but for a nominal fee yourNiagara felt they could supply that service.

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While all school boards tended to provide comprehensive web sites, one board member interviewed suggested the Book It/ Pay IT online payment feature could be used for continuing education courses.

Another service being developed is one by the Niagara Training and Adjustment Board (NTAB), a provincially and federally funded organization, which is working to compile a database of local businesses. The database will go live, after they finish conducting a business census in the region. NTAB has had to collect the data fresh because information from other organizations tended to be stale-dated or was not made available.

Despite the fact that the municipalities have had their differences of opinion around what applications and services were best suited for a regional portal, the Niagara site shows the promise of being quite extensive and was contributing to an emerging sense of community integration.

PART C – ASSESSMENT

FOCUS

One of the main criticisms we observed was the narrow focus of the portal. While it was important to have the municipalities onboard, the strong municipal focus, according to some interviewees, has edged out many other areas such as tourism, community groups, cultural groups and Native communities. And, while the portal has successfully overcome the challenges of the 12 municipalities working collaboratively for the first time, it may also have led to a watering down of those municipal service offerings, such as not including online payments for parking tickets and fines. A couple of interviewees remained unconvinced that the municipally driven portal design was the right angle and suggested a mix of areas would be better.

However, several well developed portals already existed for business and trade. Most prominent among them was the Advantage Niagara portal of the Niagara Economic Development Corporation. This portal was quite successful and the governance group saw no need to duplicate it. Links to Advantage Niagara, nevertheless, are included on yourNiagara.

Another similar element of the site’s focus was around the decision not to make it another tourism portal, even though tourism was a major industry. There was a

Invenire4 Ltd., Ottawa, Ontario 155 COPSC Cases Niagara plethora of well developed tourism sites, (some public, some private, and some associational) and the governance group felt they didn’t want to compete with them.

So given that well developed regional portals were already present for tourism, business and trade services, the need in the region was for better coordinated municipal and community information and services. The governance group chose to focus on the municipal sector which seemed the most problematic and has had quite reasonable success as a result. The community sector did have Information Niagara, a regional portal which could conceivably be linked in a subsequent phase as one interviewee strongly recommended.

Potential portal focus for yourNiagara

Business X Community ¶

Municipal ¶ Tourism X

CHALLENGES

One of the big challenges for yourNiagara came from Telus, the initial vendor on the project. “There are all kinds of documents to support how they would never deliver on time and created no end of delays and frustration in getting this project off the ground.” The new project manager said she spent an inordinate amount of time since coming to the project in mid-October (along with her colleagues) fighting with Telus to get what they had promised to deliver. The software had bugs and needed fixing and there was a constant debate with Telus about delivering what was paid for. The obstructionist approach of Telus delayed the whole project much longer than necessary. One interviewee commented that, “I would not recommend them as a vendor and as a best practice would encourage others who are thinking about developing a portal to look at what worked best for the other COPSC parties.”

An ongoing challenge reported by the interviewees was that there were lots of financial delays associated with the project. This was attributed to MEDT’s cash method of accounting, which was unlike most other similar technology projects which used the accrual method of accounting. The latter method did not match up well with the

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quarterly reporting requirements of MEDT55. Even this cash method was thought unusual because in practice the project could not claim an expense without first providing cancelled cheques from the bank (which were delayed due to normal statement delivery times.) The delays in reporting and subsequent delays in payment added unnecessary cash flow uncertainty and complexity to the project’s financial health – not to mention an estimated $100,000-$200,000 of additional cost.

In addition, the reporting relationship with COPSC in which a community paid up front and was later reimbursed by the Province, after their claim was verified, was not one that the municipal CAOs were at all familiar with. Therefore, when confronted by the increased administrative demands of the COPSC approach, the CAOs uniformly felt insulted and defiant. At one point all twelve were ready to go to the Deputy Minister to complain but were restrained by the VP at Brock University who encouraged them to wait and work it through. While it did indirectly help shape a sense of shared purpose among the municipalities, it was not the kind of ‘common cause’ that was desired by the Province.

The above two challenges might have been handled more easily if the relationship with the Province had not soured among the municipal partners early on. While the Province has been perceived as being very helpful at times, there was an early perception among some members of the governance group that the Province was trying to micro-manage municipal affairs. This perception arose, in particular, with the municipal CAOs in the steering committee with regard to the Partnership Agreement56 which was imposed by the Province on all the partners after the fact. In their opinion the Province’s contractual relationship existed only with BEC and that whoever the BEC subsequently subcontracted to or partnered with was immaterial.

Subsequently when the municipalities were asked to sign a second letter of support57 (rather than updating the original support letter presented in the Business Plan) for the Implementation Plan some CAOs “went nuts”. The Province, they said, seemed unaware of the municipal processes involved in securing Council approval on such letters. Local council members were also put out by having to recommit to something

55 Until, recently, the Ontario government used a cash-based method of accounting. To help ensure an even funding flow, COPSC provided an up-front advance payment to the project groups every quarter, based on their budgets and supporting documentation. According to the Province, much of the reimbursement delays were due to BEC’s own lax financial reporting, accounting and documentation procedures. 56 MEDT requested all COPSC project groups to develop partnership agreements in order to help ensure the sustainability of the projects. 57 Evidence of support/commitment on the part of the municipalities involved was a condition of project approval. Given the uncertain level of support from the municipal partners (see p. 161, par.1), the ministry requested a follow- up commitment from the CAOs to re-confirm their support to implement the project’s transactional applications. This was also a recommendation of the audit report.

Invenire4 Ltd., Ottawa, Ontario 157 COPSC Cases Niagara they believed they had already committed to. This mini rebellion of the CAOs meant that their compliance on other issues was delayed.

A key technical challenge occurred with the databases. Preparing the database was very time consuming, for even when the data existed (so it was not being collected for the first time) and was simply being relayed by others it was frequently in a format that required additional data input. Often “people were hand writing everything when it did come.” The time and cost of database input was therefore much underestimated.

According to one interviewee, some of the difficulties around focus and municipal coordination stemmed from the project plan, which was not written collaboratively but by one or two people. This may have led to the criticisms around information sharing goals and focus. As a result the collective agreements on details were worked out instead during the implementation phase. One interviewee commented there should have been some degree of continuity between the people writing and developing the plan and those implementing it through to actual delivery. This lack of consensus now seems past for the team felt they had turned a corner with the new project group, including a new Project Manager.

NEW OPPORTUNITIES THAT EMERGED

• Webcasting of the City of Niagara Falls Council meetings as well as parades and other major regional events • Online municipal service requests and tracking • The online building permitting and payment. • Development of online resources for the region’s First Nations population • Development of resource tools for the human service and cultural organizations of the region. • A regional job posting tool. • Introduction of BizPal to simplify and coordinate the process of applying for business permits and licences • RSS news feeds from local media, • BEC will also be examining ways of refining the site to make it more accessible to disabled people using assistive technologies, such as screen readers.

SUSTAINABILITY

Sustainability for the project is two-fold – economic and social -- and although in the short term economic sustainability seemed assured the long term social sustainability prospects are less so. Our observation is that since the portal has focused on the portal’s

Invenire4 Ltd., Ottawa, Ontario 158 COPSC Cases Niagara public good contribution (municipal and to a lesser degree community spaces), its emphasis for sustainability should also be based on public mechanisms. However, what we heard was a desire to focus on more private sector supports through advertising, user fees for services, and the selling of portal services to small businesses.

Short term The municipal partners have approved the budgets to sustain the site for the next two years and additional funds from Service Canada have been acquired for database development. The team was also looking at co-locating with municipal web servers, which have huge Internet capacity.

Long term It was considered that in the next phase which would focus more on not-for-profit community organizations, it would be possible to sell those groups web space and web tools to help with their operations. But, without lessening the potential value of those tools, not-for-profits are notoriously under funded and unlikely to want to contribute even on a nominal annual membership basis. Basing sustainability on this sector we feel would be very risky.

There was a sense that the portal may become more sustainable through the use of user fees in online payment transactions. One interviewee felt there was a market for these services. Someone else suggested that the business directory could generate revenues from a ‘yellow pages’ model in which listings with additional advertising were paid for. The business directory service locator could be a vehicle to obtain advertising revenue from the use of corporate logos, displays, or coupons. They were also exploring the sale of GIS related services to businesses, although that group would likely argue about paying for services created with tax dollars. Despite that they feel GIS has a lot of value to help businesses locate things in the region.

One interviewee was much less optimistic. “Unless they can change the buy-in with the community, I’m not sure how it will survive.”

More telling we think was that as provincial support for the portal by way Connect Ontario’s 50¢ dollars was coming to an end, various municipal members of the team appeared to want to jump ship, afraid of absorbing the full cost of maintenance. If the municipal partners decide they have the applications they need for their sites and it’s time to move on, yourNiagara will be in trouble.

GOOD PRACTICES

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The most interesting practice observed in Niagara was its distributed development process. Faced with a short deliverable timeline and the need to align the development with multiple municipal partners all with different levels of need and capacity, the project opted to encourage a more decentralized approach. Individual partners or groups of partners with an interest in an application would develop and launch it. Once completed, the application could be used by others, or not, as they desired. Thus each of the partners got what they wanted, contributed only to that and avoided the costs of unwanted applications. In this way people did only what they did best or wanted to do. It was a very efficient development process.

LESSONS LEARNED

The lessons learned by the project

• The project was publicly launched in a preliminary way too soon (Nov. 2004). Visitors went on the site when there was nothing available and things were still under construction. There was nothing in the database, the municipalities didn’t have enough content, and the business database was lacking. This hurt the project when it was fully launched in December 2005 and since then it has been hard to get people to go back again (even key stakeholders in the community). • The portal was seen as valuable from a labour market development perspective, as it identified competitors for business, and identified gaps in the market. It was good for job seekers to find jobs, and good to see that businesses could take on co-ops and placements. • Should have been greater community buy-in and more of a community driven initiative. The project manager felt that since a focus group representing a good cross-section of the community helped to design the portal, then getting more community involvement to request more and more online services should have been a straightforward process. However, there was no follow through. • The project has not been able to learn if it was able to reduce municipal/regional costs or increase the quality level of municipal services being provided because the metrics were not in place. There is little understanding of how ROI for the portal might be conceived. • One person remarked on the lack of external knowledge or experience on similar projects. He said “we were continually reinventing the wheel, and that shared practices with other communities would have been of great value.”

The lessons learned by Invenire • Typically there is a lot of strength when a municipality is the lead player in a project like this. While we understand the impossibility of such a thing happening in

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Niagara’s case, in agreeing to BEC’s leadership the Province also assumed a responsibility to assist BEC meet the challenge of being the lead organization. A more proactive and direct approach on the part of the province would have been very helpful. The perception was that COPSC managed the Niagara project from Toronto in a reactive way58, but it may have been more helpful for the Province to participate more directly like other local partners. This may have helped to head off several of the coordination, administrative and vendor challenges faced by BEC and would have provided more of a natural conduit to YourNiagara for the experiences from other projects. • The project experienced a series of project manager changes which seemed to contribute to a management discontinuity and a loss of organizational memory. This kind of project required long-term sustainable leadership. • YourNiagara as a regional portal with a specific focus cannot be all things to all people. There were too many well developed alternatives in the areas of business, economic development and tourism to try and integrate them all. Its focus was well chosen although maybe not as complete as it might be after the next phase. • This project clearly brings to light the need to align resources with the portal’s focus. YourNiagara is not a tourism portal (there was no need given the many other successful sites in existence) and it is not an economic development or business portal (there were others in that space as well)59. It can be a portal for coordinating municipal and community services, community events, and other things for residents. Its value proposition is directed there and therefore its sustainability strategy must be directed there as well.

GAP ASSESSMENT

Things they failed to do • The online payment and transaction service and the facilities bookings service were both incomplete.

Opportunities missed • Given its focus there appeared to be little significant representation from the not-for- profit sector. Champions from this sector may have helped with obtaining broader community buy-in. • The portal seems to underemphasize its use to foster a sense of regional identity. Links generally passed the user to another site altogether rather than keeping them under the yourNiagara banner and making it easy for the user to move back and forth.

58 The project officer spent a significant amount of time to help this project group. 59 The project lead did not disclose this information to COPSC at the start of the project.

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• If business organizations were to be a market target for the portal it might have been valuable to have more business representation in the governance group to shape the outcome.

POTENTIAL NEW USES/NEW SERVICES

• For more local news items, they are hoping to have RSS feeds from local papers, once these papers provide this service. This would provide almost instant news updates. • Membership services with school boards were being considered, with services for them to include student events, support for high school coop placements, to educational use of GIS, to online searching of regional organizations. • There was some consideration being given to linking with the 211 information initiative. The local boards have populated their data with the 211 initiative, which has collected a database containing a plethora of information. It was suggested they should include employment and community service databases as partners.

NEW TECHNOLOGY DIRECTIONS

No comment

RECOMMENDATIONS BY THE PROJECT FOR FUTURE CONSIDERATION

• Contribute not only to the hardware and physical infrastructure but also to the resources to build and maintain the necessary databases. • It would be good if the province were able to provide some template60 at the outset for projects which were starting from scratch. Facilitating knowledge exchanges with other projects would have helped to reduce wheel reinvention. • The Province should be a direct part of the discussions around sustainability. Not necessarily with continued cash infusions, but strategy and ideas. • The scope of the funding formula should be extended beyond the implementation period to help ensure sufficient stability to effect adoption. • There should be a requirement to build in performance measurements from the start. There should be measurable targets in the process, along with ongoing assessments as the project evolves. These should be incorporated in the initial design so that problems are fixed while there is still money available to fix them. Better not to catch things at the end, they felt.

60 COPSC did provide templates to the project groups.

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7. OXFORD COUNTY PROJECT TITLE: COUNTY of OXFORD ON LINE (COOL)

URL: http://www.cooloxford.ca Launch Date: October 2002 Completion Date: March 31, 2004

PART A -- THE LOGIC MODEL

COMMUNITY PROFILE • Low population density • Mainly agricultural but 1 in 4 workers are in manufacturing • Self contained. No major urban community within the county • No major power imbalance between the public sector partners • Formal structure for negotiating between regional (County) and local (municipal) interests • Information (as opposed to how it is disseminated) is seen as a regional responsibility. It has been accepted that it is more efficient for the County to collect, store and manage regional information than for lower tier governments to do so. • History of effective and innovative technology partnerships • Strong social capital and extensive community networking typical of small communities • Oxford County is characteristic of small rural communities where everyone tends to know everyone else. Thus the distinctions between private, public and civic tend to be much more blurred than is larger centres. • Presence of local champions that acted to bridge the gaps between the local partners

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Demographics Project area coverage (sq km) 2039.44 SME support # C-OBSC 6 Population -2001 99270 Distance to nearest Patent Office Population density (# /sq km) 48.7 Distance to nearest patent office

Regional GDP Employment All Industry sectors (2001) 52,190 Manufacturing and construction in 15,930 Regional GDP per Capita Wholesale and retail trade 7,820 Other services 7,390 Demography Business services 6,760 Median Age 37.7 Health and education 6,635 Average household size 2.7 Agriculture and other resource-ba 5,325 % Youth (< 25) 33.8 Finance and real estate 2,335 % students (5-14 + fulltime 15+) 28.4 % Seniors (65+) 15 Internet Access (2003) % visible minorities 2.1 % Home % Aboriginal 0.7 % Business % Immigrants (since 1991) 1.6 % School % English 88.5 Overall % French 0.9 Type (dial-up, wireless, cable, DSL) % Non Eng or FR 10.5 # public internet access sites % w/ degrees/diplomas (20-64) 30.5 Average earnings 30652 Eco-Dev Labourforce 52190 Local Venture capital Participation rate 68.3 Destination Trips by Canadians (2004) Employment rate 64.4 Unemployment rate 5.8 Service Ontario Centre Median Income 23937 #0 % from Earnings 76 Kiosks 0 % from Transfers 11.9 Distance to nearest 30 % low income Access to # Firms Airports International 0 LEs (> 500 empl) Local 1 # Distance to nearest in 60 # employees Local Flights per month Revenue % of GDP Health SMEs (< 500 emp) Hospitals 3 # Distance to nearest hospital # employees Primary Medical care ratio of Small bus employment to Self employment Courts 2 SME Revenues Distance to nearest court 0 % of GDP Colleges 1 Colleges w/in communting distan 3 University 0 Universities w/in communting dis 5

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Geo-spatial profile Oxford County covers 2,028 sq. km. and has a population of 99,525 people and a population density of 49 persons per sq. km. It comprises eight local municipalities in south-western Ontario of which its three main local communities are Woodstock, Tillsonburg and Ingersoll.

Economic profile Oxford’s economy is agriculturally based. It has 2,342 farms and over 100 agri-business firms. However, the automotive and auto parts manufacturing are major industries in the area employing 1 in 4 people in the local labour force.

In 2005, for instance, Toyota announced they would build a second $800 million plant in south western Ontario (in addition to their existing plant in Cambridge) that would likely involve the creation of 1,300 new jobs. This development will necessitate that Toyota install at their own expense a multi giga byte per second (GBPS) fibre link between Cambridge and Oxford and one completely independent of the local capacity (100 MBPS) now in place in the county.

Oxford has a recreational airport j8ust north of Tillsonburg and but it is on the route for many of the bus tours that travel Hwy 401 from Detroit to Niagara, Toronto and other destinations further west. Over 30% of the county’s tourism dollars are generated by county residents including 85% of all festival attendees.

Technology profile Basic infrastructure connectivity The County had created a critical foundation of connectivity due to several previous programs including the Land Related Information System, the County of Oxford Online Database, and the County of Oxford Integrated Network (COIN). Since 1999 COIN has linked MUSH sector hubs with high speed broadband and offers DSL wireless links and direct Internet connectivity through a network of ‘line of sight’ wireless towers.

Internet penetration rate Estimated at 60%

User / business sophistication Oxford is a long time member of the Community Information Online Consortium which has produced a database system for collecting information on the not for profit sector. While user sophistication varies widely, the local attitude is that the unsophisticated can be reached, the benefits can be explained to them, and they can be educated about the user process.

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Social capital profile Private-public-civic interaction Oxford County is characteristic of small rural communities where everyone tends to know everyone else. Thus the distinctions between private, public and civic tend to be much more blurred than is larger centres.

There are a lot of business networks in Oxford, including five Chambers of Commerce, several agricultural producers’ associations, the Southwestern Ontario Marketing Alliance, The Tourism Associations and the Automotive Parts Manufacturersʹ Association.

“Oxford is the Partnership Capital of Canada” – the County Warden. “[The Toyota] project has been a textbook example of cooperation between various levels of government” noted Woodstock Development Commissioner Len Magyar61. “City and County Councils have worked together to assemble the land required to facilitate such a site, and senior management at all levels have worked lock-step to ensure that the only logical answer to a Woodstock site was yes.”

Oxford’s two community information centres were closed in the mid 1990s for provincial funding reasons leaving behind both an unsatisfied need for a reliable central source of community information and legacy data.

Cross-linkages between organizations The cross linkages are many because of the small town nature of the community. All the MUSH sector leaders tend to know one another as do the IT leaders.

The communities recognized that no one community could do what COOL proposed on its own.

Dominant player & relation to others A key factor in the Oxford project is the relation between the County and the various local cities, towns and townships (lower tier governments). There is really no dominant player -- no elephant in the midst of much smaller players. The power differential is much less than in Windsor or Hamilton. Each player could opt in or out as they chose.

61 Economic Developers’ Council of Ontario, “Woodstock Welcomes Toyota”, June 30, 2005

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What really drives Oxford is the “rurals”. Only the lower tier governments levy taxes and then they turn over a predetermined portion of what is collected to the County. Thus there is an ongoing series of negotiations about what constitutes a lower tier responsibility and what constitutes a regional responsibility. While the relationship is at times tempestuous there is an appreciation that some things are best done locally and other things best done regionally. The collection of information and the tools developed by the COOL project have been accepted as best accomplished regionally62.

There is no other community portal of any consequence in Oxford County that does not make use of COOL’s database or web tools. The other major web portals, including City of Woodstock, the Town of Tillsonburg, the CCAC and the Health Line act or will act as additional doorways to the same Oxford data set.

Role of champion The initial leadership of Oxford County’s technology vision was to be provided by the Warden’s Technology Taskforce Group of 25 citizens covering a broad range of community interests. Out of the Task Force came the steering committee which played a major role in guiding the project. Within this context a single ‘civic entrepreneur’, who could act as a neutral broker, played a critical role in developing the project. During the implementation there were several of these community brokers who helped weave the partners together.

Culture/values Over 44% of the workforce has acquired post secondary education. Five universities (McMaster, Guelph, Waterloo, Wilfrid Laurier, and Western) are within an hour’s drive of the county, as are 3 colleges (Conestoga, Mohawk, and Fanshawe).

The residents of the county have a strong employment and leisure connections to both London and Waterloo.

Maturity profile (demand and supply development) • The demand for ICT applications was low to moderate to start • The supply of ICT infrastructure and applications companies/experts was low to moderate

62 This does not negate the fact that there may be other types of information and tools that may in future gravitate to one level or another.

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Needs assessment Stimulate economic development • Need to better coordinate the eight municipalities and the County • Need to make available the business and business directory information contained databases of local municipalities, business associations, libraries, and companies • Need to provide more uniform high speed access to private companies across the region in order to continue to attract companies • Need to increase the awareness of and encourage the use of ICT and the Internet among SMEs. Very few are using. • Need for demonstration projects of sufficient scale to show the potential business impacts of using ICT solutions

Social service delivery • Need to make available the approximately 1000 public programs and services contained in library databases • Need to find the service when you need it • Need to capture information on the not for profit sector in the county

Municipal efficiencies • Need to improve service quality and accountability • Need to improve municipal services to the more rural areas of the county • Need to simplify the delivery of government services

Strengthen sense of community & regional heritage • Need to provide a central source of county-wide information • Need to improve the region’s access to training and educational opportunities, especially training in ICT applications

Assumptions • Internet applications increase the opportunities for people to connect within communities • A community portal provides opportunities for people to stay and participate in their community • A portal builds greater social cohesion • Migrating some municipal service delivery to electronic transactional service delivery over the Internet will permit greater efficiencies at the local and provincial level. • By encouraging more universal demand for and sophistication with the Internet, both Oxford’s technological and community capacities will grow.

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• The demonstration of the benefit potential of ICT with public sector organizations such as emergency response organizations, SMEs can be shown how they may benefit from ICT • The Connect Ontario project will increase the awareness and marketability of Oxford as a place to do business.

PROJECT PROFILE

Lead Organization: The County of Oxford Other Partners:

Public Private The township of Blandford-Blenheim Execulink (Hurontario Television) The township of East Zorra-Tavistock ESRI Canada Ltd. The Township of Norwich Cargill Fertilizers The Township of South-West Oxford University of Waterloo The Township of Zorra Community Information Online Consortium The Town of Ingersoll Chambers of Commerce The Town of Tillsonburg Fanshawe College The City of Woodstock Urbana/WSIM Local libraries PsiGate Local Health organizations Nor-Del Cablevision Industry Canada Bell Nexus HRDC Erie Thames Hydro Oxford County Police Assoc. Grey Islands Systems OPP ARC Industries Local Fire Departments Vincent Farm Equipment Oxford County School Boards JPH International OMAFRA

It was the Warden’s Technology Taskforce team that was initially mandated with developing a business strategy to implement the COOL solution and with providing policy direction and ensuring community inclusivity on the project. Once the COOL began its implementation, however, the Taskforce was seen as having completed its task and it retreated from prominence.

COOL’s operation was managed by a matrix form of governance where a Steering Committee drawn from the key stakeholders (Technology Task Force) gave direction to and employed a project coordinator but who also reported to the County. Therefore the County’s Director of Corporate Services and the Library for the County jointly hired a

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COOL Coordinator who was responsible to implement the COOL projects and who also took direction from the stakeholder Steering Committee. The Coordinator reported to both the County Director of Corporate Services and to the Steering Committee. The partners not included in the Steering Committee had input through the Coordinator. The County IT Manager, was a member of the steering committee and provided technical support to the Coordinator during the project build phase. After the implementation was completed in 2003, the IT manager continued to manage COOL as a function of the County’s IT services department with collective input and direction from key stakeholders. This relationship is managed within the context of annual negotiation of the County levy.

Investment (direct & in-kind)

Total Project Cost: $2,036,738

Provincial Funding: $984,339 Leverage: 2.0

Partner Funding: $1,052,399 Direct: $518,257 In-kind: $534,142

Information to be provided

COOL promised to provide the following content and services: Municipal Services X Agriculture Services X Municipal Information X Agriculture Information X Business Services X Youth Services Business Information X Youth Information X Children’s Services Senior Services Children’s Information X Senior Information X Small Business Services Employment Services Small Business Information X Employment Information X Health Services X Recreation Services X Health Information X Recreation Information X Education Services Library Services X Education Information X Library Information X Cultural Events X Community Services X Virtual Tours X Community Information X Gateway to Federal Services X Gateway to Provincial Services X Gateway to Federal Information X Gateway to Provincial Information X Gateway to News providers

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Application services to be provided The COOL applications would provide interactive/seamless tools with which to conduct business, deliver e-government, enhance social service delivery, and encourage citizens to use the Internet. Among those applications were:

Prior Proposed via COPSC Online database of county businesses Gateway Portal (mix) CIOC database Enhanced online social service delivery Library databases Linking of online databases for the region COIN high speed broadband to 80 Data retrieval and provision county organization 17 CAP sites Ecommerce and secure payment transactions Transactional (info) & Registration Authentication Emergency service enhancements Mapping (GIS) TV based COOL Online customer relations management Data storage

ACHIEVEMENTS

Outputs Completed/Incomplete • In general, COOL completed all its targeted applications with four small exceptions. First, COOL initially envisioned offering its information and services over cable TV based was not implemented. The supplier involved went out of business and there are no plans to implement it.

Until just recently, the library services on COOL did not allow book reservations because there was no direct access to individual Library databases. One could, however, schedule time to use space, reserve a computer, or search Library events. This changed in 2005 with the Libraries offering to view individual accounts online and place holds on books and other resources.

A municipal e-commerce tool (RecConnect) was developed from the CLASS software and piloted by Tillsonburg but it has not been adopted for use in other areas of the County. The Town extended the design capability of CLASS to accommodate different types of online payment transactions aside from course

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registrations. CLASS is now being used as the basis of an e-commerce option for all the Town’s transactions with citizens and is even available for use by small businesses and community groups.

The Town of Tillsonburg first introduced a Citizen Response Management (CRM) system in 1999 and in 2001 received a gold medal for ʺInnovative Service Deliveryʺ. To date it has not been adopted elsewhere.

• COOL also went beyond the scope of the Connect Ontario project with the extent to which the mapping application addressed the needs of farmers in order to help them meet new nutrient management regulations that emerged during the implementation phase. Similarly, the EMS management tools and Tillsonburg’s extension of the CLASS software were beyond scope. The inclusion of ‘switches’ to permit access to COOL through the use of other devices like cell phones and PDAs has also gone beyond scope.

Next phase • Generally the technology infrastructure and application pieces have largely been done. What remains are principally the policy and governance pieces. • However, MeshNetwork applications are being considered by Tillsonburg to expand the capacity of secure wireless to the rural edges of the county. Tillsonburg has begun discussions about combining this technology with the Province’s implementation of ‘smart meters’ to double up on the Internet anchors needed for that initiative. • Linking COOL to other County information databases (health, education, CCAC, 211, etc.)

Outcomes • County is re-organizing itself in part because of the better information it now possesses about itself due to COOL • The County EMS department was re-organized to make better use of staff and vehicle resources and the new management application has increased their sensitivity to providing better quality service while diminishing the time required by them to comply with Provincial reporting demands • Conservation Authority re-organized and became more automated and efficient in order to meet the demand for more up-to-date data in their databases. Old data makes them vulnerable to criticism. • From September 1999, the town of Tillsonburg has been re-organizing. In addition to its Connect Ontario work, the town opened a ʺpoint of saleʺ system that became a focal point for licensing, billings, permits and utilities payments, a ʺone stop shopʺ

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for town business transactions. The convergence of several services and the elimination of outdated and manual operations led to an increase in ʺopen hoursʺ for town services. Tillsonburg’s more integrated operations allowed the elimination of redundancies in staffing and operations. For instance, five different financial systems were brought under one roof, allowing employees in all Town departments to access a greater body of data, in real time. As a result the Town was able to adopt a ʺcustomer firstʺ approach to service delivery that was reflected in its online services and has seen a major decline in citizen complaints. • Over $27 million of transactions now flow through the Tillsonburg e-commerce tool. • Over 70% of agricultural producers are embracing technology for online buying and selling of equipment, or using the ‘Map Your Farm’ tool. The primary limitation remains the level of connectivity service available in the rural areas. • Many county organizations are using the Event Calendar. There were almost 2300 event listings in 2005, up 47% over the previous year.

Impacts • Information is now seen as a regional asset and responsibility. It has been accepted that it is more efficient for the County to collect, store and manage regional information than for lower tier governments to do so. • EMS “knowing what we know” is enabling them for the first to consider their operation as a whole in real time rather than as a collection of independent parts

Indications of ROI • Over $1 million in local government savings and new revenues in Tillsonburg • Savings to EMS by way of better resource management, reporting and inventory control

PART B – OXFORD’S STORY

In 2000, the County of Oxford launched the COOL (County of Oxford On-Line) Directory of Businesses based upon technology provided by the Waterloo University Information Network (WIN). Over two thousand local businesses were listed in this Internet directory. Through the Connect Ontario initiative, the County and its partners transformed this online business directory into an enhanced community portal with a variety of online services.

One of the key success factors was the fact that the principle players were already involved together with several other regional information projects including the County of Oxford Integrated Network (COIN) and discussions around a regional 211 service.

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COIN was designed to make wireless internet available in the rural corners of the county and the 211 service required the compilation of data on community organizations. This meant that the relationships for the portal project already existed and the partners could readily see the benefits of avoiding the duplication of multiple databases and mapping tools.

One of the original visionaries of COOL was the former Chief Librarian of Oxford County who brought together representatives of the municipalities and agriculture. It was his vision that it was important for Oxford to be an early adopter of technology but also that that technology be of useful benefit. Although many of the MUSH sector players already communicated online by 1999, the concern was for the small businesses and not-for-profit organizations that didn’t. Another big issue at the time was where to find local services – social services, services for farmers, services for small business – in a region where those services were widely dispersed. Later, during the implementation phase, it was another facilitator hired by the County that maintained effective communication between the partners.

A key factor in COOL has been the ongoing relation between the County and the various local cities, towns and townships (lower tier governments). Only the lower tier governments levy taxes and then they turn over a predetermined portion of what is collected to the County. Thus there is an annual series of negotiations about what constitutes a lower tier responsibility and what constitutes a regional responsibility. While the relationship is at times tempestuous there is an appreciation that some things are best done locally and other things best done regionally. The collection of information and the tools developed by the COOL project have been largely accepted (for efficiency reasons) as best accomplished regionally63. And in this same context, the issues that arise between the ‘urbans’ and ‘rurals’64 become balanced through the same series of negotiations and compromises, trading off cost in one area for reduced costs in other areas. In fact, the awareness of the need to seek this balance seems to have become essentially “ingrained” as typified by the County motto “growing stronger … together”.

The users in the county had and continue to have very mixed levels of sophistication and in particular the technology sophistication levels between public institutions and the general public are vastly different. The municipality of East Zorra-Tavistock, for instance, is very sophisticated but its residents are not. The gap doesn’t necessarily seem to be between the ‘urbans’ and the ‘rurals’ but between those with access and those without. The project members believed that even the unsophisticated can be

63 This does not negate the fact that there may be other types of information and tools that may in future gravitate to one level or another. 64 Terms in use locally

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reached, the benefits can be explained to them, they can be educated about the user process, and ultimately persuaded to sign on to the Directory or otherwise make use of the portal. For example, “a lot of small businesses don’t have computers. They are still very much in ‘paper mode’, so to reach them we have to use means other than electronic to reach them such as mail or in-person visits.” Therefore an effort was made to go to meetings of all the local Chambers of Commerce to both explain and demonstrate the site and its tools.

According to one interviewee, “the elderly seem to be using the Internet a lot now, especially in libraries.” The libraries have played an important role in providing individual training in the use of the portal in addition to their regular role in providing Internet access through the CAP65 sites. Due to applications like e-Bay, that can offer small or used agricultural equipment sales, the local farmers are using the Internet more and more. It has a lot to do with ‘word of mouth’. Only a small number of people locally seem not to be adopting it.

COOL was built as a stand alone product but it has become increasingly integrated with the official County website, the local Tourism site and several of the lower tier municipal websites. There are essentially two aspects of COOL. One is the front-end website that is increasingly the primary website of the county region (as opposed to the County) and the second is the back-end databases that underlie and support that website as well as the other municipal websites in the county (including the County of Oxford). It is maintained by the County’s Geographic Information Systems Group and Information Technology Group

Some lower tier municipalities obtain IT services from the County while others like Woodstock, Tillsonburg and Ingersol have their own IT staff. High speed Internet existed at the outset of the project but mostly in the urban areas. As the infrastructure capacity has been extended into the rural areas through the wireless services of COIN, the rural adoption of COOL is growing. “The ‘Map Your Farm’ service, for example, has been hugely successful at building rural demand.” It has been promoted extensively in the rural communities, with producers, with agri-businesses and with chemical suppliers and their respective associations. It has also won several awards.

The popularity of the ‘Map Your Farm’ tool has been a major ‘hook’ to draw local attention to the site. The local OMAFRA representative led a rural committee of producers and suppliers which worked on the necessary components of the tools for over a year. It has several ‘WOW’ factors including the identification of water sources,

65 Community Access Program of Industry Canada

Invenire4 Ltd., Ottawa, Ontario 175 COPSC Cases Oxford County soil types, field acreage, buildings, etc. Previously, this information was very distributed across many agencies and departments and required time and expense to retrieve each piece. Therefore the ‘Map Your Farm’ tools have had real and immediate benefits for farm producers. Knowing this would be so, the launch of ‘Map Your Farm’ was intentionally delayed a couple of months until after the nutrient management regulations were announced by OMAFRA in early 2003 so as to maximize the perceived benefit to farmers from the online tool. Subsequently, demonstrations of ‘Map Your Farm’ and word of mouth drew local producers to the portal with minimal effort.66

There were two key success factors in developing ‘Map Your Farm’. One was the conscious decision to involve agricultural producers and suppliers and the other was the creation of a facilitator to help the ‘rurals’ reach consensus and to act as interpreter for the application development team. There was a clear need to get someone involved to directly communicate with the producers and evolve a trusted relationship with them. This need stemmed from the fact that “IT is about issue number 20 for farmers”. There were many bigger and more urgent things for them. Therefore it took someone to persuade them in a trusted way that government and business were moving more in the direction of the Internet and that they needed to get on the bandwagon. The announcement delay in the ‘Map Your Farm’ tool was done precisely to demonstrate this point.

Originally COOL considered using the CIOC database (as in Hamilton) but in the end developed its own because of the added features that CIOC did not have. Currently, COOL is working on extending its database and linking with various other regional databases with the support of Industry Canada. Inputting and maintaining data is a very time consuming job but when combined with the mapping function, the database can provide a powerful tool for planning and programming because it can present the ‘big picture’ of the county.

The demand for data to feed into tools like the ‘Map Your Farm’ project has also had some helpful organizational impacts. The Conservation Authority, for instance, has long held a variety of environmental data sets (including water ways and wetlands). The data contribution by the Conservation Authority required that they automate their processes in order to be more accurate and up-to-date and resulting in their own operation becoming more efficient.

66 However, it was suggested that the same strategy might not work as well today because it lacks currency. Today the link would have to be made around spring planting or around the use of RF tags for livestock tracking.

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One of the main partners of COOL is Tourism Oxford. Visitors have seamless access to the Tourism Oxford website but that website draws from COOL’s database to highlight local attractions, to showcase local arts and culture, to find where to shop, stay and eat, to discover recreational opportunities and to present a calendar of local events. The site has had over 76,000 unique visitors and 720,000 hits. Feedback from the site has provided better tracking and marketing research to Tourism Oxford than the Ontario Tourism site.

The Oxford website has also allowed Tourism Oxford to focus on smaller and more targeted niches, like the many motor coach tours that pass by Oxford on a regular basis. In addition, the portal offers a vehicle to showcase the winners of Oxford’s annual amateur photography competition. This competition not only encourages local artists but it provides an effective way of illustrating the county to the world since the submitted photographs become the property of Tourism Oxford.

“What made the partnership between Tourism Oxford and COOL work was the synergies we were able to develop, like those around the Community Directory and the Community Event Calendar, the variety of perspectives that have enriched what we did, the increased visibility that came from having many more doors, and the greater attention to all things local.” Woodstock’s Fanshawe Singers, for example, were one of those local groups that were more effectively profiled through COOL and Tourism Oxford. “While there’s always a period of adjustment when working with partners, it works well in the end.”

Another important partner has been the County Public Health Department and EMS group. The Connect Ontario project was to support the development of an application to enable on-line dispatch and tracking of County ambulances through the portal. The County’s GIS would provide the maps to enable vehicle tracking via web-based GPS and the new application would coordinate patient transfers. These transfers were non- emergency between local hospital and care centres in Oxford and the hospitals in London. On a typical day there would be 8-9 of these transfers each requiring approximately a three hour trip. Usually transfer requests all came in the morning so the danger was that the county EMS vehicles would be that in responding to these requests the County would risk lowering its emergency response capacity.

Using a web based system, the hospitals and nursing homes can now request a transfer which is copied to EMS staff. The requests are prioritized according to the level of patient need (low priority transfers can be postponed a day). The EMS staff then book the transfers for the next day with dispatch by 3pm. Now instead of scrambling at the last minute EMS knows a day ahead what its needs are. The transfers can be spread out

Invenire4 Ltd., Ottawa, Ontario 177 COPSC Cases Oxford County during the day and sometimes doubled up for non critical transfers along the same route. This has allowed a more efficient use of ambulance resources and staff.

The hard thing was persuading the hospital staff that such a system was possible. But once it could be demonstrated that it was easy for them to use, easy for them to see all the patient transfers being requested on any given day (staff wouldn’t even make a request for a non critical transfer if the vehicles were already booked with critical ones), and provided a more reliable and less frustrating experience for their patients, hospital staff were quick to buy into it. The service has been in use for two years and has become an integral part of health care provision in the county.

The patient transfer system had an unintended consequence for Oxford’s EMS managers. They began talking with the developers about other web-based possibilities. As a result, they co-developed a secure site for use by EMS personnel. It included an informal chat site; contact information (voluntarily provided by staff); staff notices and reminders (all staff are required to read this as their first task of each shift); a staff work schedule; road conditions and scheduled road closures; and a policy page. While communicating in the chat site, for instance, staff can trade shifts, ask questions, and get feedback on local driving conditions.

In addition, the department is investing in laptops that can be used in vehicles. This will permit the use of electronically updated maps instead of printed maps that quickly go out of date. It will also permit written instructions on where to go and how to get to the hospital to be sent out and logged. It also means incident reports can be typed and filed on the scene. This latter feature has huge implications for inventory control and for provincial reporting. Inventory can now be monitored as its being used and reporting can be as easy as compiling the electronic files already submitted. Oxford’s EMS now files all its incident reports to the Province electronically in spite of the continuing requests for paper copies. These field reports can also be sent to the hospitals reducing the need to prepare a patient history a second or third time. From an EMS management perspective “for the first time we are seeing the possibility of getting the whole picture. We have the chance of knowing what we know.”

An interesting observation about COOL was the degree of marketing success that was obtained through the use of a very modest investment in staff time to conduct presentations and provide guidance on getting started. As part of its advertising activities Oxford has done an annual radio and TV campaign, especially just prior to and just after its launch. But the team felt they wouldn’t actually get too many people to sign up their organization on the Directory or start using COOL through that medium alone.

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So between 2002 and 2003 the project team did 150 on-site demonstrations and made over 4,000 individual contacts by request, at fairs, workshops and other local events. Additional presentations were made by the local OMAFRA representative to agricultural producers and associations.

This personal approach resulted in 90% of all of Oxford’s businesses and not-for-profit organizations currently being listed on COOL’s Community Directory. The holdouts seem to be the larger, non local businesses that require head office approval to be listed. This use of staff time was supported through Job Creation Partnerships, 4 coop placements from Fanshawe College and over 2300 hours of local volunteer time.

# COOL Database Listings

4500

4000

3500

3000 Directory (Published) Directory (Total) s 2500 g

n Calendar (Published) i st

i Calendar (Total)

# L 2000 Services (Published) Services (Total)

1500

1000

500

0

3 3 3 3 3 3 4 4 4 4 4 4 5 5 5 5 5 5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 - l- -0 - - - -0 -0 -0 -0 - -0 -0 n- r-0 p v n- r-0 ul p r-0 ul p a Ju a J ov an a ay J ov Ja M May Se No Ja M May Se N J M M Se N Month & Year

“We’ve done a lot of in person work. People really don’t believe the listing is free. The in person contact allows us to describe COOL, explain the advantages and even give advice on how to get started and set up their own web page.” Since member fees were frowned upon because they would lead to less inclusiveness and most organizations disbelieved the ‘zero cost’ of the service, this personal connection strategy was a necessary ingredient of the Oxford marketing strategy. And while the COOL team used to do training for the local SBDC and producer associations, now those organizations are offering the same training to their clients and members. For COOL this change is not really cost saving because the time and resources that were directed to presentations can now be directed to other issues.

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The website itself has attracted interest far and wide, even from the USA but to be listed, organizations must have a local office. Each day there are several of the listed organizations highlighted on the site’s main web page adding to the value of being included in the Directory. COOL has also donated T-shirts to local not-for-profits for fundraising purposes. And the more events, meetings and recreational camps listed the more the site attracts visitors and becomes used as a means of community marketing. The site also makes use of its GIS facility to give directions to local events. The Events Calendar is the aspect of COOL which has shown the most growth in the past year – 47%.

COOL has not undertaken any specific review or community survey on the portal as yet, but that hasn’t meant they haven’t obtained feedback from the community. In fact there have been several ways in which the project has collected feedback. First they got constant feedback from the partnering municipalities who are trying to ensure their needs are being met. Second every page on the website has allowed for feedback from end users and citizens. The team also conducted an open house with the launch of both the portal and the ‘Map Your Farm’ tool. This year the project will conduct a county- wide survey on the reaction to the project. But most importantly the most valuable feedback has come informally.

The existence of extensive, informal networking typical of a small community has meant that feedback has tended to be continuous and very direct. “This is a small town and if people are unhappy about something they just come up, or call up, and tell you straight out.” Lastly, in the promotion of the Directory and ‘Map Your Farm’ where the site and its tools were being explained, there were the extensive and regular project staff interactions in the community in one-on-one or one-on-few situations where feedback was obtained.

The current sustainability strategy is to make COOL such an embedded part of the County’s online presence that the County will have to continue to sustain it. This is being done by re-building the County’s website based on the strengths of COOL. Over the five year Connect Ontario period there has developed tacit (though not formal) agreement among the various municipal partners that information (data collection and storage) has become a regional/county responsibility along with public health, social services and public works.

This new strategy is accompanied by website management that is becoming more automated and therefore more self managed by local clients. The Community Directory and Calendar tools developed under COPSC can essentially be updated by citizens and local organizations themselves (with a gatekeeper to keep things civil). This was

Invenire4 Ltd., Ottawa, Ontario 180 COPSC Cases Oxford County designed more as an empowering capability and a means for developing ownership than a means of cost saving. Tourism Oxford clients will be able to update their own information as of January 2006. The not-for-profits, too, will have their own spaces within COOL and they will be able to maintain their own site within that sphere. For example, the COOL team is working with the local ‘Welcome Wagon’ and ‘Baby Welcome’ organizations to define shortlists of relevant organizations (drawn from the Community Directory) and routing capacities that will specifically ease the burden of people in these situations to find what they need in the county.

As COOL has gained popularity, local infrastructure providers have been responding to the demand by investing more into ‘last mile’ efforts to connect homes, farms and offices. The deployment of any new or revised COOL service will also include options for wireless, cell phones and PDAs. These may mean additional changes to the information format of local clients (more text and fewer pictures and graphics) but these clients will have the option (switching it on or off) to provide a variety of delivery channels at their own choosing.

The COOL team has recently explored the idea of a single fully integrated website for use by all the municipalities in the area but that proved to be a non-starter, because most communities wanted to maintain their own online identities. However, each local community website can pull as much or as little information from the COOL databases as they choose. “We have one huge database but it’s accessible from many sites.” So if Norwich wants to simply show Norwich events on their website they can do that. If they want to show all the events in the county they can do that too. It’s their choice how much or how little data they use but it all comes from the same single database.

This evolution of the portal to become more self managed, more modular and more connected in the background has re-framed the COOL concept. In COOL’s new strategy it is the database that is being viewed as the most important element of this regional information system. Any organization in the county can therefore draw whatever data or tools it desires to complete its own unique web presentation.

The municipalities for instance, have become like multiple gateways to the same county-wide information. They are no longer silos because they are all using the same data store. “We’ve eliminated the redundancies as far as data collection and storage, so once [the data entry is] done, it is used by everyone.” The result is that “people in the County can more and more see the world through the eyes of Oxford County rather than through AOL.”

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A new feature of Oxford’s portal not initially conceived of but now effectively in use is disease tracking. It has been used so to track West Nile disease and Rubella (see Figure 1). In April of 2005, for instance, Oxford County experienced an outbreak of Rubella or German Measles. Immediately the County was using the portal to communicate information to the public and the press in one area and using another secure area for clinicians and public health officials to exchange data to combat the disease. Within a week the portal’s GPS tools were also configured to track the progress of the disease throughout the County to present a vision of the actual scope of the disease. Between April and September when the disease was considered eradicated, the disease could be seen tracking slowly eastward out of the County. Oxford’s Figure 1: Tracking Rubella in Oxford County experience demonstrates how portals can be used in emergency situations and that they should probably be included as a factor in emergency preparedness and pandemic planning.

Currently, throughout the region there is a big push to try and increase further SME awareness of the kinds of information and services that are now available online. Small business can now identify and map their competitors and suppliers; new businesses can explore the transportation infrastructure, zoning and bylaws; and employers and workers can look for each other. The links to the small business enterprise centres in Woodstock and Ingersoll also permit SMEs to find help to start and sustain their businesses through the services provided by MEDT and the Community Futures programs respectively.

COOL does seem to provide a better ‘pulse’ on activities in the region. There was some perception that it was becoming more like a 211 service although there was no intention of it becoming so. COOL is however, talking to the 211 group and the CCAC to pool database information.

Oxford has consulted with both Sarnia-Lambton and Elgin on the development of their respective sites and Tillsonburg consults regularly with Chatham-Kent. Because Oxford

Invenire4 Ltd., Ottawa, Ontario 182 COPSC Cases Oxford County was farther ahead among the 11 Connect Ontario projects, it tended to be in the position of giving advice rather than seeking it.

One of the big lessons learned in Oxford was that “the implementation doesn’t run itself.” Regular database updates have to be made because expectations in the community have been raised; marketing, advertising and presentations still need to be done; and there is no end to the new uses that the portal, the data and the mapping tools can be put to. But COOL has not been constructed to generate revenue. As a public good it continues to require the buy-in of local authorities who need to be continually reminded of added value COOL produces.

Another of the lessons was the need to focus on the big things. “You need to focus on how you group and sort information and then you need to partner with the right group to make it happen.”

The community was very appreciative of the Connect Ontario opportunity, receiving it as “a hand up not as a hand out.” The COOL team believes that the project would not have happened without the catalyst and resources of Connect Ontario. When looking to the future, according to one interviewee, “the Province should be encouraged to continue to make money available as seed money to help communities help themselves.”

On April 18, 2005 The County of Oxford was presented with an Award of Excellence at ESRI Canada’s annual ESRI Regional User Conference in London in recognition of the County’s efforts in creating an Interoperable Geospatial portal. “With the County of Oxford’s geospatial portal many organizations have made their GIS data available to the agricultural community through a one-stop web application,” said Alex Miller, President of ESRI Canada. “While the Map Your Farm is the window to the data, organizations supplying data can maintain and host their data through their own web map services. The ‘Map Your Farm’ application provides all of the data and maps from participating organizations in one location.”

In 2004 the ‘Map Your Farm’ project also received the Showcase Ontario Merit Award of Excellence for “Serving Ontario’s Citizens Better”.

PART C – ASSESSMENT

FOCUS Municipal vs broader community

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The two are intertwined in the way of small communities. The overall guiding premise has been that regional information was a public good. As such there is a very strong belief in not charging user fees to community organizations or small businesses to be listed in the Community Directory or the Event calendar. Inclusivity is seen as the over riding community need. There is good balance.

Economic development & tourism This was not a focus of the COOL project. Yet both economic development and tourism have changed in the way they are conducted over the last decade so as the use of the Internet as a marketing tool has ceased to be an advantage but only a disadvantage if not present. Because of this Tourism Oxford became a partner in 2002.

Economic development remains the responsibility of the lower tier governments. The County supplies some regional information and COOL’s mapping tools have been adapted for exploring Land Planning, and Owned and Leased Lands. The ‘Map Your Farm’ tool was a major project focus as it represented the economic interests of the major industry group in the County -- over 2300 farms.

Small business SMEs were not an initial focus of the project, although the portal project did emerge from a previous initiative to create an online business directory. While the trend to e- business is becoming more significant all the time, many COOL participants believed the issue of adoption of technology by small business may be more of a generational issue. Others believed it may be related to the nature of the small business, with many small businesses not really needing the ICT tools. However, with 90% of local businesses (almost all small) listed in the Community Directory and over 70% or more of farmers taking advantage of ‘Map Your Farm’ the take up by small Oxford businesses has not been ‘slow’. While there could be more online interactivity for SMEs, the portal itself is doing a good job at linking SMEs to small business resources and promoting them through the Directory.

Service delivery The primary service delivery focus has been information service delivery. Thus on the portal community services can be identified, described, mapped, and routed. Transactional public services (RecConnect & CRM) were developed but were only rolled out in Tillsonburg. This is an area where Oxford chose not to pursue broader implementation of existing pilots.

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Other The County website and information on County services (like several other local municipal websites) run on top of the COOL database. COOL and its partners demonstrated good innovation evolving new tools to deal with a changing environment. The web enabled public health tools, such as the three EMS applications, agricultural services (focused particularly on producers, such as ‘Map Your Farm’), and the use of the portal for the rubella outbreak all demonstrate this. However, the limited use of e-government services such as RecConnect and CRM suggest the relationship between public partners isn’t perfect.

CHALLENGES

Changing environment There was an impression locally that the Provincial government has essentially abandoned the agricultural sector. There are too few regional OMAFRA representatives and where they are present, they usually have province wide responsibilities. The type of facilitation role provided by the Oxford representative between the producers and the COOL team is unlikely to happen elsewhere. It takes time and attention to build relationships but with them communities can do a lot for themselves.

Technical (infrastructure) The absence of a high speed infrastructure across the county was a huge challenge. ‘Map Your Farm’ for instance won’t run on dial-up. The introduction of the wireless line-of-sight through COIN has helped but it remains an incomplete solution. Apparently large storms and lightning strikes can shut down the wireless towers and temporarily cancel Internet service over large sections of the County.

Technical (applications) The biggest challenge was developing, maintaining and linking the databases. Finding resources for this was difficult. In the end JCP’s, coop students and volunteers did much of this although it wasn’t done in a methodical, dedicated way because of the unpredictability of the staff.

Implementation Keeping the political decision makers onside.

Adoption Despite the zero cost, the main adoption challenge was to be able to communicate clear benefits to the target audiences of the portal and its tools.

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Local Governance A principal challenge was to find a way in which the partners could work together. Each had different capacities and different needs to be addressed. Each municipality wanted to retain their own Internet identity, have a locally relevant solution and yet have access to regional information and services.

Key to resolving this was the presence of a local champion who could act as a neutral broker. At the outset this person met regularly with members of the various local government administrations to put out feelers, test the waters, and offer straw dogs of possible ways of engaging with one another. Without this COOL would never have gotten off the ground.

“Oxford is a community that takes risks for benefits.” That said, each community is different – from the County to Woodstock to Tillsonburg to Norwich. A standardized approach would never have worked and therefore the champion was necessary to weave together what was actually possible among the various partners.

Provincial partnership The community struggled with politically inconsistent goals and messages from the Province. “They kept jumping around with different sets of expectations.” There should be a clear understanding of where the Province wants to go. “We lost money that was on the table from partners because of the indecision and competing interests of the Ministry.”

“The accounting was a nightmare. The claims reporting had huge staff costs and seemed to be duplicated at the Provincial level.”

“It may be funded under a provincial program, but if the service being implemented is local, the decision making has to be local too.” For example, the community could pursue funding from the Trillium Foundation and prepare its pitch to suit Trillium’s needs and feel confident, based on the county’s record, it would get funding. OR, it could do the needs assessments, see if the fit is there between all the communities, and attempt to really move the bar for the community forward and risk that no funder is found to match Oxford’s specific need. The challenge is that funding can be available for things the community may not need and not be there for the things it does need. “The funding should conform to the community need.”

PROJECT STATISTICS

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PMP Objective/ Metric Metrics

Deliverables met Complete plus. Connect Ontario implementation completed in 2003. Full obligation completed January 2006 New Online Services and Information Resources No. of new online services & info resources developed for: - municipalities 8 – Links to municipalities, RecConnect, LandPlan mapping, Owned and Leased Land mapping, EMS (3), Tillsonburg e-commerce - economic development 7 – local eco-dev (3), LandPlan mapping, Owned & Leased Land mapping, Community Directory, Map Your Farm - SMEs 2 – Community Directory, Map Your Farm - community 3 – Community Directory, RecConnect & Event Calendar 4 - Community Directory, EMS (3) - health 1 - Community Directory - education 1 – Community Directory, mapping, tour package - tourism 1 – CRM, Event Calendar, Community Directory - e-governance 15 - Geosmart

page views /site page views 1) Community Directory, 2) Map Your Farm, 3)Event Ranking of services and information Calendar, 4)RecConnect, 5) Portal resources

New on-line registration sites Number of new on-line registration 1 - RecConnect sites Community database listings Published: 3244 Directory listings 324 Service listings

Usage per site volume Usage of the Event calendar is up 47% over the last year and the use of service listings is up 27% in 2005

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PMP Objective/ Metric Metrics

Number of new Internet-based applications Number of new Internet-based Tillsonburg’s use of CLASS software for community e- applications commerce constitutes new use unintended by the vendor

2 (EMS Transfers & EMS management) Number of newly invented subsequently used elsewhere

Efficiency Total leverage [Total cost (including $1,052,399 = $518,257(Direct) + $534,142 (In-kind) in kind & volunteer) – Ministry Funding] • In addition volunteers contributed over 2300 hours in 2002-2003 towards COOL data entry. This amounts to over 12,300 transactions for COOL Admin. and can be valued at $34,500 (@$15/hr) 2.0 Leverage ratio (total leverage/Ministry funding) Collaboration # of project partners 23 – based on financial section

# of engaged partners (financially or >23 activist) Contribution balance multiple contributors with different levels of contribution

# partnership agreements Unavailable Number of local networks participating in project Governance Existence of governance body(s) Warden’s Taskforce initially and then for implementation the County Steering Committee for COOL

Evidence of formalized feedback • Focus groups were held during the development and progress monitoring process of COOLoxford.ca • Demonstrations & Presentations included opportunity for feedback. This information was taken to COOL developers in regular meetings. • Portal has a feedback button. • the ‘Map Your Farm’ advisory committee was

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PMP Objective/ Metric Metrics

comprised of individuals from all aspects of agricultural industry in Oxford County (Farmers, Associations, elected officials, Consultants, etc). Civic participation # private partners in non commercial 22 ARC Industries project activities Bell Nexus Cargill Fertilizers Chambers of Commerce Class Software Solutions CompuPower Systems Community Information Online Consortium EMS Erie Thames Hydro ESRI Canada Ltd. Ever America Execulink (Hurontario Television) Fanshawe College Grey Islands Systems JPH International Nor-Del Cablevision PsiGate Small Business Development Centres Trillium Consultants University of Waterloo Vincent Farm Equipment

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PMP Objective/ Metric Metrics

User satisfaction • Help available to users during regular office hours via existence of help services email or phone. • Database “Add/Update A Listings Form” notifies us when a submission is incomplete due to an error. It saves the information submitted until the time of the error. This information is then emailed to Database administration staff so they can follow-up with the user. • In 2002 we made approximately 68 presentations & staffed displays. These included demonstrations of how to use the website, focus groups, & training sessions.

# of help requests / month Not available

Usage trends Usage of the Event Calendar is up 47% over the last year and the use of service listings is up 27% in 2005. The number of active listings in the Community Directory has increased 30% since January 2003 Community satisfaction Trend of % of users among Not available population

Ratio of positive to negative media No negative media stories. There were 20 positive media stories stories 89% of Tillsonburg residents and 80% of businesses say that they are satisfied and most of these believe that Tillsonburg is a better place to do business as a result of the implementation of their strategic technology plan. Many through Community Directory. 90% of community # Links to other community organizations listed including 324 services resources Municipal outcomes Cost reductions County-wide reduction of duplicate database creation and maintenance and of duplicate GIS. It was estimated that Tillsonburg saved $1 million67 on its use of e-commerce and an organizational rationalization stemming from its use of technology

67 refer http://broadband.ic.gc.ca/pub/ program/success_stories/tillsonburg.html

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PMP Objective/ Metric Metrics

Added service provisions Citizen Response Management (CRM), EMS (3), RecConnect

Added information provision Community Directory Economic Outcomes number of new jobs created 7 (temporary)

number of new jobs (permanent) 1

# project spin-off jobs Not sure SME outcomes # of SMEs using site Over 1100 small businesses estimated from Community Directory listings

Links to small business development 1000 organizations listed in COOL stated they learned centre (strong, medium, weak) about COOL through a business association, economic development office, or business centre

Strong –regular demonstrations provided on how COOL technology can assist in developing business plans, promoting & operating a business. Evidence of SMEs using Internet technologies The majority of businesses listed in Community Directory have websites Evidence of SME networks using site, developing site, or catalyzed by COOL provided regular demos to small business groups. site When businesses say they heard of COOL through the small business centre – this is recorded in their database. Sustainability annual amount of user fee revenue 0

subscription fees 0 local partner support (cash & in kind) Partner support provided by:

Class Software Solutions CompuPower Systems Oxford County Library Ever America

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PMP Objective/ Metric Metrics

Town of Tillsonburg Tourism Oxford University of Waterloo EMS ESRI Vincent Farm Equipment OMAFRA OCFA Agricultural Advisory Committee Community Directory Partners Woodstock District Chamber of Commerce Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and Food Ontario Early Years Centre “Services 4 Children” Oxford Self Help Network Promotion and Database Development Partners Community event organizers Fanshawe College Local business organizations Oxford County municipalities Libraries and CAP sites Ministry of Consumer & Business Services Small Business & Employment Centres Direct investment • Integration of COOL into County & Municipal total revenue all sources/total costs websites (funded by tax levy) Unavailable existence of ongoing business plan

• Annual targets set for growth in COOL database • Developing new efficiencies in data maintenance (preference for email over mail). • A COOL marketing campaign is run every year • Regular contact kept with partners. Forging new partnerships including United Way (211). • Utilization of COOL data by County staff in planning (maps & reports) and day to day operations (contact lists).

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NEW OPPORTUNITIES THAT EMERGED • The ability for farmers to inexpensively and more effectively comply with stringent new nutrient management regulations through ‘Map Your Farm’. • The online EMS staff site, inventory monitoring and incident reporting. • Disease tracking for West Nile and Rubella (see Figure X).

SUSTAINABILITY Oxford’s view is that the COOL portal and the COOL database and GIS tools are public goods. User fees or membership fees are not being contemplated. Instead COOL is being embedded into the County’s IT infrastructure. Sustainability will therefore be based on political support which has now become fairly substantial.

Short term They have already fulfilled their 2-year sustainability obligation.

Long term The growing utility of COOL to county residents and organizations (both public and private) provides a more accepted role for the County as the information collector/disseminator and thus increasing public sector legitimacy.

GOOD PRACTICES

Applications • ‘Map Your Farm’ -- as much for its marketing strategy and the link to a clear benefit to farmers as the rich array of data that can be mapped. • The EMS patient transfer system and EMS management system • The extension of CLASS software to be an all purpose e-commerce tool for NFPs and small business owners

Process • Using a community facilitator is essential in a community partnership environment. • The use of staff to educate, demonstrate and market the portal and its tools through many one-on-one and one-on-few interactions. • The matrix governance through stakeholder steering committee and County administrator

LESSONS LEARNED

The lessons learned by the project

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“We have to be sure to take the lower tier needs into consideration and address them. The tools we develop have to be scalable and they have to take into account the local tools already invested in by the local authorities.” All the major stakeholders were offered a seat on the Steering Committee.

Because of the need to obtain and retain buy-in from multiple public sector organizations it is difficult to construct an overall framework that people can generally understand and support. Consequently the development is project by project. No one was buying in ‘whole hog’. One group of stakeholders would support one thing and then after it became operational it would be utilized by others. The ‘Map Your Farm’ project was an example. It was the ‘rurals’ that pushed for this and the ‘urbans’ in some cases actively resisted it. Yet once in place, its utility for Woodstock’s local economic development became quickly apparent and the tool easily adapted for their use.

The Steering Committee adhered closely to the contracted deliverables. They took COOL’s progress to County Council on a regular basis to assure buy-in at the political level.

The e-government issue is essentially about access and how people prefer to conduct their interactions with government. One essentially has to maintain a dual system. Many people still have rotary phones, and banks, even though they can do everything electronically, still maintain a strong network of local branches.

The lessons learned by Invenire

Portals • Portals are not as important as the databases that underlie them. Knowing this allows Oxford’s public partners to coordinate information yet allow more localized web solutions. • Portals can have varying levels of access. Besides the public one, there can be spaces with more restrictive access. As the rubella case illustrates, the portal was the chosen communication vehicle because it could be both as a trusted source of public information dissemination and a private space for official interaction. This makes them important for events of community-wide or even province wide significance.

Economic development • The coincidence of Toyota’s decision to build its new $800 million plant outside Woodstock and the existence of COOL is just that. Nevertheless, one can not entirely ignore it either. The existence of COOL certainly didn’t hurt the community’s sales

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pitch to Toyota (it was mentioned) that the community could demonstrate such cooperation and a supportive infrastructure.

SMEs • The generational and ‘type of business’ gaps for SMEs may not be as great as they seem. SMEs are more responsive when presented with the clear benefits and when they have sufficient access.

Delivery of public services • If it’s a local service, the decision making should be local

Community partnerships • The gaps between private, public and civic sectors typical in large centres are not as evident in smaller centres where extensive social capital exists. This suggests the province may get a bigger bang for its partnership program dollars in communities where this social capital and formal lines of cooperation (County-municipal) already exist. • The community partners must recognize they can not do it on their own • A partner facilitator is essential • Ongoing negotiation and feedback is helpful • Inclusivity of key partners is essential but so is allowing them to opt in or out at their discretion

Provincial intervention • Oxford’s County-municipal relationship may be a model for the Provincial- community relationship for future technology initiatives -- ongoing negotiation, allocation of who does what best, freedom to opt in or out and acceptance of variable outputs • Clear Provincial goals and requirements are essential • Keep accountability requirements in line with the project. Don’t over do them. • Province should act like a partner

Technology projects • Optimize the use of your existing technology first, extending if you can before investing in new technology • Talk to your developer and explore possibilities • Innovation can occur anywhere. If the Province wants to capitalize on made in Ontario innovation it needs to find better, faster ways to identify and promote that innovation. The Oxford EMS innovations have never gone beyond the County because officials at the Ministry of Health didn’t return several calls in offer of help

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from Oxford for over a year. It is not the job of communities to disseminate innovation elsewhere.

Other No comment

GAP ASSESSMENT

Things they failed to do • RecConnect county-wide (other partners didn’t see it as a priority) • CRM county-wide (other partners didn’t see it as a priority) • COOL TV (partner dissloved) • More extensive online access to Library holdings, although this was completed in 2005. (This was due to the libraries being affiliated with different municipalities and using different software. Coordinating the software took longer to implement but now because of vendor changes all the libraries are using the same software.)

Missed opportunities • None identified

POTENTIAL NEW USES/NEW SERVICES

• COOL is looking at the idea of providing online services for the disabled but it is being appreciated as a very costly investment. Although some CAP sites are wheelchair accessible, the technology requirements for some forms of disability are considered high. • In an attempt to make the site even more visible in the eyes of county citizens, COOL is looking to add news feeds from local media, to provide daily features on community organizations, better links to provincial and federal websites, and to provide better connections with area schools and colleges where there is only a low level of demand right now (there was little time to explore with Fanshawe potential student uses although the CLASS recreational and event software would likely prove to be beneficial). • Emergency response to human or animal disease. The use of GPS can precisely target an outbreak with responses dependent on how fast a disease may be spreading or how far an area is from the disease site. Isolating a disease is a crucial factor in controlling it. Therefore, the use of the portal, its database, secure spaces and GPS tools will become part of Oxford’s emergency preparedness planning. • The Rubella case also illustrated the potential for another use of the portal -- that being emergency personnel management. In health emergencies like Rubella the

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Province manages what it calls ‘surge capacity’ drawing doctors and other specialists from wherever they are available and directing them to the epidemic location. A simple scheduling tool, not unlike the one used by Oxford’s EMS group would permit the Ministry to find, track and monitor personnel parachuted into a health crisis area which would not only ease the burden on the Ministry but also help protect against burnout and front line staff infection spreading elsewhere68.

NEW TECHNOLOGY DIRECTIONS

• New AJAX technology (as is used in Google Suggest) for changing a web page without having to repost the whole page thus eliminating disruptions in the page and the possibility of tying into the Google Earth initiative. This could potentially enhance the County’s GIS solution. • New meshnetworks technology offers the opportunity to enhance wireless transfer rate from 1.5 MBPS to 54 MBPS creating a more reliable and secure ‘last mile’ solution than COIN for rural and urban areas. If it’s possible to combine this with the already planned ‘smart meter’ rollout, the cost of such an implementation could be locally affordable.

RECOMMENDATIONS BY THE PROJECT FOR FUTURE CONSIDERATION

Portals • Follow the life experience format. • Follow the natural order of technology development. Make sure the infrastructure piece gets done first and then do the portal/application piece. COOL’s observation of Elgin was that this got turned around. • Portals are about regional information and the success of the portal depends on the database that underlies it. It takes resources to create and maintain a database. • While funding staff time isn’t sexy, it is an effective means of developing user interest and building community buy-in

Economic Development & Tourism • Online tools are a must-have, minimum condition for success.

Small & Medium business • Highlight the clear and immediate benefits to SMEs

Delivery of public services

68 The need to better address these issues was also commented on in the report on the SARS inquiry.

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• Despite online delivery, people will still need access to personal contact. • Local provincial representatives can play important leadership roles in the community. • If the Province wants to cut back on their points of presence, they should do so in negotiation with the AMO.

Community partnerships • Partnerships work best when there is a history of cooperation. Even then, there is a need to facilitate the partnership and ensure ongoing conversations about benefits and roles.

Technology projects • Try and make the most of existing community assets (technology and otherwise) • Communities should pay attention to how they group and sort information and then partner with the right group to make it happen.

Provincial relationship • As was done with Connect Ontario, support preliminary research as necessary to identify needs and help develop a business plan • Make the accounting easier. Many communities would be terrified of COPSC’s administrative overhead. • The Province needs the communities to develop projects and the communities need the Province for resources and knowledge. But each community is different and so the relationship should be different. It is the culture and mindset of local leaders which will determine the outcome. The province should present options not a uniform approach.

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8. Greater Sudbury Project Title: mySudbury

URL: http://www.mysudbury.ca Launch Date: March 2005 Completion Date: March 1, 2006

PART A -- THE LOGIC MODEL

COMMUNITY PROFILE • The City of Greater Sudbury has a population of 155,219 and a land mass of 3,354 sq. km. for a population density is 46.3 people per sq. km • Sudbury tends to be isolated by distance from other major urban centres hence the surrounding areas tend to look in to Sudbury rather than out to elsewhere. • Well developed IT infrastructure high speed due to large investments in technology infrastructure in the 1990s. With awareness of and access to technology high in Sudbury, the principal community challenge was moving people into higher usage levels. • Sudbury is a city in decline both economically and by the size of its population • Sudbury is a community with strong social capital possibly stemming from their isolation and the tendency to look to themselves. • The Sudbury Social Planning Council through its CRNet application had developed extensive community reach among the members of the region’s voluntary sector • The mySudbury partnership has tried to rebalance the influence of the major contributor and lead partner, the City, with the community engagement strengths of the Social Planning Council and other community actors • Sudbury has two First Nations reserves within the City and 10 more in the vicinity

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Demographics

Project area coverage (sq km) 3,354.34 Employment All Industry sectors (2001) 77,635 Retail 10,120 Population 155,219 Health 8,710 Public administration 6,215 Population density 46.3 Education 5,910 Accommodation & food services 5,405 Regional GDP (millions) 5,396 Administrative, support, etc. 4,960 Manufacturing 4,870 Regional GDP per Capita $34,764.00 Mining and oil and gas extraction 4,840 Demography Construction 4,415 Median Age 38.9 Other services 4,005 Average household size 2.40 Transportation and warehousing 3,850 % Youth (< 25) 31.70 Professional, scientific & technical 2,870 % students (5-14 + fulltime 15+) 35645.00 Wholesale 2,480 % Seniors (65+) 13.80 Finance 2,040 % visible minorities 2.00 Arts, entertainment and recreation 1,585 % Aboriginal 4.60 Information and cultural industries 1,540 % Immigrants (since 1991) 0.79 Real estate and rental and leasing 1,080 % English 62.30 Agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunti 545 % French 28.20 Utilities 510 % Non Eng or FR 8.10 Management of companies 10 % w/ degrees/diplomas (20-64) 35.20 Average earnings $31,063.00 Internet Access Labourforce (2005) 80,500 Home Participation rate (2005) 61.3 Employment rate (2005) 56.5 Business Unemployment rate (2005) 7.7 School Median Income $22,262 Overall 63% % from Earnings 72.6 Type (broadband) 35% % from Transfers 13.5 # public internet access sites % low income 14.90 Eco-Dev # Firms (2002) 7967 Local Venture capital Destination Trips by Canadians (2004 1,005 LEs (> 500 empl) #12Service Ontario Centre # employees (2204) 15581 # Revenue Kiosks % of GDP Distance to nearest SMEs (< 500 emp) #~8000Access to # employees 62054 Airports Percentage of small bus to total empl 80 International 0 Self employment Local 1 SME Revenues Distance to nearest int'l air 390 % of GDP Local Flights per month 2,706

SME support Health # C-OBSC 1 Hospitals Distance to nearest Distance to nearest hospital Small Bus/Entrepreneur Centre Primary Medical care Patent Office Distance to nearest patent office Courts 1 Distance to nearest court Colleges 2 Colleges w/in communting distance University 1 Universities w/in communting distance

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Geo-spatial profile The City of Greater Sudbury has a population of 155,219 and a land mass of 3,354 sq. km. for a population density is 46.3 people per sq. km. The City of Greater Sudbury represents an amalgamation of the towns and cities which formerly comprised the Regional Municipality of Sudbury (Sudbury, Capreol, Nickel Centre, Onaping Falls, Fayside- Balfour, Valley East and Walden), as well as several unincorporated townships (Fraleck, Pakin, Aylmer, Mackelan, Rathburn, Scadding, Dryden, Cleland and Dill). The amalgamation, which occurred in 2001, has greatly simplified the task of achieving community involvement and consensus around the mySudbury project.

Sudbury is a regional capital that functions as the service hub for all of north eastern Ontario – a market of 550,000 people. The City is relatively isolated from other major metropolitan areas in Ontario being 400 km. from Toronto and 500 km. from Ottawa. Unfortunately, according to one informant, this leads to the Provincial tendency to lump Sudbury in with other northern communities like Sault Ste. Marie (300 km. distant), Thunder Bay (1,000 km. away) or Kapuskasing (460 km. away) as if they were as near to each other as Kitchener, Guelph and Waterloo69.

Sudbury has two First Nations reserves within the City limits and 10 other reserves in close proximity including several on Manitoulin Island.

Economic profile Sudbury’s economy is primarily resource based and the image most associated with Sudbury is of course mining, followed immediately by ‘moonscapes’. But Sudbury is being viewed by the champions of this project as being much more – a high quality of life, a growing assortment of creative new businesses, 300 lakes, and a technology infrastructure rivalling the GTA.

However, Sudbury tends to be a city in decline (“the most economically depressed CMA in Ontario” and “the fastest shrinking”) but struggling to renew itself and grow. The declining population trend was expected to continue given increased productivity in the resource sector. Sudbury’s workforce is not highly skilled or highly educated and many of its most talented people leave the City for opportunities elsewhere.

Technology profile Basic infrastructure connectivity Today, of Sudbury’s 57,000 households, only 5,000 don’t have high speed access (DSL or higher) and those that don’t are in the most rural areas of the City. The region has over

69 The Province disagrees with this assertion.

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2,400 km. of fibre optic cable. Since infrastructure was not an issue, the mySudbury project focused on increasing the traffic volume on this “96 lane information highway” in order to capture the benefits provided by the infrastructure investment. The mySudbury team believed that if they didn’t get more traffic on the Internet, the infrastructure would begin to lose value and would not be effectively maintained.

Internet penetration rate Relative to the high levels of connectivity access, Sudbury had a lower proportion of residents actually using the Internet. In 2003 only 63% of Sudburians were using the Internet and only 35% of those users were connecting over high speed. Thus, closing this gap between access and use was a principal goal of the project.

User / business sophistication The City had a strong technology culture and most residents were fairly tech savvy. In a ‘needs assessment’ survey conducted for the Smart Sudbury project, 87% of the 1,300 people surveyed felt that information technology was important for the future of the community.

Social capital profile Private-public-civic interaction According to a Sudbury’s economic development strategy in 2003, “collaborative partnerships are a must not a want. Collaborative partnerships in pursuit of economic aims develop stronger city and regional cultures better able to compete in a global economy. Joining together with a common purpose creates an “invisible leader” who is always in front of the group and is more important than any one entity.”70

Cross-linkages between organizations Inside Sudbury there were many networks including the Chamber, the networks involving the post-secondary institutions and the community action networks. There were many social service networks associated with the Social Planning Council at their hub. There are also many tourism related networks in Sudbury including the network of accommodation providers. Outside Sudbury there were networks that Sudbury participated in such as Destination Nord, Ontario North, the Georgian Bay group, Ontario Tourism, and the Association of Bed and Breakfast operators.

Dominant player & relation to others

70 Coming of Age in the 21st Century: An economic development strategic plan for Greater Sudbury 2015, June 2003:pg 25

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The dominant player in Smart Sudbury was the lead partner, the City of Greater Sudbury. The City was instrumental in creating the basic fibre optic infrastructure that enabled the project in the first place. The City was the major contributor to mySudbury but has been constrained by the champions and the project’s steering committee from playing a domineering role in shaping the outcomes of the project.

Role of champion The role of champion has been played by the Greater Sudbury Development Corporation and the Social Planning Council. Both have been instrumental in forging a partnership that is balanced, responsive to the community and effectively coordinated with the municipality.

Culture/values Sudbury has a slightly higher percentage of its population participating in volunteer activities in the community than the Ontario average.

Maturity profile (demand and supply development) • Consumer demand for online information and services in the urban areas was high. In the more rural areas, demand was initially more mixed usually as a factor of high speed access. That demand has increased as high speed access has been brought to 90% of the community. By the time of the project’s launch, community organizations which were a major focus of the project had developed a moderate level of Internet sophistication. • Technical suppliers who could provide infrastructure or portal software applications were all competitively available locally.

Needs assessment Stimulate economic development • Need to diversify the regional economy • Need to encourage more rural participation in knowledge economy • Need to build local technological capacity • Need to provide support for small businesses through electronic provision of tools, education and business services

Social service delivery • Need to be able to provide services & information on an as needed basis • Need to encourage better coordination between agencies

Municipal efficiencies • Need to improve customer response times of municipal officials • Need to reduce municipal service delivery costs

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• The amalgamation of the City of Greater Sudbury has made the gaps in information technology more evident. There are innumerable sources of information on or about the City which collectively are difficult to find, manage or sort through. The information tends to be static (ie posted once and left without updating) and not very useful.

Strengthen sense of community & regional heritage • Need to strengthen the region’s sense of community • Need to improve communication between stakeholder groups • Need to have an integrated approach to the community • Need to provide online access to meaningful community information through a common access point.

Other • The greater City of Sudbury does not have all the resources necessary to realize the full potential of leading edge Internet technologies. There is an opportunity to extract private sector investment by leveraging public money.

Assumptions • Internet applications would increase opportunities for connectivity within the various communities in Sudbury. • A community portal provides opportunities for people to stay and participate in their community • A portal builds greater social cohesion • A portal helps promote community values • Migrating some municipal service delivery to electronic transactional service delivery over the Internet will permit greater efficiencies at the local and provincial level. • Stimulating local Internet usage through the provision of meaningful applications will increase network demand and therefore support the IT sector in Sudbury which had stalled along with the IT sector generally worldwide. • By encouraging more universal demand for and sophistication with the Internet, both Sudbury’s technological and community capacities will grow. • The Connect Ontario project will increase the awareness and marketability of Sudbury as a place to do business.

PROJECT PROFILE

Partners Lead Organization: The City of Greater Sudbury

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Other Partners:

Public Private Greater Sudbury Development Corporation Sudbury Tourism Partnerships Social Planning Council of Sudbury Dalron Construction Sudbury Tourism Microsoft Corp. Greater Sudbury Public Library Navantis Inc. FedNor Municipal Software Corp.

The e-Sudbury.com team, formerly the Information Technology/Telecommunications (ITT)71 team, was mandated with stimulating the use and adoption of technology by local businesses. Its long term vision was to work collaboratively with its public and private partners to develop and enhance existing online services and diminish the divide that existed between the rural and urban communities, and between Sudbury and the rest of Ontario. It would promote and develop IT strategies and projects to enhance and sustain economic development, and electronically deliver municipal and social services.

The Connect Ontario partners included five public and five private partners under the leadership of the City of Greater Sudbury and the guidance of the e-Sudbury.com team. Yet while the City was the lead partner, the development of mySudbury has taken an arm’s length attitude in their relationship with the City in order to avoid being overwhelmed by the needs of the City. This was facilitated by champions with the Greater Sudbury Development Corporation and the Social Planning Council. That ensured that the partnership was sufficiently balanced -- being responsive to the community and effectively coordinated with the municipality.

The other major partner, Sudbury Tourism, was itself a private–public tourism partnership formed in 1999. Basically the City provided 75% for its core funding and the businesses contributed 25% for project funding. There were 55 key paying members of Sudbury Tourism and some 500+ associated businesses (only 250 of which are directly involved in tourism). The key players included the major hotels, Science North, the Malls, and Westmount Hospitality.

Investment (direct & in-kind)

Total Project Cost: $3, 284,294

71 The Region of Sudbury; the Sudbury Regional Development Corporation; the City of Sudbury; HRDC; College Boreal; Ministry of Northern Development and Mines; Cambrian College; the Greater Sudbury Chamber of Commerce; and Laurentian University

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Provincial Funding: $1,100,000 Leverage: 3.5

Partner Funding: $2, 184,294 Direct: $$889,068 In-kind: $1,295,226

Information and Services to be provided The objectives of the project were to improve and enhance electronic information and service delivery and remove geographical barriers experienced by rural and remote communities. The project would also develop a bilingual community Internet portal that will act as a one-window access to the municipal services and businesses.

Content Municipal Services X Agriculture Services Municipal Information X Agriculture Information Business Services X Youth Services X Business Information X Youth Information X Children’s Services Senior Services X Children’s Information X Senior Information X Small Business Services X Employment Services X Small Business Information X Employment Information X Health Services X Recreation Services X Health Information X Recreation Information X Education Services X Library Services X Education Information X Library Information X Cultural Events X Community Services X Virtual Tours X Community Information X Gateway to Federal Services X Gateway to Provincial Services X Gateway to Federal Information X Gateway to Provincial Information X Gateway to News providers X

Applications to be provided The Smart Sudbury applications would provide interactive/seamless tools with which to conduct business, deliver e-government, enhance social service delivery, and encourage citizens to use the Internet. The principle behind these tools was to provide them to citizens and then let the citizens and community organizations use them for their own purposes. Among those applications were:

Prior Proposed via COPSC Online building permit applications Gateway Portal (mix) CRNet (social services) Enhanced online social service delivery

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Prior Proposed via COPSC Tourism content Central data repository on the region Small business content Ecommerce and secure payment transactions News services, notices, & alerts Interactive multimedia (virtual tours) Collaborative workspaces Content management Membership management Threaded discussions Content sharing Online customer relations management Free web mail services Discussion groups Personalized calendar Authentication Data retrieval and provision Transactional (info) & Registration Data storage Mapping (GIS)

ACHIEVEMENTS Outputs Completed/ incomplete All the applications and services that were proposed were implemented save one. The community e-commerce tools exist but only to the extent of being pilots. The one service originally proposed that has not been implemented was the online building permitting. This service was delayed because of several personnel changes within the City and the new provincial legislation Bill 124 but it was hoped that it will go ‘live’ early in 2006.

In addition the portal has also included sub portals for Seniors, Youth and Kids and a web casting service for local Council meetings.

Next phase • Extend the community e-commerce facility • Complete the online building permitting function • Conduct a workshop with administrators to review the project and obtain advice on how to move forward

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• Market the e-learning tools to generate additional revenue

Outcomes • Community organizations were communicating with each other more frequently and more effectively • Internal tourism (tourism associated with locals) was up as well as visitor tourism • Sudbury Tourism was getting a much better overall picture of what goes on in the City • Economic development had become more closely linked to tourism and promotion of the voluntary community • Sudbury Tourism was experiencing organizational change pressure. “We’re looking to adjust the way we work so that we’re doing the things more core to tourism and farming out the routine web stuff.”

Impacts • The divide between rural and urban populations largely evaporated due to amalgamation and the way in which both groups had equal access to the opportunities presented on the portal

Indications of ROI • Last year Sudbury sold 12 of tourism packages. This year they sold 150 packages worth $60,000 which they attribute to the portal • Time savings for community volunteers while trying to connect with other voluntary organizations, in one case from weeks to hours. • Reduced costs relative to ‘traditional’ tourism marketing although the savings were re- invested to improve the marketing impact of the portal

PART B – MYSUDBURY’S STORY

Greater Sudbury was one of the first Ontario municipalities to establish an advanced telecommunications infrastructure based on high speed fibre optic networks. This infrastructure has fostered healthy competition among IT and IT service suppliers. Consequently, the local availability of IT and IT applications suppliers was not an issue in Sudbury. This was a legacy of the early 1990’s and Sudbury’s then Mayor Jim Gordon who was a strong champion of building an advanced telecommunications infrastructure in Sudbury as a way for the City to compete in the future. He frequently spoke of the “96 lane information highway” he wanted to build from Sudbury to the rest of the world. Much of the area’s private sector bought into that vision, including the phone companies,

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cable companies and Dell Computer and they helped create a community working group on technology, the Information Technology/Telecommunications (ITT) team.

Despite the high speed access throughout much of the City (now estimated to be about 90% coverage) a user gap existed, Statistics Canada estimated in 2003 that only 63% of Sudburians were using the Internet and only 35% of those users were connecting over high speed. Addressing this gap therefore became a principal concern of Smart Sudbury. As expressed by one interviewee, “we needed to have sufficient traffic volume on this 96 lane highway or the value of the infrastructure will decline.”

Prior to COPSC, Sudbury had prepared a fairly comprehensive smart community proposal for Industry Canada’s Smart Community Demonstration Program. Despite the unsuccessful SCDP bid, Sudbury still wanted to move forward with the smart community projects but lost time during the amalgamation process. The delay in some respects was fortuitous. In the pre-amalgamation period “there was a lot of stick handling” to coordinate the smart community strategy because the various municipalities were very competitiveness. For example, one interviewer mentioned a regional planning session involving 30 community partners where the debate became bogged down with who’s logo was bigger in a presentation rather than the content of the plan itself. One of the important impacts of amalgamation was that much of this competitiveness was eliminated when all the communities were brought under one roof.

The SCDP experience, gave the community a high level of confidence about the outcomes they ultimately wanted to achieve and they continued to pursue them when the COPSC program emerged. The SCDP proposal was again put forward and “The Province [MEST] informed us that we could use [the SCDP proposal] and move directly on to the implementation phase. Later it abruptly changed its mind and required us to do a business proposal as well.”72 Although the more application centric COPSC approach (ie. it had to deliver a certain minimum number of applications) meant that the SCDP proposal was no longer suitable, but Sudbury was able to choose its applications in the context of an established community development framework: a community portal, an online building permit service, virtual tours, and a platform for secure online transactions.

It was a cornerstone belief of the ITT team (later the e-Sudbury.com group) that the municipality should not be using new Provincial money to do what it should be doing in the first place. They believed that developing online tools and providing a good municipal portal was just smart business practice and the City shouldn’t have to rely on

72 COPSC maintains that this was never done because it was program policy that all projects must develop an acceptable business plan before proceeding to the implementation stage.

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the Province to do that. Already Sudbury had well developed websites for the City of Greater Sudbury, Planning Sudbury, the Regional Business Centre and the Greater Sudbury Development Corporation. The team believed that Provincial money should used to bolster areas of the community that had received less emphasis and had fewer resources. They felt that the need was greatest in the community itself and so Connect Ontario funding was directed there.

Community engagement This was why mySudbury has had a strong community emphasis and ‘community’ here was defined in a clearly non-municipal context. The perception in the community, we were told, was that senior government officials tended to equate the word ‘community’ with local municipalities73. Sudbury’s definition of community on the other hand was more closely associated with the non-municipal, non business, social and human services sector and so they wanted to be sure that their proposal was not received as a municipal one (which it was). In fact the e-Sudbury.com group took steps to intentionally buffer the community portal from the City and make it more arm’s length. They did this to avoid the interests of City Hall from overwhelming the project. This was an interesting step given that the lead on mySudbury was the City and that the project was housed at the City.

One of the ways this buffering was achieved was by closely aligning the portal project with the Sudbury Social Planning Council (SPC). While this alignment did enable the project to take advantage of the SPC’s existing database of community organizations in the region (CRNet) but the SPC’s main contribution was its co-leadership provided an effective counterweight to the influence of the City.

In 1998, both Sudbury’s Local Information and referral Centre and its Volunteer Centre had closed their doors leaving no organization to coordinate information and referral services or area volunteers. With a view that technology might help address this concern, the Social Planning Council spearheaded a collaborative community effort to create a central database of social services and make it broadly accessible. The result, CRNet, was launched in 2000 just as civic organizations were beginning to see the value of using computers and dial-up Internet. Like many Ontario communities, Sudbury initially experienced somewhat of a challenge to get technologically unsophisticated organizations online but Internet use has now become so common place that 70-80% of the community organizations are using high speed access.

73 It was COPSC program policy to fund broad regional partnerships (community writ large) not municipally centric proposals.

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The pattern of these organizations working together has been typical of Sudbury. In the sector, resources were frequently very scarce and there was rarely anyone else to do things for them, considering the city’s relative isolation. The Province and the federal governments were too far away and the City had a small tax base with a large territory to administer. Therefore, the sector has developed a strong culture of cooperation and self reliance. For similar reasons training has also figured prominently in community service solutions. “There was never a time when we did not consider doing training.”

So it was in this context that in 2000 the SPC began contemplating a human services portal to minimizing the distance challenge imposed by Sudbury’s large geography on community organizations and people in need of social services. The Connect Ontario program proved opportune because it permitted the community to consider a more comprehensive solution. “It is likely that the community would have only a very fragmented online presence rather than the integrated solution provided by mySudbury.”

From the outset of the portal project, the project team believed that there was both great need and value for Sudbury residents to be able to access the information and services on the 1,200 local not-for-profit organizations. This belief was at the heart of the project’s strategy to attract users and web traffic. The value of the portal would be determined by the number of human service organizations using the portal and the volume of user traffic interacting with them. The more organizations the more community ownership and the more sustainable the portal would become as a community resource.

The process of engaging the community organizations involved three steps. The first step was to get them onto the portal (and if they couldn’t pay it didn’t matter). The second was to help them create new value for themselves and their members. Then the third step, if their members had come to see some real value from participating, was for mySudbury to start asking about sliding scale memberships. “We needed to try and strike a balance between the provision of a service and the provision of a public good that enabled other things to happen in the community.”

Therefore the theme of mySudbury’s message to residents and community organizations became “make it yours”. This particular message evolved as the project team prepared its business plan. “We needed a way to embrace the human service community in order to incorporate CRNet and so we believed we had to become more bottom-up. We also had to face a political landscape where local citizens had little confidence in the City’s capacity to do the right thing. So we distanced ourselves from the municipality and centred ourselves on the community.”

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There were several community networks that were supporters or partners of mySudbury including the Chamber of Commerce and the Social Planning Council. These partners all had a direct interest in the success of the project. Therefore, it came as somewhat of a surprise that a condition of acceptance by the Province was to expand the steering committee to be more community oriented and include representatives from education, health, and small business. To the Smart Sudbury partners this condition was artificial since the project had little or no direct benefit for educators, health practitioners or small business. It was based on a wholly different definition of community more arbitrary than bottom-up.

From the community’s perspective where commitment was being built bottom-up, they couldn’t understand why a steering committee member would retain their level of interest and contribute to the project if there was nothing in it for them. In the end the university and colleges were involved at the steering committee level, but they weren’t particularly involved in the mySudbury project itself. The Province’s condition was acquiesced to as “just another instance of Provincial meddling74—one of those irritants you can’t avoid but must accept”.

A similar series of comments were generated around the inclusion of a focus on Manitoulin Island as a condition of project approval. The point of the interviewees was not that it was inappropriate to do so. In fact there were several natural affinities between Sudbury and the Island. People on the Island tended to look to Sudbury for many types of services, information, work, entertainment and other linkages. CRNet already had many Island organizations as part of its social and human services database. It was also generally understood by mySudbury’s steering committee that the Island had no capacity to do something like this on its own. The Province’s condition75 to include Manitoulin Island was not seen as an ill-fit as much as it was ill-timed. The problem from the community’s perspective was that Manitoulin Island was added on arbitrarily after the portal’s planning had been completed, budgets had been drawn up, and partnership roles agreed to. In addition it occurred without much consultation with the residents of Manitoulin Island. The final agreement included a commitment to include Manitoulin Island in mySudbury at some point, a commitment agreed to largely because the CRNet connection to the Island would have brought some form of participation anyway.

74 From COPSC’s perspective the original Sudbury portal project proposal was municipally centric. It was COPSC program policy that portal projects include partners from as broad a range of sectors as possible, hence the requirement to be more inclusive. It was felt that to call this “Provincial meddling” was unjustified. 75 The request to include Manitoulin Island was done “in order to expand the breadth of the project’s partnerships and to provide assistance to Manitoulin to connect to the e-economy”.

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One of the most useful tools on the portal was the capacity for community organizations to create their own private workspaces and websites. These spaces could then be linked quite easily to other groups. The search engine employed by mySudbury searched all the data in its internal websites as well as the data linked to it from outside. Thus a search for soccer groups would explore all the sites under the mySudbury umbrella.

This feature had clear advantages for community groups in at least two ways. First, it saved them a lot of time. For instance, the Human League, a human service organization that helped to place children in sports and recreation programs whose parents were unable to fully afford those activities, saw a clear reduction in the amount of volunteer staff time required to do their work. The Human League used the portal to communicate with the organizers of the area’s sports and recreation programs, identify referrals from them, and quickly respond to requests from parents – often the same day. In the past this could have taken weeks because of the amount of phone tag involved with connecting to program volunteers. Thus, for them the portal has become an essential tool to help them accomplish their mission.

Second, the portal has helped small community groups to aggregate their resources and coordinate their activities. For example, an organization called SBENI, a small environmental group, has used mySudbury to acquire an alternative and inexpensive means of marketing, as an effective networking tool. More importantly the portal’s community collaboration space has enabled a means to connect and interact with many other similar environmental organizations in Sudbury. This has allowed them to pool their resources and collectively focus on a common environmental objective. This has meant that they have had a bigger impact on the community

“The thing that the Province often didn’t seem to understand, and one that they need to, is that we are selling participation in the portal at a very basic level.” What was meant by ‘basic’ was that the selling of participation on an almost one-to-one basis with the small community and recreational groups who had little or no money, were doing things by virtue of voluntary contributions, and had only rudimentary knowledge of computers and the Internet. Although some groups did require a donation of a computer, most did not. But many required basic training on the use of a computer and in how to effectively surf the web. The libraries, for instance, helped provide training oriented to individual citizens such as seniors or youth.

With the need for education high among community and human services organizations and only limited resources available to provide it, mySudbury representatives had to frequently explain not only the potential value of the resources on mySudbury but also

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how to use them. Sometimes they even had to address the person’s reservations about technology and the Internet.

While the linking of Greater Sudbury’s urban and rural communities figured prominently in the business plan, in practice voluntary organizations in both communities have acted as if there were no barriers and that they were all one community. The Community Directory lists organizations across the region, and the project receives 6-7 content submissions per day from all over the Greater Sudbury area, urban and rural. So in practice, mySudbury did not do too much in this area because it had ceased to be an issue. The one qualification to this was the great care that was taken in the branding the initiative not to offend anyone anywhere and the result ‘mySudbury’ was sufficiently innocuous that it offended neither group.

Bilingualism The community centric focus that shaped mySudbury has also led to its being a bilingual site. The need for French language services and content wasn’t any more of a focus in mySudbury than English language services or content. For the Sudbury team, bilingualism was just such an accepted part of life in the community that bilingual services and content for mySudbury were assumed. This assumption, however, often doubled the amount of content work because of the requirements for translation.

One of the criticisms of the province’s role in COPSC centred on this issue. The local perception was that the Province, based as it was in Toronto, did not fully appreciate the requirement for bilingual content76 in Sudbury believing that it was somehow a choice. Thus, as decision points arose about when to go live with a certain feature, the community always wanted to wait for a bilingual solution instead of going live with an English only one. Similarly, translation costs were viewed by the project team as must-do development costs, whereas the Province tended to view them as marketing costs. While this was done by MEDT specifically in order to help the community get reimbursed for its translation costs, it underscored the view from the community that English content could be application development related and French content wasn’t.

However, when it came to content provision by French language community groups, translation did not appear to be much of an issue. This was because those groups, like everyone else, were encouraged to come up with their own material. This frequently meant that the French and English content was quiet different, aside from the differences

76 In contrast, the Province felt it did appreciate the bilingual aspect of the Sudbury portal. MEDT appreciated fully the bilingual aspect of the Sudbury portal and considered it a plus for the project. MEDT characterized translation costs as marketing costs to enable Sudbury to claim them as expenses eligible for reimbursement.

Invenire4 Ltd., Ottawa, Ontario 214 COPSC Cases Sudbury in language (i.e. the French content was not just a translation of the English but wholly different content).

Small business Except for tourism, the project did not focus on business because they felt the business community was already being well served. The Sudbury Chamber had already published a well used online business directory and the Regional Business Centre was successfully providing online support services to small business. When soliciting community feedback from Sudbury’s business community on the directions of the portal, the portal team received lots of critical comments on a previous provincial IT initiative where it was perceived that public money was spent on one supplier at the expense of others. As a consequence, mySudbury was much more cautious about appearing to compete with existing business initiatives.

It was assumed by the developers of the portal, however, that the portal investment would cascade into new business opportunities just as the previous investments in a fibre technology had led to new call centres, then to new animation companies and then to movie production companies. The mySudbury project saw its role as helping to create a better environment for business success, hence its emphasis on the community and representing Sudbury to the world rather than on services that were specifically directed at business. The business links on the portal linked to basic economic development information or to the existing business service providers like the Chamber and the Regional Business Centre.

“When we look at the small tourist businesses, one interviewee reported, “what seems to best predict their adoption of Internet technologies is the generational divide. Many of these businesses are run by people over 50 and they frequently don’t believe that access to the Internet is really necessary. And for them in the past it wasn’t. Slowly, however, they are coming around, but we have to spend the time to educate them.”

Tourism Although the City’s tourism partnership did have a website when the Connect Ontario application was made, they didn’t have the tools for their partners to establish online communities or to do registrations or accept payments. mySudbury was viewed as an opportunity to create those tools and do something that would benefit both the big and small tourism companies.

Tourism in Sudbury was generally up over the last year. One good example was destination packages. “Last year we sold 12 of these. This year we sold 150 worth approximately $60,000. mySudbury seems to be helping to drive people to the tourism

Invenire4 Ltd., Ottawa, Ontario 215 COPSC Cases Sudbury website but from our side [Sudbury Tourism] we need to do better at fulfilling the need than we are. Right now people can register and make requests but can’t do the complete booking online. We would like to follow the example of Ottawa Tourism and allow people to book, transact and have their confirmation online.”

One of the side effects of Sudbury Tourism’s effective online promotion was that they discovered via the portal the extent of local tourism interest. The mySudbury portal led not only to the attraction of visitors from outside the region but also to the attraction of more local residents to local attractions and events. Many of the smaller tourist attractions or tourist destinations had become disconnected from the public at large. With the portal they no longer were. Interviewees suggested there was more local awareness of local events. “The increase in the availability of local information over the portal has in fact increased the area’s capacity to do business with itself.”

“mySudbury has actually gone way beyond our initial [tourism] expectations and we are scrambling to catch up with the needs of both visitors and our local tourism operators.” Another outcome of this project has been that Sudbury Tourism is getting a much better overall picture of what goes on in the City.

In 2004 and the years prior, Sudbury placed a few low key ads advertising Sudbury in key markets and produced a big glossy Visitor’s Guide publication which was sent out on request. This year they’ve used less of this traditional advertising, creating a smaller 12- page Guide and redirect the saved resources to the website where they believed they would reach ten times the audience and have ten times the impact in attracting people to Sudbury. This has had a big impact on Tourism staff in terms of moving routine things onto the web but also in creating a year-round demand on staff to ensure information on the site is up-to-date and for customer support in responding to inquiries. The staff demand is no longer just a fall and winter demand but all year round. This has put organizational change pressure on Sudbury Tourism. “We’re looking to adjust the way we work so that we’re doing the things more core to tourism and farming out the routine web stuff.”

The reviewers were also reminded that tourism does lead to new residents and has a link to economic development. “We want to create more of a community feeling to attract not only visitors but new residents in a way that is linked into the City’s economic development strategies.”

Economic development The portal markets the City in effect, as an integrated technology community. The awards mySudbury has received for its portal underscore this message. The increased awareness

Invenire4 Ltd., Ottawa, Ontario 216 COPSC Cases Sudbury of the community and its opportunities has served to attract new talent from outside the area and to create a certain ‘stickiness’ for current residents. This latter element is essential for the community to turn around the city’s declining population trend. mySudbury has become part of a community-wide re-branding exercise that was repositioning Sudbury from a notion of “mining and moonscapes”, to a combined notion of “innovative health practices, biotechnology, environmental protection, eco-tourism and the creative and curious arts”. To sustain these new engines of growth, the community feels it will have to rely on a high quality of community life to attract and retain a highly skilled workforce, better higher education and training to develop new people, and an advanced and ubiquitous technology infrastructure to inform and coordinate them all.

As an example, they pointed to the Toronto-based company March Entertainment which in June 2003 officially opened its Northern Ontario office, locating in the Sudbury Technology Centre. Dan Hawes, the company president, and co-creator and series executive producer of Chilly Beach, himself a Greater Sudbury native, set up his animation studio in Greater Sudbury because ʺSudbury had a very advanced broadband network and had a stated commitment to technology and ongoing renewal of technology.ʺ77

Marketing The marketing plan for mySudbury itself budgeted approximately $200,000 over 2 years. The first phase of the plan focused on creating awareness of the portal and the mySudbury brand through the use of billboards, print and radio advertising and the creation of a logo. Because the project was led by the City, mySudbury was able to leverage a variety of City resources, including the use of a City bus that was painted with the mySudbury logo. Many presentations were and continue to be conducted with community organizations in order to push the theme of “make it yours” and to illustrate how the portal and its tools can be used. The ‘no cost’ price of membership has proven to be an essential element for overcoming the entry barriers of the voluntary organizations.

In the second phase of the marketing plan (the one they are moving into) involves creating interest in the portal based on its value perception by citizens and community organizations. Workshops will be conducted involving a lead person in each organization who is liaising with mySudbury (usually called the ‘administrator’). Each administrator will be provided with a detailed user manual and be able to participate in their own mySudbury community of practice to share experiences, ask for help and work cooperatively. A workshop is also being planned to review the content and structure of mySudbury with this administrator group in order to obtain their feedback on the portal’s

77 Grant McIntyre, Chilly Beach, The Globe and Mail, August 30th, 2003: pg. 42 See also http://www.chillybeach.com/chillynew/root.html

Invenire4 Ltd., Ottawa, Ontario 217 COPSC Cases Sudbury progress. In addition, mySudbury will soon conduct a survey on the portal content to examine its value to portal visitors and to identify any content gaps.

Administration mySudbury has taken an innovative approach to providing and updating content on the portal. In order to provide the quality and timeliness of site content, the onus for providing content rests explicitly with the community organizations themselves. The use of the ‘Aries taxonomy’ for constructing the site architecture (the same being used by Inform Canada, Inform Ontario and 211 initiatives) has meant that content groups on the portal were created without having specific content in hand. The resulting skeletal structure created a series of content place holders where, if content was not yet available, a standard offer would pop up asking the user to contribute. In this way the entire community was made responsible for content that was relevant to it. It has resulted in a very bottom-up organization of content, one that was coordinated by 12 dedicated people across the SPC and various City departments who collect the content, reviewed it to see that it conforms to basic standards of civility, and then physically added it to the site. This was done on a daily basis.

One of the COPSC program observations made by the interviewees was that “it was always easier to fund stuff”. Only 10% of the budget was allowed for operating budgets (this was because the source of COPSC funding was the Ontario SuperBuild Fund – a capital fund). In the beginning stages, the coordination and development costs were large in order to define the “stuff” that had to be purchased. To fill in this gap the team went to FedNor to help with this and received a one-time contribution of $300,000 to help offset those operating costs. They also FedNor’s internship program to fund 75% of their full time staff needs since 2001.

In spite of the FedNor support, a better way according to the interviewees would have been to “dole out the money contingent on meeting specific milestones that would require both capital and operational expenditures rather than expensing big chunks for capital expenditures up front.”

One interviewee suggested that the manner in which COPSC support was delivered ended up creating tensions between the mySudbury group and other City departments. Because of the emphasis on buying “stuff”, equipment was purchased long before it was actually needed. In era of scarce resources for the City, this stockpile was looked upon daily with envy. It was suggested that the tension it created may have been responsible for those other departments refusing one day to permit their site to be ‘framed’ within the mySudbury portal.

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Two of mySudbury’s originally proposed applications have been rolling out more slowly than anticipated. One was its community e-commerce tools which have been developed and are being piloted at two pilot locations in order to do registrations, event payments and memberships. The other service that has been delayed was the online building permitting service. This service has been postponed because of several personnel changes within the City and , the new provincial legislation (Bill 124) which has caused some changes in scope but it was hoped that it will go ‘live’ in early 2006.

While the mySudbury team did consult with other Connect Ontario projects, most networking was concerned with how they should deal with the reporting requests of the Province. The mySudbury team also tended to mentor the myHamilton team somewhat given their common vendor and application software. It appeared, however, that much more cross-project interaction would have been appreciated. One interviewee commented that “the COPSC sponsored conferences were valuable networking and learning opportunities” and they were clearly missed during the implementation period.

Sustainability “Sustainability is a big problem – for all the projects.” While the team was trying to obtain buy-in from the human service organizations for the site, the sliding scale membership of $200 per annum were presently being waived. In the short term then the biggest number of users was not providing the biggest revenue stream. It was expected that as the portal proved its worth, as in the case of the Human League, the community organizations would be more willing to contribute, even nominally, to its support. The project manager estimated that they had 2 years grace to enlist the majority interest and involvement of the 1,200 community sector organizations. Currently approximately 200 are actively participating with private workspace on the portal, although organizations most are listed in the Community Directory.

The municipality has been the biggest contributor to mySudbury but it has also been very budget conscious of its own basic infrastructure projects. The fact, for instance, that the City maintains a network of roads for the largest geographic area of any Canadian city with a tax base that is less than 5% of Toronto’s continues to be a great burden on City resources. One of the ramifications of the arm’s length relationship with the City is that since the municipality maintains its own separate portal, it is unlikely for the City to sustain the lion’s share of the portal’s upkeep. The City currently contributes about 60% of mySudbury’s funding and is expected to provide 50% funding over the next three years. After five years it was suggested that the City’s contribution will likely fall to 40% and stabilize around that level. This means that a new revenue model will have to be developed – one that doesn’t depend entirely on either the City or the non-profit (human service) sector.

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One interviewee suggested that over time “this separation with the City will be harder to maintain” and that for its contribution the City will demand a greater say in mySudbury’s direction. Already there has been a sense of growing competition with some City departments (other than those directly involved with mySudbury including Tourism, Economic Development, and Human Services). The situation also raises an important succession question about what might happen if the current champions at the City, who have done a lot of the buffering work, move on to something else.

One source of new revenue may well come from a suite of e-learning tools developed for the community groups. Sport Links, for instance, is a community organization that uses the portal’s e-learning tools to provide training on how to run a local recreational sports organization. mySudbury discovered that the same tools would be useful to local government and business groups to conduct online education and training. For example, firefighters, paramedics, police, and ambulance drivers can be provided with region-wide training and professional development while remaining in their local areas, minimizing the cost of classroom venues and work replacement. The City would benefit from a less expensive training tool and the portal would benefit from non-core related revenue. As data emerges from these e-learning pilots, it was hoped that the e-learning revenue might provide an additional source of revenue to sustain the portal in the short term, and help offset the limited contributions expected from the human service organizations.

Another sustainability option being pursued involves online services for First Nations (there are twelve groups in the area). Because of the SPC’s links with the First Nations organizations through CRNet, mySudbury is proposing to put more emphasis on First Nations people than was originally considered. Consequently, the team was encouraging the SPC to explore new FedNor money to assist local reserves in providing online services and information.

According to the interviewees, the progression to portal sustainability will follow three steps: 1. get people connected, 2. get them to use it and discover its value, and finally 3. get them to expand their use and the portal by contributing to it.

“To get out of survival mode we really need to be able to support the operating staff costs, particularly around the training of community groups.” In order to get good staff, however, mySudbury has to be able to make commitments to prospective staff for more than a few months at a time. According to several people, money for capital expenditures always seems easy but the critical need is for the staff resources to provide portal updates,

Invenire4 Ltd., Ottawa, Ontario 220 COPSC Cases Sudbury to maintain equipment and to educate users so that they can move up the ladder from awareness to interest to desire and action. “While [the FedNor] internship funding was very helpful,” another remarked, “those staff were obviously inexperienced and the good ones left as soon as they found something better.” Right now mySudbury is spending about $200,000-230,000 per year on staff. If resources could become available to fund more staff they feel the mySudbury team feels it could move the community much faster onto the portal and put the portal into situation of being permanently sustained.

Looking ahead Although mySudbury was developed as a regional portal, at this time the question of which of several Sudbury portals represents the ‘real’ gateway to the Sudbury community remains unanswered. Was it mySudbury, the City of Greater Sudbury portal, the Planning Sudbury site or the Greater Sudbury Development Corporation portal? “We’re still not sure how to deal with this,” said one interviewee. To date the portals seem complementary with none being able to lay claim to umbrella portal status.

As more and more groups come onto mySudbury, the team has been continually challenged by its users to come up with new ways to solve the specific needs of specific groups, a pressure which has caused the portal and its suite of tools to constantly evolve. “We show them what they can do to hook them in. Then we train them on how to use the tools. Then we get feedback from them on what they really want to do and then we see if the tools can be stretched that way. But sometimes we need to go back to the vendor to see whether we may have to make a refinement.”

The mySudbury team has begun collecting usage data among the search requests in order to generate a ‘top ten’ list of most sought after community sites. This simple user oriented convenience, however, was also serving to some extent to guide the team around community priorities. The presence of mechanisms like this illustrated the ‘learning loops’ that mySudbury had embedded in its process and that underlie its ongoing evolution. Other learning loops included the meetings and presentations with users, the administrators’ community of practice, the training feedback, the top ten searches, and direct portal feedback from citizens.

To improve the portal the mySudbury team was frequently faced with a choice between finding a local solution or a standardized one. In trying to strike the balance between these two, one member of mySudbury commented that “it depended on the concern and your resources.” They pointed out, for example, that in the case of the Seniors’ Portal “there was no need for mySudbury to reinvent the wheel. So we literally grabbed the Brockville template off the web and then stuffed with local content to make it locally relevant.” The Seniors’ sub portal then led to the creation of youth and kids’ sub portals. The same sort of

Invenire4 Ltd., Ottawa, Ontario 221 COPSC Cases Sudbury pragmatism to avoid “reinventing the wheel” is leading Sudbury Tourism to explore the tourism Internet model being used by Ottawa. It was felt that the Ottawa Tourism site had more of the functionality that visitors to Sudbury wanted (from online awareness to booking to payment) and so mySudbury and Sudbury Tourism were exploring how to make use of Ottawa’s ‘good practice’.

In that context, the project manager was asked whether the Province might be of help in generating additional application solutions. He responded that “what I really need now are more content partners. There is real resistance from the Province on this issue. I don’t need to provide my content to various provincial (or federal) ministries. That’s just too much work given the amount of daily updating we do. What I need is for the content from the ministries to populate the various channels we have created here locally.”

In thinking about future portal applications the possibility of modifying it to accommodate disabled persons was explored. “Doing a project that addresses the needs of disabled is a big challenge because of the costs associated, both technological and staff support.” Because of this “we have no plans at the moment to undertake a version of the portal for the disabled.”

Could mySudbury be used to better support SMEs? It was suggested that before mySudbury became more involved with SMEs (more than just linking to existing providers), they would first want to establish what their role would be. Was there something not being provided in the community that mySudbury could provide? Would their role be to provide information on investment capital or seed money or loans at reduced rates? Would theirs be an educational role to help small business leaders run their business? “Both of these roles are currently being performed by others in the community so there would be no need for mySudbury to compete with them.”

The project has ended up being a lot bigger than anyone thought. And “it has taken time to appreciate the full potential of all the tools.” This has been a resource intensive period of adjustment for City staff in terms of the time needed for coordination and for understanding how to use all the various tools. “It was also surprising in a good way – in the way interest has taken off. The work really only began after we went ‘live’. Now, we need time to digest what we have.”

PART C – ASSESSMENT

FOCUS Municipal vs broader community

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• The portal’s focus was strongly weighted in favour of the voluntary sector of the Sudbury community. Links to the municipality or municipal services were found on the site but generally at a 2nd or 3rd tier level. The main page had tabs to sub portals directed at a variety of community audiences including: seniors, youth, kids, community, tourism and the main Sudbury area. There were also tabs for more personalized tools such as email and news. In the mySudbury Home area one could find further links to Lifestyle issues, Sports and Recreation, Arts and Entertainment, and Learning and Working. This was also where one would find links to City Hall and key City services such as waste management, health, disaster services, EMS, fire, police, and transportation. While the City was the largest investor in the portal, the relationship between them tended to be arm’s length to ensure that the priorities of the portal remained on the community.

Economic development & tourism • Economic development was not a principal focus of mySudbury although the profiling of the community and the promotion of tourism were closely intertwined with several economic development goals of the City. While traditional economic development activities remained the purview of the Greater Sudbury Development Corporation, and cross linking with this group was evident, the main contribution of mySudbury to economic development was its ability to represent Sudbury’s quality of life in order to attract and retain talented people and creative businesses in the area. This focus was closely aligned with the need to attract visitors and encourage local tourism. One interviewee commented that in fact “we have to remember that visitors can ultimately become residents.”

Small business • mySudbury has only marginal focus on small business. Given that other local providers existed which successfully offered services and information to small business, the developers of mySudbury did not want to use public money to compete with those offerings. They have however provided links to the small business service providers in the area.

Service delivery • There are links to municipal services via the municipality (as above) but a broader range of community services can be accessed through the community sub portal where one can search for programs or service provider organizations, for instance, “unemployed”. The search would display a variety of links to program details for “unemployed” along with links to the public or civic service provider’s mySudbury workspace for more information on the organization’s programs, contact information,

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events, announcements or job postings. The content was maintained by the participating organization.

Other • Seniors, youth and kids also figured prominently in mySudbury as sub portals. Various learning resources, including library links, could be found at a 2nd tier level under mySudbury Home. • Among the links to City resources there was also a link to archived webcasts of City Council meetings. • Health related resources were not as prominent but could be accessed in different ways, through the links to the City; through the Seniors, Youth of Kids sub portals; through the Lifestyle related sub theme; or by searching myCommunity for specific programs or organizations.

CHALLENGES Changing environment • The declining population of Sudbury has put increasing pressure to come up with solutions that can better attract and retain quality people and creative business and this challenge has in part guided the community oriented approach taken by mySudbury.

Technology (Infrastructure) • The technology challenge that lingered was trying to establish high speed access to the remaining 5,000 households in the very rural areas of the City that currently have at best only dial-up access to the Internet.

Technology (applications) • The ARIES taxonomy that was adopted for the portal has proven to be the basis of a very comprehensive architecture. There are more content areas than there is content, a welcome opportunity for a portal that wants to keep expanding. At the same time, this structure’s presentation of content gaps or place holders where future information might be offered can deflate user expectations. On the other hand they offer opportunities for the users to contribute content and take some ownership of the site. mySudbury believed that in the near future it may have to constrict the architecture in some way to minimize the gaps if content was unlikely to be provided.

Implementation • One implementation challenge was balancing the need for equipment and the need for staff. According to our informants, the COPSC’s funding model did not facilitate a phased technology development approach. Instead equipment and infrastructure purchases were up-fronted, sometimes well before their need, awaiting staff to

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complete their development tasks. Although the Province asserts that no linkage existed between equipment purchases and operational expenses78 such as staffing, the project team had the impression they were linked. So to acquire operational resources to develop the applications they purchased equipment in advance. Not only did this create tensions in the City administration but when it came time for mySudbury to use the equipment, it was older (less robust and more costly) than it could have been. • One of the challenges experienced by Sudbury Tourism included the need to staff sufficiently to keep up with events and inquiries in Internet time. According to one interviewee, “the worst advertisement is a site that isn’t up to date.”

Adoption • MySudbury developed a good marketing mix of advertising to create awareness, and presentations and educational sessions to stimulate the interest and desire of community organizations to participate on the portal. The challenge was and continues to be finding sufficient and stable resources to staff the presentation and educational functions.

Local Governance • The challenge of achieving community consensus on the directions the portal should take was much simplified with the amalgamation of the City. • Maintaining an arm’s length distance with the City has been a challenge but it has been achieved through the effective intercessions of the project manager and champions from the e-Sudbury.com steering committee. • The challenge of securing and maintaining community support for the project has been effectively achieved by the Social Planning Council and the visible presence of aspects of mySudbury’s operation within the SPC that convey a clear sense of community ownership in the project. • The regular use of ‘learning loops’ to provide input into the operation and management of the project help ensure the responsiveness of mySudbury to a wide range of community stakeholders

Provincial partnership • The burden of COPSC reporting was considered overly high • The conditions of acceptance imposed by the Province (including the focus on Manitoulin Island and the extension of mySudbury’s governance to include representatives from areas of the community not involved in the project), were

78 Because COPSC funding came from the Ontario SuperBuild Fund for capital projects, only 10% of the total budget could be for operational expenses.

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appreciated as arbitrary and failing to respect the bottom-up process that otherwise characterized the project locally.

PROJECT STATISTICS

Just two months after its official launch, mysudbury.ca had over two million hits and over 20,000 unique visitors.

On November 18 2005 the Intelligent Community Forum (ICF), based in New York City, announced that Greater Sudbury made the list of the top 21 Intelligent Communities worldwide.

By December 2005 mySudbury had approximately 200 of 1200 local voluntary groups having their own community workspaces on the portal.

mySudbury Web Traffic

35

30

25

20 Unique visitors per month (,000s) unt

o Page Views per month(0,000s)

m Hits per month (00,000s) A 15

10

5

0 Apr-05 May-05 Jun-05 Jul-05 Aug-05 Sep-05 Oct-05 Nov-05 Dec-05

NEW OPPORTUNITIES THAT EMERGED

• The mySeniors’ Portal, the myYouth Portal and the myKids portal all emerged in response to an initial request from the Ontario Ministry of Citizenship and Immigration to explore the Seniors’ Portal develop by the Province and the federal government. While the proposed arrangement with the Seniors Secretariat was

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declined, the structure of the Seniors’ Portal was adopted and populated with local data. Sudbury’s Seniors’ sub portal was later used to help create the myYouth Portal and the myKids sub portals. • The opportunity to link mySudbury to the area First Nations

SUSTAINABILITY

Short term • 50% funding from the City over the next three years • e-learning revenue from sale of e-learning tools to public and private organizations • additional project funding like that being proposed to FedNor to assist local reserves in providing online services and information

Long term • The strategy for portal sustainability was following three steps: 1. get people connected, 2. get them to use it and discover its value, and finally 3. get them to expand their use and the portal by contributing to it. • sliding scale membership fees of $200 for voluntary organizations (max contribution = $200X1200= $240,000) • likelihood of 40% funding from the City after the next three years

GOOD PRACTICES

Applications • The use of ‘share point’ technology from Microsoft has facilitated the adoption of the portal by community organizations in Sudbury. The tools on the portal were relatively easy to explain the users.

Process • The mySudbury adoption strategy that emphasized a lot of ‘one-on-one’ or ‘one-on- few’ education and training sessions has been very successful in encouraging community buy-in. • MySudbury has developed many different ‘learning loops’ to understand how the portal is being used, how it could be used and what may be required to evolve it from where it is to where it wants to be.

LESSONS LEARNED

The lessons learned by the project

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• The project was bigger than anyone thought, but especially in the post implementation period. “The work really began only after we went ‘live’.“ Once the site was up there was a very large staff requirement to keep it up-to-date and current. It also took time for staff to appreciate for themselves the full potential of all the tools. They learned that there were obligations to the public in terms of timeliness and accuracy that really only became evident after their launch. • The marketing strategy has been premised on achieving a critical mass of community organizations adopting the portal for their own use. That strategy was focused at a very basic level. They learned that advertising was insufficient and required staff to conduct educational sessions. “We show them what they can do to hook them in. Then we train them on how to use the tools. Then we get feedback from them on what they really want to do and then we see if the tools can be stretched that way to help or whether the vendor may have to make a refinement.” • mySudbury learned early on that they couldn’t shoulder the burden of community content themselves and therefore had to find a means of enlisting the participation of community members and organizations to provide the content that they wanted to see. This influenced their choice of application in that it had to be user friendly. Hence, the adoption strategy for the community was to “make it yours”. • With more and more local tourism sites and events being identified on the portal, local residents were becoming increasingly aware of their own community and contributing to internal tourism via the portal. • mySudbury learned that the public sector can be an important early adopter and model user to showcase the tools and capacities of the portal as well as contributing to the sustainability of the project by way of non-core funding. • mySudbury learned that the apparent cultural gaps between the urban and rural communities in Sudbury which figured prominently at the outset of the project weren’t as wide as anticipated when there was an opportunity address the needs of both communities in equal measure. In practice, both communities have acted as if there were no barriers.

The lessons learned by Invenire Portals • Build in lots of learning loops helps to make the portal relevant and evolve • Approaching portal development bottom-up builds commitment and the willingness to adopt the solution

Economic development • The strong link between economic development and the promotion of the community and its quality of life as key attractors of business and talent.

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• There can be very beneficial economic impacts from stimulating a region’s internal economy by improving regional self awareness

Small & Medium business • As a publicly funded initiative, don’t try and compete with already existing services that are working well. • To improve Internet adoption levels among SMEs in businesses that have historically operated without will need a strong educational component to establish the “what’s in it for me” benefit.

Delivery of public services • The cost savings that are generated by moving public services online are usually redirected to provide better quality service. Where savings appear to have made the biggest impact in Sudbury’s case is at the level of voluntary organizations.

Community partnerships • Community partnerships work well when there is not a strong power/resource imbalance between the partners. While a power/resource imbalance did exist between the partners in Sudbury, the e-Sudbury.com group took sufficient steps to buffer the community leaders from the influence of the City resulting in a more balanced relationship.

Provincial intervention • The essential contribution made to the project by amalgamation which eliminated the competitiveness between urban Sudbury and the smaller towns in the region • While from a provincial perspective the conditions imposed on mySudbury regarding Manitoulin Island and its governing body seemed eminently sensible policy, the misalignment with the bottom-up approach of the community resulted in minimal impact on outcomes and a diminished regard for the province.

Technology projects • The importance of matching the technology application to the intended audience (by contrast the reader should examine Windsor’s use of PKI technology to support a largely MUSH sector focused initiative). • The need to better coordinate the funding for equipment and staff costs associated with operations and development. • There was no clear cut answer to the question of whether to buy, build or otherwise acquire new technology. However, there does seem to be an operating principle of pragmatism and the need to avoid the reinvention of the wheel.

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Other No comment

GAP ASSESSMENT Things they failed to do • The online building permitting. This service was delayed because of personnel changes at the City but it was hoped that it will go ‘live’ in early 2006.

Missed opportunities • None reported

POTENTIAL NEW USES/NEW SERVICES

• One interviewee pointed out the potential use for the portal in helping to manage a pandemic. He indicated there are various online solutions in emergency preparedness planning to connect health care providers -- doctors to doctors, doctors to hospitals, public health authorities to hospitals, etc. But to date there had been no effort to connect health authorities to the public in a credible, non- inflammatory way. It was suggested that mySudbury offered great reach into the community and the opportunity to connect to residents through trusted outlets in order to keep people informed and allay fears.

NEW TECHNOLOGY DIRECTIONS

• mySudbury has been exploring several new technologies – the use of wireless technologies to push mySudbury onto cell phones, PDA’s, other handheld devices and cable TV. It is also exploring the use of Interact payments over the portal and the use of ‘alerting’ to notify organization members of schedule changes, events and reminders.

RECOMMENDATIONS BY THE PROJECT FOR FUTURE CONSIDERATION

Portals • The program could have used another funding model, one that released funds contingent on meeting specific milestones that would require both capital and operational expenditures together rather than expensing big chunks for capital expenditures up front. • A longer time horizon for funding should be used that would allow contributions to a post implementation period

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• What is currently needed is for the Province to be more of a content partner, one that can supply content, application code and data that can be formatted in the front-end context of mySudbury

Economic development • “From a tourism perspective the web is where you have to be.” The challenge, it was suggested, was finding the right marketing model and resourcing it adequately. The Province could be very helpful here as a knowledge broker by identifying and disseminating ‘best practice’, lessons learned and development opportunities. They could also do more around building the capacity of communities to promote and transact over the web and funnelling those opportunities to other communities.

Small & Medium business • Don’t reinvent the wheel

Delivery of public services • No comment

Community partnerships • Community partnerships are developed bottom up with local champions representing various aspects of the initiative. The Province should be respectful of that process, and avoid imposing add-ons unless they are willing to champion and support them.

Technology projects • “To get out of survival mode we need to be able to support operating staff costs.” If the province can help or direct to them someone who can that would be much appreciated.

Provincial relationship • The COPSC sponsored conferences were appreciated as valuable networking and learning opportunities and should the Province undertake to do a similar program again, these should be structured throughout.

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9. THUNDER BAY PROJECT TITLE: NORTHERN GENESIS

URL: www.ournorth.com Launch Date: January 12, 2006 Completion Date: March 2, 2006

PART A -- THE LOGIC MODEL

COMMUNITY PROFILE • The Thunder Bay region covers 103,714 sq. km., a population of 150,860 and a population density of 1.5 people per sq. km. The project includes the City of Thunder Bay, Marathon, the Town of Dryden and the Town of Manitouwadge. Although Thunder Bay was in the middle of the region it has tended to act as if it were not part of a regional information solution • This area has stronger connections west to Winnipeg or south to Minneapolis than to either Toronto or Ottawa • Leadership for the project stems from the Chamber of Commerce in each partner community • Thunder Bay International Airport, was considered to be the third busiest airport in Ontario, and had advanced wireless services. • In the town of Marathon, the central location for the Connect Ontario project, there are three providers of high speed cable and DSL, and two wireless providers, an infrastructure comparable to larger townships or smaller cities. • First Nation communities represent 9% of the population and have good Internet connectivity to broadband due to federal investments. • Most jobs were related to the natural resource industries. • Population has declined an average of 8% annually, mainly because of youth who leave school or university to pursue work elsewhere. • Tourism was a principal economic driver, especially hunting and fishing, but eco- tourism was growing as a tourism attractor • Need to stimulate economy; to provide support for small businesses; to strengthen sense of community; to provide online access to meaningful community information.

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Demographic Employment Statistics Coverage sq km 103,714 Employment All Industry sectors (2001) 62,545 Population 150,860 Health 8,275 GDP (millions$) 4,622 Retail 7,185 Population density 1.5 Manufacturing 6,720 Median Age 38.7 Average household size 3.1 Accommodation & food services 4,880 % Youth (< 25) 31.9 Education 4,755 % Students (5-14 + fulltime 15+) 22,3 Public administration 4,275 % Seniors (65+) 51.1 Transportation and warehousing 4,135 % Visible minorities 2 Construction 3,530 % Aboriginal 9 Other services 3,060 % Immigrants (since 1991) 1 Professional, scientific & technical 2,415 % English 82 Administrative, support, etc. 2,250 % French 4.4 % Non Eng or FR 13.7 Wholesale 1,905 % w/ degrees/diplomas (20-64) 37.1 Agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting 1,625 Average earnings $32,010 Finance 1,545 Labour force 81,420 Information and cultural industries 1,320 Participation rate 64.3 Arts, entertainment and recreation 1,275 Employment rate 58.4 Real estate and rental and leasing 1,075 Unemployment rate 9.2 Utilities 675 Median Income $23,607 Mining and oil and gas extraction 465 % From Earnings 75.4 % From Transfers 12.9 Management of companies 15 % Low income 14.1

Geospatial Profile Of the region’s population of 150,860 the City of Thunder Bay’s population was 121,986 or 80% of the regional total. It was located in the middle of the region in only 328.5 sq. km. By comparison the other towns in the district involved in the project – Marathon, Dryden and Manitouwadge – have populations of 4,416; 8,198; and 2,949 respectively and could be as much as 900 km. apart.

The closest major urban centre to Thunder Bay is Minneapolis Minnesota (557 km.) compared to Winnipeg (710 km.), Sudbury (1,175 km.) or Toronto (1375 km.).

Economic Profile

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Thunder Bay has been an economy in decline but it may be experiencing a bit of a turn around. According to the Conference Board of Canada79 “Following a decline of 5.2 per cent in 2004, the Thunder Bay economy is expected to recover in 2005, with real GDP growth forecast to come in at 4.1 per cent. The services and manufacturing sectors are anticipated to lead the charge, the latter benefiting from better days in both the wood and paper products industries.”

The city of Thunder Bay was a transportation hub, one of Canadaʹs largest port facilities, with connections to both major railways and a junction point for the Trans-Canada Highway and the principal north-south routes to the US Midwest and the Gulf of Mexico. The major industry clusters included: • Forestry Products • Education & Knowledge Creation primarily life sciences and health sectors • Transportation primarily the aviation sector • Tourism, primarily destination eco-tourism

The MUSH sector was the biggest employer followed by the forestry products industry with Bowater Canadian Forest Products the largest private employer with 1,400 employees.

Tourism was a major industry contributing approximately $150 million in regional GDP and over 4,000 direct and indirect jobs. One of the biggest tourism assets was the international airport and close proximity to the United States. Most tourist activities involved eco-tourism, or low impact types of tourism, such as camping and kayaking, which did not attract as many tourist dollars as urban events. Hunting and fishing were also key tourism drivers.

The region’s population trends indicated that many people were moving out of the region. The population was declining at a rate of between .8 to 13% depending on the specific locale, with a regional average decline of 8% per year. From a labour force perspective, a principal need was for the region to retain its youth. Interviewees indicated that once the youth leave school or university they tended to move elsewhere to find jobs related to their education or training. Within the region the number of professional jobs was relatively low -- most jobs were oriented to the natural resource and the lumber industries, which were highly cyclical and were seeing some of their worst times in decades; particularly with the softwood lumber dispute. This had an

79 “Calgary, Thunder Bay to top all cities in economic growth next year”, Conference Board News Release December 17, 2004

Invenire4 Ltd., Ottawa, Ontario 234 COPSC Cases Thunder Bay impact on the project in terms of a lack of competitive choice for technology vendors and business consultants.

According to one interviewee, the retention of people was more of a rural problem and than a Northern Ontario problem. In a knowledge-based economy, it was indicated, education and training were essential to the development of a highly skilled workforce and knowledge based companies. But with a small rural population, the critical population mass needed to sustain an leading edge education and training infrastructure was low, lessening future, non-resource based opportunities in the region.

Social capital profile Private-public-civic interaction • The project was based on the strength of the local Chamber of Commerce networks and municipalities. In the smaller communities the Chamber networks had reach across all three sectors of the community.

Cross-linkages between organizations • There were inter-community linkages that existed at the level of the Northwestern Ontario Development Network (NODN), the North of Superior Tourism Association and across the Chambers of Commerce. The local Chambers of Commerce were small with little support staff except for Thunder Bay but they provided a vehicle for linking across communities. The Local Health Integration Network worked similarly. • While formal District structure worked well to help the smaller communities to work together, it worked against Thunder Bay’s involvement. The power imbalance was great.

Dominant player & relation to others • The City of Thunder Bay, being a Tier 1 municipality with 80% of the region’s population, seemed only peripherally engaged in the project through its tourism department. Competition emerged between TBay Tel, the municipally owned telecom, and Bell Canada the main telecom partner on the project. The smaller municipalities recognized the importance of a regional information solution whereas, with the exception of tourism, Thunder Bay did not. Reports suggested that Thunder Bay was more interested in integrating its local MUSH sector actors than in any regional integration.

Role of champion

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• The role of champion was being played out by the Superior North Futures Community Development Corporation and the Marathon Chamber of Commerce. These champions have been able to secure some support from the existing regional economic and political networks; however, the City of Thunder Bay remained uncooperative.

Culture/values • Thunder Bay was home to both Lakehead University and Confederation College. The region has a diverse social fabric. Thunder Bay was considered the sixth most culturally diverse community of its size in North America.

Maturity profile (demand and supply development) • Demand was latent to moderate to begin with depending on whether it was rural or urban • Suppliers existed but the main one (TBay Tel) was tied directly to the City of Thunder Bay and the project chose Bell Canada. • Community networks existed but networks involving Thunder Bay did not play a large role.

Technology profile Thunder Bay Telephone, owned and operated by the City of Thunder Bay, was the largest independent telephone system in Canada and offered some of the lowest rates in the country. High speed Internet was available throughout the city and in the communities of: Atikokan, Nipigon, Fort Frances, Rainy River, Ignace, Sioux Lookout, Marathon, and Terrace Bay.

In the town of Marathon, the central location for the Connect Ontario project, there were three providers of high speed cable and DSL, one for telehealth, and two wireless providers -- a level of technology infrastructure comparable to larger townships or small cities.

According to interviewees, broadband could be found through most of the region and urban residents were fairly well versed in its use. Nevertheless there were pockets without access or without adequate knowledge or interest in the Internet. FedNor has been contributing heavily to changing this situation, helping to create much more rural broadband access, especially on First Nation communities. According to one interviewee, the population was developing a greater sense of connectedness by its ability to reach out to others across the region.

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In April 2005 FedNor announced a plan to invest a further $10 million to improve broadband access in the region including the provision of satellite based Internet connectivity for remote areas including some First Nation communities. That said, it was estimated that 25% of the population was still without Internet access, either through their own lack of interest or through the absence of connectivity due to the rural and remote nature of the region.

Thunder Bay International Airport, considered the third busiest airport in Ontario and handling over 500,000 passengers annually, and has just installed an advanced wireless service to offer travelers with 802.11b connections.

It is important to note that the City of Thunder Bay had its own municipal portal, although it offered only a few basic online services (event listings, access to library resources and some limited GIS functions). Nevertheless it represented somewhat of a community portal for 80% of the region’s population.

Needs assessment Economic development • Need to stimulate the economy due to the downturn in the lumber industry • While there is broadband connectivity, there is still a need to encourage more rural participation on the Internet • Need to have knowledge-based economy • Need to build local technological capacity- mostly dial up in the remote areas • Need to provide support for small businesses through electronic provision of tools, education and business services

Social service delivery • Need to improve social service delivery and educate people about the 211 social service delivery mechanisms

Municipal efficiencies • There are great distances to services in some areas, which could benefit from online activities. For the resident, the benefit would be less transportation costs. In turn, the municipality may realize reduced municipal service delivery costs. • Thunder Bay has extensive broadband, and some in smaller towns and municipalities, with the rest on dial up Internet access. Still need to encourage use of system.

Strengthen sense of community & regional heritage • Need to strengthen the region’s sense of community

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• Need to have an integrated approach to the community/ region • Need to provide online access to meaningful community information through a common access point. • Need to improve knowledge, skills, and local use of those, so as to arrest brain drain

Assumptions • Internet applications increase opportunities for connectivity within communities • A community portal provides opportunities for people to stay and participate in their community • A portal builds greater social cohesion and connectedness, particularly when vast distances between communities exists, such as in the Northern region • Migrating some municipal service delivery to electronic transactional service delivery over the Internet will permit greater efficiencies at the local and provincial level. • By encouraging more universal demand for and sophistication with the Internet, the regions technological and community capacities will grow. • The Connect Ontario project will increase the awareness and marketability of the region as a place to do business and also as a destination for tourism.

PROJECT PROFILE

Partners Lead: The Northern Genesis Community Portal Association (NGCPA) was the lead partner. It hired Geospatial Consulting to act as its project manager.

Other partners : The NGCPA was comprised of five public and five private partners in order to carry out the COPSC project. They were:

Public Partners (voting representatives): • City of Dryden • Township of Manitouwadge • Town of Marathon • City of Thunder Bay (Tourism and Economic Development Departments only) • Superior North Community Futures Development Corporation: (including Aguasabon Chamber of Commerce; Land of Nipigon Chamber of Commerce; Marathon and District Chamber of Commerce) • The regional office of Emergency Measures Ontario (EMO) was a partner but with no voting rights

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Private Partners (non- voting): • ATG • Bell Canada • CANUSA (originally a member but no longer involved due to business problems) • CGI Group Inc. • Med-Nexus Inc. • Northernsupplier.com Inc. • Northwestern Ontario Technology Centre (NOTC) • Travelinx Inc. (for tourism)

With the fragile relationship with the City of Thunder Bay, the municipality with the largest regional population base, the portal has effectively been under the direction of the partners from the smaller towns.

Investment (direct & in-kind)

Total Project Cost: $2, 800,000

Connect Ontario Funding: $900,000 Expected Leverage: 3.1

Partner Funding: $1,900,000 Direct: $570,000 In-kind: $1,330,000

Information/ Services to be provided The Northern Genesis portal was designed to provide interactive/seamless tools with which to conduct business, deliver e-government, enhance social service delivery, and encourage citizens to use the Internet. Among those applications were:

General Features ƒ Gateway Portal (mix) ƒ Content Sharing ƒ Help Desk

Community Features ƒ Community Profiler ƒ Chamber Navigator ƒ Case Management System per community ƒ Content Management ƒ Virtual Incubator

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Business Features ƒ Economic Development Information System (EDIS) ƒ Project Management System (previously the Economic Asset Promotion System) ƒ Trade Net ƒ EMarket with interactive Business Directories

Municipal Features ƒ Med-Nexus Health Information Knowledge System ƒ Tourism Information System ƒ Emergency information measures services. Regional reps were involved to share emergency measures plans and information on critical infrastructures. ƒ e-government services

The portal promised to deliver the following content and services: Municipal Services X Agriculture Services Municipal Information X Agriculture Information Business Services X Youth Services X Business Information X Youth Information X Children’s Services Senior Services X Children’s Information Senior Information X Small Business Services X Employment Services X Small Business Information X Employment Information X Health Services X Recreation Services X Health Information X Recreation Information X Education Services X Library Services X Education Information X Library Information X Cultural Events X Community Services X Virtual Tours X Community Information X Gateway to Federal Services X Gateway to Provincial Services X Gateway to Federal Information X Gateway to Provincial Information X Gateway to News providers X

ACHIEVEMENTS

The ‘hard’ launch of the portal was to be in February 200680. At the time of this writing it had not.

Completed/ incomplete

80 The OurNorth portal was posted online from an earlier ‘soft’ launch but much of its content was unavailable.

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• The full launch of the portal will make available the full list of services above.

Next phase • Complete the launch • Online education and training with Lakehead University • Extend the portal to include other towns in the region • Improve links with North of Superior Tourism Association (NOSTA) • Add French and Aboriginal language services and information • GIS mapping

Indications of ROI • None yet as the site was not launched.

PART B: THE NORTHERN GENESIS STORY

Northern Genesis was a joint venture of towns and municipalities in the municipal District of Thunder Bay. The distance across the region was over 900 kilometres creating many geographically based time barriers for both residents and organizations. For instance, meetings among the Northern Genesis partners, were undertaken at a central regional location – Thunder Bay -- which was still a 4 hour drive for some of the partners. Thus reducing this time and travel barrier to obtain services in the region was a large motivator of the project.

The objective of the project was to enhance electronic information and service delivery, improve convenience, and reduce the geographical barriers experienced by rural and remote communities. The project was designed as a Internet portal that would act as a single-window access point for the region. It would aggregate resources across many communities to help build a regional view of the District. This ‘regional view’ has proven to be somewhat of a challenge.

Partnership In the summer of 2004, the Minister of Northern Development and Mines in describing the Ontario government’s plan for Northern Ontario underscored the willingness of the Province to encourage a greater use of technology to support residents of the region. He said, “We will … engage northerners by availing ourselves of the latest technologies to introduce E-consultation initiatives to enlist and capture broader input and feedback.” But he emphasized the need to undertake initiatives on a regional basis, “Together we can bring prosperity to this region and a quality of life that is second to none. The key

Invenire4 Ltd., Ottawa, Ontario 241 COPSC Cases Thunder Bay word here folks is “together”. And I want to take a moment to stress this. We are a region. We are Northern Ontario. We must work cooperatively to capitalize on our strengths as a region.

The Minister also implicitly recognized some of the inherent resistances to such regionally based thinking, saying “Communities that fail to realize this, that fail to come up with regional strategies will either decline, or they will remain stagnant. We’ve heard this sentiment from many experts and economists but agreement and collaboration does not always come easily to northerners from different parts of the region or even from neighbouring communities.”81

Whether the Minister’s comments were directed at Thunder Bay District is unclear, but the import of his comments has very clear relevance for the OurNorth portal. Negotiations between the smaller municipal partners and the City of Thunder Bay to get the latter more involved with the portal have been called “frustrating”. While the OurNorth portal was not considered a big advancement for Thunder Bay, its proponents felt that a collaboration inclusive of Thunder Bay would have made the region stronger in many ways. In the meantime, Thunder Bay has developed a large municipal web site, which also has economic development and tourism aspects to it and which was being positioned so as to integrate services across Thunder Bay’s MUSH sector.

Notwithstanding the Minister’s remarks in 2004, the differences between Thunder Bay and the other communities in terms of population, scale of economy, services, amenities, and municipal structure made a portal partnership among equals improbable. Thunder Bay seemed to be implicitly adopting the view that it alone was the region and therefore according to interviewees, it was unlikely that it would support a competing portal to any significant extent. According to a Ministry spokesperson, “the other three worked very well together. They invested more money than required by their commitments and developed a good working partnership.”

An additional wedge between the City and the smaller towns in the region developed as a result of competition between TBay Tel the municipally owned telecom which serviced City residents and Bell Canada which serviced rural residents and was the main technology vendor on the project. In addition, Bell’s support was provided from Toronto not from within the region.

81 The Northern Prosperity Plan, Rick Bartolucci, Minister of Northern Development and Mines, Sudbury, June 10, 2004

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One of those organizations that had a potential to bridge this gap was the Chamber of Commerce. While there were a number of Chambers in the region, they were all part of a regional Chamber body, the Northwestern Ontario Associated Chamber of Commerce (NOAC), estimated to have 2,500 members. These smaller Chambers ranged in membership size from Marathon with 50 members, to the City of Thunder Bay with 1000 members. The smaller Chambers around Thunder Bay were very much involved in the project, with the Chair of the Marathon Chamber of Commerce also being the Chair of the project. On the other hand, although the Thunder Bay Chamber was very well funded, organized and active beyond just social and networking events, it, however, did not participate in the Northern Genesis project.

Another important regional stakeholder was the Northwestern Ontario Development Network (NODN), an economic developer community of practice that was supported by both federal and provincial governments to assist regional economic development and complement the Chambers of Commerce. In existence since 1991, their activities covered the sharing of education and training opportunities, the sharing of regional information and the promotion of policy discussions on things of mutual interest like forestry and cross-border initiatives with Midwest US states. However, NODN sphere of influence also included the Kenora District as well. The portal team has so far been not focused on getting them involved as their focus has been on municipalities. However, some of its members, such as Superior North Community Futures, were participating in the portal.

Strong regional support has come from the Local Health Integration Network (LHIN) for the region. One of the heads of the LHIN was a member of the health working group. The Northern Ontario School of Medicine (NOSM) was also involved in the health sub portal which was designed to help inform the public on the basis of profession, need and level of knowledge. For example, a nurse will get different information than a patient. The health sub portal provided access to: Crisis and Emergency information, My Health Knowledge Kernels, Public Health information, information on Health and Aboriginal Health Services, Health Research and Education, and information on health related news and events. It will eventually provide information on the Ministry of Health and the LHIN and conduct regional health surveys and polls.

One of the partners in the health sub portal was Med-Nexus, the producer of an adaptive, health knowledge management system, Knowledge Kernels, that could collect and deliver Internet based health knowledge in a highly personalized format. Med Nexus was located in Thunder Bay and was providing much of the portal’s health

Invenire4 Ltd., Ottawa, Ontario 243 COPSC Cases Thunder Bay information. Via its telemedicine studios there Med-Nexus could also help determine if a patient’s health could be managed locally or perhaps needed outside care. Med-Nexus also provided web space for health care professionals as a private access point for sharing documents, thoughts, discussions, images, and calendar, events, and announcements. While its portal contribution was not yet fully operational, Med Nexus was collaborating on the portal to add the Knowledge Kernels feature to link to its interactive knowledge repository.

According to the interviewees, indications were that Service Ontario was planning an initiative in the area, as has ‘211’ services organization. They have been approached but so far no collaboration. The team felt that since Service Ontario had not responded to their partnership inquiries that Service Ontario would likely go ahead and set up their own regional information initiative independently.

Despite the partnership challenges, the Town of Marathon and the Marathon Chamber of Commerce have managed to keep the project alive and keep other stakeholders sufficiently inspired as to the value of the portal.

Implementation Given that the level of technology sophistication among residents appeared to be mixed, from excellent in the urban areas to low in remoter regions, the general fear at the outset was that rural residents were not sufficiently interested in or capable of using the Internet. For instance even in areas where Internet access was present, municipal employees found that procurement decisions were dominated by faxes rather than emails. The NGCPA board felt there were clear pockets where technology sophistication was lacking.

As a consequence, the portal team had four working groups centred on the portal’s main themes: economic development (including small business), health, tourism, and technical development. The goal was to develop a service which was relevant and simple to use. The teams met regularly and so all the members were fully involved in the project and aware of its various initiatives.

In consultations with the community on what to include as main elements of the portal, the following four priorities emerged: • Tourism was key. As the region has a big influx of tourists, the portal could provide information and resources to them. • With great distances between health facilities, identifying health service locations was essential and helping residents address their own health issues, possibly by

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pre-screening cases, was identified as being important. This was also connected to emergency measures planning. • The management of public assets, GIS, and information systems, would help residents find the information or services they required, and to track movements when trying to locate something in remote areas. It was a 9 hour drive from one end of the region to the other so better knowledge of service location was essential. • Supporting small, business and attracting new businesses were considered essential for the vitality of the region. Among the small business needs identified, education and training were cited as important and they hoped to develop partnerships with Lakehead University and Confederation College in order to facilitate this.

Although tourism has declined somewhat globally in recent years, tourism in the region has been experiencing a resurgence as demonstrated by last year’s increases. The largest attractions were fishing and hunting, particularly with tourists from the United States. They contributed approximately $150 million to the regional economy through purchases of supplies, gas, food, lodging, and outpost support and over 4,000 direct and indirect jobs. Even the smallest locations have benefited from refuelling snow machines in winter or boats in the summer, and so small tourism operators were conscious of the need to ‘spread the word’ to attract more tourists.

Because of this, most tourism operators had become very technically savvy and had begun using the Internet to improve awareness of their operations. Travelinx, an affiliate of Bell Canada, was a strong partner in the project and designed the tourism sub portal to link the tourism portals of the four communities and created additional value with a searchable database around five common tourism features – packages, ‘things to do’, ‘places to stay’, destinations and directions. The Travelinx network of portals had amassed a database of 4,000-5,000 regional tourism providers.

The tourism section included online feedback through the North of Superior Tourism Association (NOSTA) and will later link more directly with them. This relationship has been slow developing and talks continue on involving NOSTA in the portal as the administrator of the tourism components.

Creating multiple data linkages on the portal was considered very important. When people access information they frequently require linkages across several databases. For example, the properties listed on the Economic Development Information System (EDIS) will be linked with electricity, gas, sewer and water services, mapping information, zoning, etc. Currently one has to visit five different service locations to get

Invenire4 Ltd., Ottawa, Ontario 245 COPSC Cases Thunder Bay information on a single parcel of land. With the full launch of the portal it will be in one online location.

It was felt that local businesses usually had Internet access and were desirous of extending their reach across the region to new customers and suppliers. Most businesses were fairly technically savvy and were aware of various online marketing channels. Most of the region’s small businesses were service suppliers to the natural resource industries. Therefore the portal has compiled a list of every business in region and published their contact information for free on the portal’s business directory. The information was initially provided by the municipalities, and then Northern Supplier cleaned the data. It was set up so that each small business would be better able to identify suppliers and customers across the region. “The main target of the portal was SMEs”, according to one interviewee. According to another, “Given that Thunder Bay’s small businesses would benefit most from the portal, the only way to understand their lack of participation is petty territorialism.”

As part of its assessment of small business needs, the portal team completed a study that involved interviewing regional businesses. The study involved spending 1-2 hours with each business, and involved 65 of the 140 businesses in the region and did include Thunder Bay. They tried to determine the extent to which those businesses were exporting to US and found that very few were doing so, except the paper mill and 3 gold mines. Those four businesses saw the portal as a valuable tool. They also felt online research was important in helping them extract information about local suppliers, new zoning and legislation affecting export.

Another small business benefit of the portal cited by an interviewee was its confidentiality. For example, when a parcel of land is for sale, the potential buyer might not want anyone to know, particularly in a small town where interest can quickly spread and can drive up prices. The portal provides this degree of anonymity.

In the area of education, the portal team was optimistic that they would be able to involve both Confederation College and Lakehead University on the portal. Lakehead University was generally supportive and would at least link to the portal and may even manage the portal. It was envisioned that the portal would offer online training through the university in a later phase of development. Confederation College may contribute and build technology, specifically the GIS component, as well as offering a training component. The portal team was preparing a document they could share with both the university and college to bring them to the table.

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Marketing In terms of marketing, the municipal partners had sub committees struck that contributed toward the development of a portal marketing plan. At this writing the marketing plan was still in draft form and was unavailable for review.

The portal team found online competition, especially in the tourism sector, quite strong and therefore they didn’t want the portal to become a competitor to existing initiatives. They tried Therefore to design a portal product that would complement existing initiatives by providing more ways of accessing those initiatives or providing information already being provided.

A marketing plan had drafted but completing it was dependent on securing additional funding from the partners, estimated at $5,000.The team was optimistic about receiving the funding to finish the plan. At the time of this writing, the team was also waiting for a joint partner announcement to fund a portal manager to guide the project with $90,000 over the next two years through FEDNOR. However, the team was not without some concern. Their two biggest fears were that that they will have spent $3 million and then the partners would walk away from the project, or if they agreed to go ahead and make the portal ‘live’, no one would use it.

Administration It was generally appreciated that the portal project has helped build communication and collaboration across the participating communities. There has been a genuine sharing of knowledge and experience between communities. That said, these communities (outside Thunder Bay) were thinly populated and had a minimal tax base upon which to do anything.

The interviewees felt there was a definite lack of experience as they got started which contributed to several bad mistakes and wasted time -- to the extent that some partners didn’t think the project would ever make it this far. “I think our project should have failed due to a lack of leadership. [The partners] were already busy and adding another project to that load without the requisite experience made it that much harder,” said one project leader. “The Board would stare at each other and say what do we do with this? We just didn’t know.” NGCPA Board meetings that were once annual became intense monthly meetings during the implementation phase.

Given the team’s lack of experience with this type of project, they felt that some form of “project model or template with check marks to follow” would have been very useful and could have saved them a lot of time and money. As one interviewee put it “If asked to do it again I wouldn’t touch it. I would have liked to have seen a model or a checklist,

Invenire4 Ltd., Ottawa, Ontario 247 COPSC Cases Thunder Bay or someone with more expertise than me to come in and walk me through the project. Someone to indicate how to do it … there was no project map.” This type of conceptualization was done by the from the former President of Geospatial Consulting that prepared the business plan, but he was dismissed from the company early into the implementation phase, leaving the NGCPA board with some lack of clarity in the project. They were on their own.

The Board also felt they needed better legal and accounting advice, but there was not sufficient municipal resources for this or sufficient project funds to hire that advice externally. “When people say $3 million it sounds like a lot but it’s not that much. It’s a huge project, and we could have used three times that amount of money.” This comment brings to light the differences in local capacity between rural northern communities and the more urban, southern ones.

Once the process, the vendor arrangements and governance had been worked out getting everyone to do their bit was an ongoing and unexpected challenge. The vendors were not very adept at delivering tools on time and due to inexperience the contracts did not have holdback clauses to ensure timely and acceptable products; the board was slow to respond to requests for information and action; the lack of sufficient legal and accounting expertise meant that provincial reporting was delayed resulting in a very slow reimbursement process that created a great deal of strife through the project.

In general, there was a lack of understanding on everyone’s part about their roles and responsibilities, particularly for each municipal partner. Getting these stakeholders to input their information onto the portal site was tedious, in fact so much so it delayed the launch of the portal that was originally scheduled for September 2006. Since then the team has been primarily focused on posting content.

Sustainability The team saw tourism as the major source of revenue generation for the portal, in addition to the sale of portal memberships to the communities that wished to participate in the e-government initiatives.

The current member communities paid portal member fees, including Thunder Bay which contributed $68,000 as a membership fee as did the other municipalities with varying amounts.

Additional public funding for the project came from FedNor for $270,000 . FedNor also agreed to fund 90% of salary up to $27,500 for one year and have approved a youth

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intern to work on the marketing plan. They have also been useful funding advisors, giving pointers in terms of funding opportunities and application process. One interviewee suggested that FedNor may well invest another $50,000 to help see the project to completion.

In terms of other community groups, the portal is only in English but they do have a francophone community in the region. Additionally, the native communities have their own portals, but they would like them to join the portal as well.

PART C – ASSESSMENT

FOCUS

• The focus has shifted somewhat to embrace the region outside of the city of Thunder Bay. The portal was focused on tourism (a non-city centric industry), health (a provincially mandated regional concern), economic development (a regional concern), the Thunder Bay Area Emergency Measures Organization, an aggregation of non-Thunder Bay municipal information and services, as well as information and training suitable for more rural audiences. While a complete regional solution, may have been possible, it may have required the portal to limit its solution to the areas where Thunder Bay was more likely to cooperate. • From the perspective of the ‘soft’ launch, health, economic development, and tourism were the most fully developed aspects of the site.

CHALLENGES

The portal project had several challenges, which slowed their progress, and seemed largely related to their unfamiliarity with large technology projects, with working regionally and their capacity to bring resources to bear on the situation. They included: • Early withdrawal of the project champion. • Lack of familiarity among the partners in implementing a large technology projects • The inability to obtain buy-in from the major municipality in the region (Thunder Bay) or other major regional players • Lack of initial experience among the partners in working in a distributed governance context • Lack of resources to effectively administer the project’s reporting requirements • Unbudgeted costs • Vendor malfeasance

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To the project team the main challenge was the over expenditures of funds. The contracts with the funding agencies, even though approved and signed, did not include the costs of complying with requirements that were mandated but unbudgeted. For instance, they felt there were new liabilities, such as the need for an in-kind audit, which were put into the contract but not initially budgeted for creating a $30,000 unanticipated cost82. It was an issue of changing the rules within a fixed budget. The manpower needed to process the reporting requirements just wasn’t available either on the project team or with the municipal partners. This caused a reporting backup which delayed payments.

The provincial request for CAO participation in the NGCPA also proved very difficult, considering the time and distances required to meet. The Province seemed to be unaware of the cost this imposed on the partners, until late in the project.

There was a leadership challenge. The president of Geospatial Consulting, and the original primary lead in the project was dismissed from the company and it took several months for the firm to find a replacement. The uncertainty related to the irregularity in the receipt of project funding hindered their ability to hire someone right away. Aside from the owner of Geospatial Consulting there were also other original visionaries who left and were no longer part of the project contributing to this leadership challenge. As the new management group took over they disavowed the original contracts, saying the original group was overly optimistic in terms of actual costs, and that there were items that failed to be identified.

The firm CANUSA was the original partner in the project designated to build the tourism sub portal but they had business problems and were cited for unethical business practices. They were dropped from the project after quite a few months of problems. Consequently, Travelinx took over much of their work and financial commitments, but the transition delayed the project somewhat. However, the tourism sub portal ended up being the most complete part of the portal at the time of its soft launch.

SUSTAINABILITY

The communities have built the portal around the delivery of public goods (information and services) but the smaller municipalities may have little in the way of resources to sustain the portal. For example, Manatouag, a community of around 1,000 people, has not been able to contribute much. On the other hand, Dryden, a slightly larger

82 This amount seems high compared to the in-kind audit costs of other project groups.

Invenire4 Ltd., Ottawa, Ontario 250 COPSC Cases Thunder Bay community of 5,000, has contributed almost $125,000. The sustainability of the portal therefore seems based on how necessary the municipalities view it.

Short term The two main things that they hoped will sustain the portal were fresh content, and the generation of revenues through advertising and member fees from other communities.

Long term They feel the revenue will come from ads, subscriptions, ability to sell mailing lists, click through rates, bank advertising, and listings for tourism and business as well as selling new memberships in the portal.

BEST PRACTICES None commented on

LESSONS LEARNED

The lessons learned by the project • The governance body was too large and involved too many people. There were many miscommunications at times in discussions and they would like to have limited management to a smaller, more focused group. • They also learned that a portal project such as this was a larger undertaking than they envisioned and required significantly more financial and administrative support than anticipated.

The lessons learned by Invenire • The power imbalance between Thunder Bay and the rest of the region created a fundamental obstacle to the creation of an inclusive regional portal. While it seemed clear why the region needed Thunder Bay, it wasn’t clear why Thunder Bay needed the region. The widely-separated, loosely-interacting communities which comprise this region needed to more clearly identify a common purpose upon which their collaboration would be based – one which they could only effectively undertake all together. • Northern Genesis may be a case of Icarus flying too high and too fast. The project may have attempted to do too much, too soon in its scope. Given that regional vehicles existed for economic development and tourism it might have been easier to establish regional cooperation (including the City of Thunder Bay) around these two axes rather than the larger portal concept that was undertaken. Sometimes less is better. A successful smaller project would most likely have opened the door to more

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extensive regional collaborations that could have been inclusive of Thunder Bay and the other regional stakeholders. • The consistent presence of a strong project manager/facilitator who can build and maintain collaboration among the players was clearly essential for a successful portal project. Just as clear was the need for the champions to be uniformly credible in the eyes of all the key stakeholders. There seems to be a misalignment between the principal champion from Marathon and the need to engage people from Thunder Bay. • The project has worked hard to ensure the basic elements of connectivity portal applications were in place. However, the benefits to the community only come with their use of these tools. The target audience was not the sophisticated urban core in Thunder Bay but a less sophisticated rural one. Addressing this audience is not a matter of advertising but of education to establish for users, often at a one-on-one level, the benefits of the portal’s use. The efforts for this are best undertaken concurrently with the implementation so that the audience is receptive upon the portal’s launch.

GAP ASSESSMENT

• To date the full launch of the portal has not been completed • The education component in the original plan was dropped • Lack of obvious ‘hooks’ to attract user audiences, or secure stakeholder buy-in. • Inability to secure the participation of the City of Thunder Bay and/or the regional Chamber and the Northwestern Ontario Development Network. The value proposition for various stakeholders was either not clear enough or not immediate enough to motivate them into more active collaboration. • The portal team is still struggling to secure the needed commitments of its partners to cover next two years83

POTENTIAL NEW USES/NEW SERVICES

• The opportunities for tele-health and telemedicine in the region via Med-Nexus look promising. At this stage, however, it was not completely clear as to the value of the Med- Nexus ‘Knowledge Kernel’ application on the portal. On the other hand, the inter-institutional communication tools being developed for the health sector could be quite significant. One interviewee commented that “Walkerton was an example

83 While it is a contractual obligation for the COPSC project groups to establish their financial viability for two years after the end of the period of provincial funding, they are still attempting to define precisely who will contribute what.

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of an issue that was poorly communicated. Too many silos. This could be the vehicle to help us communicate better.” • It was hoped that the Province could begin to utilize the portal to deliver services it offers to the public online, including birth certificates, death notices, driver’s licences, health cards, etc – all of which have a local component to them. Doing so would serve three purposes – speed up service provision, create efficiencies, and avoid the duplication of access. Provincial participation in local service delivery would presumably help to make the portal more sustainable. • They were exploring home care, 211 services, and social service delivery mechanisms that could be incorporated onto the portal. • They would like to develop an e-municipality for the communities in the region in order to pay various bills, permits and fines online. With the savings from an e- municipality service, more funds could be directed to areas that were less routine and adding more value to residents. • They have also been considering the addition of a polling tool on the portal and reach out and gauge community reaction on various issues. In an ongoing way and in between elections, a community polling tool could help municipal offices and politicians get a better pulse on the region’s interests and concerns. They envisioned not just one-way communication, but two-way communication that could receive input and communicate responses.

NEW TECHNOLOGY DIRECTIONS

• They are looking at the potential of open source technology to save money. • The portal plans to develop GIS capability. GIS locator function was felt to be important, particularly with land searches, business locations, and with public works. For example, in Dryden, people could access garbage collection schedules and determine “did I miss it?” Or with real-time wireless input from a snowplough, determine if “the blade is up or down and by proxy determine the road conditions.”

RECOMMENDATIONS BY THE PROJECT FOR FUTURE CONSIDERATION

• The Province should develop a template system in order to assist the portal team in making good financial and business decisions. “The role of the province’ according to them, “is to make the technology available, and to enable smaller municipalities to go forward when from a fiscal perspective it would have been otherwise inconceivable.” The province should provide a template of step by step “how to’s” as well as the additional financial resources to help catalyze and administer the projects. That said, the province did provide the project with a series of templates on

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technology and applications; project planning; business planning; procurement; partnership agreements; and general project management. • The Province should spend more time on guiding the projects. The project team felt out of the loop in terms of what was happening elsewhere, despite the fact that COPSC subsidized the travel of the northern project team members to the COPSC workshops and conferences so that they could network with the other project groups.

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10. WELLINGTON-GUELPH PROJECT TITLE: WELLINGTON-GUELPH: A SMARTER COMMUNITY

URL: http://wellingtonguelph.ca Launch Date: June 2005 Completion Date: February 16, 2006

PART A -- THE LOGIC MODEL

COMMUNITY PROFILE • Wellington County has a population of 187,313, a land area of 2,656.65 sq km. and a population density of 70.5 persons per sq. km.. City of Guelph, the main city within Wellington County has a population of 106,170, a land area of 87.12 sq kilometres and a population density of 1225.1 persons per sq. km.. The region also includes the Township of Wellington North, the Township of Centre Wellington, the Township of Guelph-Eramosa, and Puslinch. Guelph is 95 km. from Toronto, 30 km from Waterloo and 56 km. from Hamilton. • Annual population growth is pegged between 1 and 2.61%. • The community benefits from strong educational facilities and is on the edge of a technology triangle between Kitchener-Waterloo, Hamilton and Toronto. • There are a number of quite large GIS installations. Some of the large rural auto parts suppliers, as well as some farmers, were noted as very sophisticated users. • Socially, the City of Guelph has a diverse mix of industrial, agri-business, biotechnology, environmental enterprises, automotive, and advanced technology enterprises. • The University of Guelph is a centre of excellence in the areas of food sciences, biotechnology, agriculture, health, culture, environmental sciences, veterinary medicine, education and research. • Guelph has over 60 agricultural research and biotechnology companies, 24 research centres, and boasts more than 6,000 jobs in the agricultural – biotechnology sectors.

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Demographics

Coverage / sq km 2,656.65 Employment by Industry Total Population 187,313 Labour force 104,170 Population density 70.5 Manufacturing and 30,525 Median Age 36.3 construction Average household size 2.7 Health and education 17,985 % Youth (< 25) 34.4 Other services 16,025 % students (5-14 + fulltime 15+) 23.3 Business services 14,915 % Seniors (65+) 12.5 Wholesale and retail trade 14,880 % Visible minorities 7.4 Agriculture & other resource 5,135 % Aboriginal .68 Finance and real estate 4,700 % Immigrants (since 1991) 4.4 % English 83.5 % French 1.2 % Non Eng or FR 15.1 % W/ degrees/diplomas (20-64) 46.1 Average earnings $33,825.00 Labour force 66410 Participation rate 71.9 Employment rate 68.7 Unemployment rate 4.5 Median Income $26,484.00 % From Earnings 80.3 % From Transfers 8.8 % Low income 8.6 # of firms 1098 # of employees 53,652 Ratio of small to large business 88.6

GeoSpatial Profile Wellington County has a population of 187,313, a land area of 2,656.65 sq km. and a population density of 70.5 persons per sq. km. The City of Guelph, the main city within Wellington County, has a population of 106,170 (or approx. 57% of the county total), a land area of 87.12 sq km. and a population density of 1,225.1 persons per sq. km. The region also includes the Township of Wellington North, the Township of Centre Wellington, the Township of Guelph-Eramosa, and Puslinch. Guelph is 95 km. from Toronto, 30 km from Waterloo and 56 km. from Hamilton.

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Economic Profile The City of Guelph has a diverse mix of industrial, agri-business, biotechnology, environmental enterprises, automotive, and advanced high technology enterprises. The workforce was generally highly skilled and highly educated and there was a high degree of talent retention among the many local industries. Manufacturing and construction accounted for almost 30% of the region’s workforce with particular strengths in fabricated metal products, machinery, printing, publishing and allied products. The fact of its diversified economy created less dependency on a single industry.

There was also a strong agricultural component to the economy with more than 2,600 farms in the region. This agricultural base is buttressed by the University of Guelph which is a world-class facility in the areas of food sciences, biotechnology, agriculture, health, culture, environmental sciences, veterinary medicine, education and research. In addition, the Ontario Agricultural College which was also located in the region, focused on health and well-being and all aspects of food. Guelph has over 60 agricultural research and biotechnology companies, 24 research centres, and boasts more than 6,000 jobs related to the agricultural and biotechnology sectors.

Technology profile While urban areas of the City of Guelph have high-speed access, rural areas remained challenged. In the rural regions there are some high-speed wireless providers with a limited footprint, along with some two-way satellites. The costs seemed prohibitive at $899 per installation and $90 per month. Added to this cost was the fact that the two- way satellite connection was not as fast as Bell Sympatico.

According to our feedback, Internet usage among the population was high. Guelph was reported to have a strong technology culture and a lot of technically savvy people, many of whom worked in technology companies in Kitchener-Waterloo or Toronto. As an indication, since the City offered the option of registering online for its community services, fully 40% of these registrations were now being done online.

The community has benefited from the presence of strong educational facilities in the region, such as the University of Guelph and Conestoga College. Additionally, since it was within commuting distance to Kitchener-Waterloo, Hamilton and Toronto, county residents had access to the universities and colleges located there as well.

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It was also noted that there were a number of big GIS users in the region including some of the large auto part suppliers, as well as farmers, each of which was a sophisticated Internet user.

The region’s public sector organizations had solid access to broadband, a large amount of which was facilitated by a recent City of Guelph initiative to install fibre optic cabling throughout the city. Overall, however, there remained some criticism that the existing County infrastructure did not fully meet the needs of either residents or local companies. For instance, the municipalities frequently made use of electronic agenda and scheduling applications, but councillors found that these programs were hard to access away from their offices, because most rural areas only had dial-up access. “From a social perspective, the government should provide access to Internet through high speed,” one interviewee stated.

Local physicians have played an important role in the portal project. This was in part driven by the fact that in the offices of many physicians in the region there wasn’t a lot of broadband connectivity. There was a general concern among doctors that Internet access reduced office productivity. Guelph’s physician recruitment group visited 70% of the region’s physician offices and estimated that only 20-30% had Internet access. Typically a physician ran his whole office on 3x5 cards, despite the dedicated connectivity required by OHIP. At home, however, most physicians did use the Internet.

Social capital profile Guelph is known for its small town feel while still maintaining close proximity to large cities, such as Toronto, London and Hamilton. It has a well-defined, family centred community culture very suitable for raising children but close enough to the major centres to periodically enjoy sports events and other large entertainment attractions.

The city of Guelph has a vibrant arts and culture, due in large measure to the presence of the university, and a very engaged citizenry. This active engagement of residents is less noticeable in the seven smaller and very independent municipalities like Elora.

Needs assessment Economic development • Need for more regional and collaborative responses on the economy due to its regional nature • Need to level the playing field between rural and urban areas in terms of high speed connectivity and Internet access to assist small business

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• The region needs to more fully realize the potential of leading edge Internet technologies

Social service delivery • Need to encourage better coordination and greater interaction between community and human services agencies, such as in health care • Need to attract more health care professionals to the area to meet the challenges of smaller, more rural communities

Municipal efficiencies • Need for more public sector collaboration around economic development but a diverse range of municipalities -- City, County and lower tier – inhibits this. • Need to improve customer response times of municipal officials • Need to reduce municipal service delivery costs • Need for better coordination and dissemination of information to citizens

Strengthen sense of community and regional heritage • Need to better organize community events to reduce competition and improve coordination • Need to keep - and further strengthen - the region’s sense of community identity • Need to provide online access to meaningful community information through a common access point • Need to improve the level of communication between stakeholder groups • Need to provide added convenience for recreational services through online registration and payment processing • Need to create a more integrated approach between the County and the City

Assumptions • Internet applications increase opportunities for people to connect within communities • A community portal provides opportunities for people to stay and participate in their community • A portal builds greater social cohesion • A portal helps promote community values • Migrating some municipal service delivery to electronic transactional service delivery over the Internet will permit greater efficiencies at the local and provincial level and offer choices for citizens • Stimulating local Internet usage through the provision of meaningful applications will increase network demand and therefore support the IT sector which had stalled along with the IT sector generally worldwide

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• By encouraging more universal demand for and sophistication with the Internet, the region’s technological and community capacities will grow • The Connect Ontario project will increase the awareness and marketability of Guelph and region as a place to do business, for tourism and for education

PROJECT PROFILE

The City of Guelph and the County of Wellington set out to collaborate together with a variety of partners from multiple sectors in order to develop and manage a suite of electronic community services that would enhance information and service delivery in the county. The partners decided a community portal would be the best way to link existing electronic content and support the growth of innovative on-line services to meet community’s needs for economic and social development.

The online portal services that were envisioned included: e-forms, e-registrations, and virtual physicians waiting room (PatientDr. Connect), business and community directories, information subscription services and web-enabled GIS applications. The partners believed a collaborative approach would induce the participation of both rural and urban interests and help realize economies of scale around the costs of infrastructure, equipment, software, database development, technical support, as well as the portal’s sustainability.

Partners

Lead: City of Guelph As the lead, the City of Guelph has worked collaboratively with its seven public partners to develop a coherent regional framework of information and services to create the connectedness between the rural and urban populations, as well as between the region and its external markets.

Other partners: The City’s COPSC partners included:

Public Not-for-profit • County of Wellington • Volunteer Centre of Guelph/Wellington • Township of Centre Wellington • Centre Wellington Chamber of Commerce • Township of Wellington North • Guelph Chamber of Commerce • Upper Grand District School Board

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Investment (direct & in-kind)

Total Project Cost: $2,119,415

Provincial Funding: $1,000,000 Leverage: 2.1

Partner Funding: $1,119,415 Direct: $533,222 In-kind: $586,193

Information/ Services to be provided The Guelph/Wellington Smarter Community application was set out to provide interactive/seamless tools with which to conduct business, deliver e-government, enhance social service delivery, and encourage citizens to use the Internet. Among those applications were:

General Features • Community Portal • Virtual waiting room - Patient-Doctor Connect • Web asset linking • Establish links to content on partner websites • Have PDF versions of content

Business Features • Links to job sites, Workopolis

Community Features • Information subscription services - one newsletter • Facilities accommodation and program registration • Community calendar of events

Mapping Features • Online directories

The portal promised the following content and services: Municipal Services Agriculture Services Municipal Information X Agriculture Information X Business Services Youth Services Business Information X Youth Information X Children’s Services Senior Services Children’s Information X Senior Information X Small Business Services Employment Services

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Small Business Information X Employment Information X Health Services (hospitals etc.) Recreation Services Health Information X Recreation Information X Education Services Library Services Education Information X Library Information X Arts and Cultural Events X Community Services Virtual Tours Community Information X Gateway to Federal Services X Gateway to Provincial Services X Gateway to Federal Information X Gateway to Provincial Information X Chamber linkages X Gateway to News providers X Links to Enterprise Centre X Links to tourism information X

ACHIEVEMENTS

Outputs At the time of our interview (December 2005), the project had developed a complete portal shell in order to provide the above information objectives; however, specific information content still needed to be entered. Thus, WG's achievements should be regarded only as being functional. There was very little content in some areas to be of practical benefit to residents or for the service to be considered complete overall.

According to those interviewed, while there was commitment and an earnest desire among the partners to see the project succeed, the adoption of the portal by the community since its launch in June 2005 has been minimal (see web statistics– approximately 30 visitors per day—are low compared to the thousands of hits per day on www.guelph.ca. even after taking into account that the City’s site was launched in 1997 and that it takes time and effort to build an audience.)

Completed/ incomplete The WG portal was launched in June 2005. The Directory, News Service and Calendar were completed although more content was needed. The online registration and payment system using CLASS had been implemented by three of the municipal partners. While the ‘PatientDr Connect’ service had been developed, it had not been officially launched. The Guelph Physician Application Form service to link new doctors with a roster of patients was also launched.

Next Phase • The project needs to focus on re-building the partnership, re-establishing commitments from the municipal partners to finish the portal and sustain it for the next two years, and the portal needs to define a long term sustainability strategy.

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• There needs to be further development of the online services, SME services, advertising, online transactions and many other features. There also needs to be further content provided to ‘fill out’ existing information services. The ‘PatientDr. Connect’ service will be launched in early 2006.

Impacts None noted so far

Indications of ROI None noted so far

PART B: WELLINGTON - GUELPH’S STORY

The Wellington-Guelph region had a strong MUSH sector partnership (the Wellington County Public Sector Consortium), which involved the City, the County, the school boards, the hospitals, City-owned Guelph Hydro, the university community and the college community. It was mentioned that these public sector institutions have worked together cooperatively for some years and that there were many layers of their integration. For instance, the CEO’s have worked together, and the Directors of Finance have all worked together. Therefore there was great expectation that this previous cooperation would translate into successful cooperation around the portal.

“There was a good framework of knowledge and understanding of cooperative ventures; the portal arrived into this cooperative framework. If this framework was not there, then introducing the portal would have been a lot more difficult than it was. Inter-organizational trust would have had to have been established first.”

The project was started by the City of Guelph and was championed by the previous local MPP, Brenda Elliott, who was instrumental in getting the Wellington-Guelph portal off the ground. “True to form the Province didn’t make it easy. It could not just transfer resources to the community, it had to be a community-based effort,” said one interviewee. So Elliott said she would help lead the portal project out of her office and chaired the steering committee.

Partnership Representatives of the City also championed the Wellington-Guelph (WG) portal project with local stakeholders and they positioned it as something that was good for the entire region not just the City.

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Although the City of Guelph had well established working relationships with various public, private and civic groups across the region the portal project was frequently not able to leverage those relationships for the benefit of its development. Therefore, according to some interviewees, the portal relationships with such regional groups as the City of Waterloo, Wellington Community Futures, the CTT, the Guelph Economic Development Committee, and various Provincial Ministries have remained relatively immature.

Leading up to the launch in June, 2005, the portal partners exhibited a lot of enthusiasm and felt a strong sense of common purpose. According to the City of Guelph’s Mayor “Wellingtonguelph.ca is the kind of forward-thinking and innovative project that enhances our citizens’ lives and helps to make Guelph, and Wellington County, a great place to call home.” However, the launch was more of a milestone than a destination because much work remained to do. “There was the launch event, like the launching of boat, where you break a bottle of champagne, and then in most cases they haul the boat back up to finish the insides. Well we still have lots of the ‘insides’ to finish since launching.”

Post launch, however, the feeling of common purpose has dissipated somewhat and some stakeholders were beginning to second guess the City’s leadership. “The portal needs a new champion”, they said, “one that is independent of the City.” Several people felt that dependence on the City was too risky and would not allow the portal to remain a regional vehicle. One person pointed out that a new portal champion was needed one that could be independent of any of the municipal partners.

As the project evolved, there were many more partners than the original eight municipal ones defined, such as the University of Guelph and the school boards. For instance, a group that was connected to the Chamber was trying to recruit physicians to the area became involved with the portal believing that some of the online tools industry used to look for talent could also be used to recruit doctors over the portal. In the course of the portal’s evolution the team was able to develop a number of these functional relationships. As another illustration, the University of Guelph needed to recruit 1,000 new professors and so in collaboration with the portal group and the physician recruitment committee, they wanted to use the portal to look for professors married to doctors or nurses, in order to offer the community double value.

Although it was the governing body, the steering committee became increasingly involved in meetings that were focused on content and technical applications. Initial committee meetings tended to be very technical and not inclusive. One group felt there was little acknowledgement of the different technical backgrounds of the committee

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members, nor of the non-technical value they brought to the project. As meetings became monthly, due to the time constraints and the enormity of the project, some members felt that there was a lack of big picture discussions to guide the project. The group tended to focus on the fine details of implementation rather than aspects of vision, strategy, and alignment to existing or developing elements in the community. According to some, the need for greater collaboration throughout the process was not effectively addressed by the steering committee. “We were tasked but nothing more.”

A significant advantage for the Wellington-Guelph portal was the presence in the community of diverse talent and expertise, ranging from those at the University to auto manufacturers to agriculturalists and to advanced technology experts.

The Guelph Chamber of Commerce was described as being very active Chamber with approximately 2,000 members. It was also a very active participant in the WG portal. The CEO of the Chamber, for instance, was the Chair of Guelph’s Physician Recruitment Committee, so he had an overlapping interest with the PatientDr. Connect service being developed by the portal.

The civic and volunteer sectors played a pivotal role. For instance, the Volunteer Centre, a member of the portal steering committee, was very strong and active participant in the portal project. They helped provide insights into the grass roots needs of the community and contributed access to their community services directory. They have 500 organizational members and over 1,000 active volunteers. Their own website also had hits that were over 100,000 per month.

“Many Ontario Ministries are working on online projects in the Wellington-Guelph area and all with different partners. We don’t think these projects have been leveraged well to have the biggest impact on residents.” For example the Ministry of Citizenship purchased software for municipalities that would have been applicable to the portal but it was unknown to the portal team until much later. At the meeting of COPSC project teams in June 2005 someone spoke about the BizPal from Service Canada, a service which may have been useful to incorporate but by then it was too late. COPSC program staff had only just been informed themselves.

Therefore while there were other provincial and federal government players developing online tools in the region none, however, became connected with the portal project. The City dealt with many Provincial organizations in the course of delivering services to local residents but none of them seemed particularly interested in delivering their services online through the WG portal. “The Connect Ontario project has not brought [the community and the Province] together as much as it might have. MEDT has not let

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us know sufficiently what other ministries are doing or what available opportunities are.”

Once example pointed out by interviewees was BizPal, an online service developed with support from both Industry Canada and MGS that helps simplify business permitting and licensing for entrepreneurs, governments, and business service providers. The interviewees felt they learned much too late about BizPal84 to do much about it. In the end, the portal committee did see a presentation about BizPal but left unconvinced the value of BizPal to the local audience was worth the price of its ongoing maintenance costs.

As indicated earlier, a significant challenge at this stage of the portal’s development was in renewing the basis of the partnership. Many interviewees felt what was needed was a new articulation of the portal’s value proposition. Although the partners seemed comfortable with their partnership agreements, in some cases the partners had to be reminded of their contractual obligations to contribute to the project. Many of them were uncertain about where the portal was going from here and what their specific roles would be and so were becoming increasingly unwilling to contribute to its support.

One of the criticisms frequently cited by the interviewees was that since the portal took so long in its development (even now it is not very robust), most organizations could not wait and have developed their own sites. In this light, the idea of a single Internet portal for the region seemed to be off the table. Oddly though, while everyone wanted to keep their own sites no wanted to pull the plug on the Wellington-Guelph portal. Interestingly too, the development of the WG portal required that local municipalities upgrade their own websites to accommodate it. For instance, the Township of Centre Wellington has successfully developed a new website through their involvement with the WG portal activity.

Implementation The portal has three primary focuses: locating information and services; the presentation of local news and the posting of regional events.

84 As soon as COPSC became aware of BizPal, the project officer arranged a meeting between the project group and BizPal officials.

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An area where the community felt they had been quite successful was the online Directory85. The WG portal Directory pulls together the directories of the City of Guelph, the Guelph Chamber, and the Volunteer Centre. This has created good information value because it has reduced somewhat the information silos in the region. However, each of the contributing organizations retains ownership and control of their own data content and still separately maintains its own directory. Fortunately, the three have agreed on a common web master who was responsible for maintaining the information databases.

The WG portal makes very active use of local media through its partnership with the Guelph Tribune. Local news is a prominent feature of the portal’s home page and stories have been grouped according to the following topics: community, business, government, entertainment, health education and top stories. Local news was also available through portal searches.

The portal’s community calendar offers a good way of finding events in the region by location and by category of interest; although outside of the City of Guelph the content remains very limited at this time.

The progress of the project suffered from the loss of a project manager, which led to a degree of inconsistency with its project management. It was felt that the first project manager did not move the project forward properly. In addition the original project was not really a champion for the project but a hired consultant who as it turned out was not particularly effective at building and sustaining the partnership. The current project manager has worked hard to strengthen the partnerships across the region and to deliver the project on time.

There was a lot of debate over the course of the project around the relevance of providing some services -- particularly social services – online. Interviewees told us that “many of the people that would need those services don’t have Internet access, and so online delivery would be ineffectual. We would like to have social services, child care services, and social housing online. We could do lots of great things to provide location of childcare centres, subsidized housing, links to rental accommodations, etc. However, those types of human services tend to be for people who do not use the Internet regularly, and who are from low income and education groups.” As a consequence, the WG portal lists where to go for social services but does not attempt to deliver them online.

85 Note: due to technical limitations, all the businesses listed in the Directory do not appear in the list on the “browse by category” page. Only 193 businesses are listed; others must be searched on. This gives the impression that content is minimal when in fact it is not.

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Several interviewees felt that in going forward they needed to find a sufficiently independent structure for the portal that can represent everyone, “to present the project in the spirit of a true partnership and not as an extension of the City of Guelph.” The current portal manager has worked hard to encourage that perception of regional partnership and to discourage the perception that the City is running the show despite its provision of most of the funds to sustain it. He has, for instance, tried to avoid having committee meetings take place in City buildings.

So far, there seems to be little doubt the portal was leading the community from a technology perspective. The portal was using a more advanced level of technology than any of the existing municipal sites, yet it was not being fully utilized by those same municipal partners. This raises more questions regarding the commitment levels of the rural partners as they continue to spent time and money redesigning their own web sites and duplicating resources already available with the WG portal. the County and lower tier municipalities appeared to have mixed feelings about the costs and attendant benefits of the portal.

The web site has no real technical challenges at this point, and they have no plans to make any drastic technical moves, such as moving to an ASP model. The City houses the portal’s five interconnected web servers and has paid up rights (to 2007) for the various software applications for the portal. Some interviewees felt it might be better to have a private sector partner, rather than the City, to host the portal in order to provide the optics of autonomy. The City didn’t appear to be adverse to this. Its position was that it was hosting the portal by default and if someone else were to come forward with a more sustainable offer for hosting the site, then they would seriously consider it.

Marketing A marketing sub committee was set up to promote the launch of the portal and there was good reaction in the local media. Now the portal is in its operational phase and the portal team was putting together a budget for a marketing plan.

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The site needs to establish a Portal Traffic strategy to drive more traffic (see 80 figure below on portal traffic). There were no big ‘hooks’ to 70 y

a 60 attract the attention of residents to D r

e 50 p

use the site. The PatientDr. Connect s t service may change this when it is i 40 e H 30 launched86. Since June 2005 there ag er

v 20 have been only about 900 visitors A per month, and only 2-3 messages 10 0 t t v v g g g c n c generated from the feedback form p p c c o o u u u e a e e e Jul Jul O O Jun Jun J Jan N N A A A D S S D - 6- - - - 8- 4- 9- on the site. This stands in stark 20- 3- 7- 22- 12- 26- 18 23- 17- 31- 14 28 contrast to say the Volunteer 21 Centre 100,000 hits per month. Source: City of Guelph, January 2006

Another marketing point that was raised was the need to be able to offer more interactive services, such as online transactions, interactive forums, etc. Interactive GIS, course registration and online payment services have all been developed by the partners but they are only available on the partner’s website. More services on the portal would likely draw more people.

Sustainability The project was currently being supported entirely by the City of Guelph. The other municipal partners have been asked to contribute toward the costs but have so far contributed only in-kind resources. In 2005 the partners held a sustainability workshop to see how they might put the portal on more solid financial footing. However, the seven rural municipalities have felt threatened by the City’s lead so they have so far opted not to fulfill their obligations to continue contributing to the portal. This leaves the City in the position of deciding whether it needs to provide a regional portal that no one wants in addition to the robust municipal portal it already has. The portal team was scrambling to re-establish the commitment of the rural partners in the interim.

Several of the interviewees felt that even if the portal was sustainable in its present state without adding any new technical features, it may not be sustainable from the perspective of its capacity to respond to community pressures for expanded content. The idea of providing the portal services on a subscription basis has been entertained and a subscription service was set up to capture names of users, but with so little web

86 The PatientDr. Connect service was officially launched in February 2006, however, finding it on the site is difficult if you don’t know it’s there.

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traffic, they have a total of only 30 people on the subscription service since the portal was launched June 1, 2005.

The Chambers of Commerce for Wellington County and Guelph were asking for more services on the portal to bring additional value to their members: the hope was that perhaps this might help address some of the portal’s sustainability issues.

One of the key elements noted was that if a community is already cohesive, or has an existing collaborative group or organization, then it is easier to do this type of collaborative project using existing linkages and relationships of trust. Guelph had just such a group as outlined in the Assessment so it should have been successful with that logic. However, the effectiveness of the Consortium has been diminishing and according to one report it will be disbanded within a year. The cooperative spirit present at the outset of the project is clearly eroding.

PART C – ASSESSMENT

FOCUS In theory the portal made good sense at the proposal stage but in practice it became tough to manage and execute. Aligning theory and practice generally depends on how a project is visioned, championed, managed, and communicated. In WG’s case many of these elements were weak or misaligned. The consortium experience may have been a good framework for the participants to understand the collaborative process but with the ‘devil in the details’, many of the project’s proponents indicated it was insufficient to forge collaboration in practice.

The project was made possible because of the existing relationships among MUSH sector organizations in the region. The City already had a well developed municipal site, but it felt a need to create an information and online services source for the entire region. According to one interviewee, the City’s logic for involving the smaller rural communities was that rural communities felt threatened by the City, and providing the rural communities with a chance to shape their own online image was important. “Besides,” he said, “they didn’t have a lot to lose.”

Given the City’s resources, the County and the lower tiers were content to leave the development and its costs to the City. “It was easier for the communities to say no [to participating in the development], and tougher for them to say yes, because its implication was that it would mean more work for the municipalities.” Said another person, “The lower tiers are far more interested in transferring money to themselves

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than in participating in a shared cost program.” When asked about the imbalances that sometimes occurred between in-kind contributions and payments, one municipal representative responded “why else would we be involved in this?”

With weak commitment at the outset and minimal participation in the development phase of the portal, the County and lower tiers have little beyond basic content on the portal. It was not surprising, therefore, to see that the portal now reflects the City more than it does the other communities in the region.

Municipal vs broader community The structure of the portal does not favour municipal information and services over the broader community. On the whole it appears to be very balanced. The real imbalance comes from the degree of information and services available from the City as opposed to the County.

Economic development This was not an original focus of the portal. The portal does present links to a number of businesses and government agencies, although a more complete listing is available on the Guelph Chamber’s website. Links to the various municipal economic development groups are provided on the site but there is no sense of a regional economic development strategy. Guelph tends to be considered as an add-on to the CTT (Kitchener-Waterloo-Cambridge) or to Toronto.

Small business The portal’s Business Directory was ported over from the Chamber and although most area businesses were searchable on the portal, they were not immediately evident when browsing by business category. The added value of the portal directory over the Chamber directory is not evident.

The original concept of the portal proposed a lot of ideas for small business, for example a hotel registration system for hotels in the region, but the costing of them proved to be impossible to realize. “What was promised was lofty. The hotel registration system alone is $5 million, in terms of linkages. Perhaps the portals were trying to tell the Ministry what they wanted to hear to get the funding.”

Service delivery There were only two basic services available on the portal. A search tool for locating organizations by area of interest and/or location and a calendar tool to presents events in the region, although it could not accept input from users to add/modify event listings. Other services such as GIS, online payments, online course registration were

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available through individual municipalities but not directly through the portal. One promising exception was the PatientDr.-Connect service (see below).

Other The ‘PatientDr-Connect’ feature87 when completed will provide residents with a means to find better access to physicians and health information as well as provide a means of attracting new physicians to the region by generating waiting lists of potential patients. It might also be one of those user ‘hooks’ that can help drive traffic onto the site. More will be discussed about this in the developments section at the end.

Other services such as tourism applications, e-government tools such as webcasting or polling, or industry specific tools were not being developed.

CHALLENGES

The main challenge for the project was balancing the interests of the City, the needs of the County and lower tier municipalities, and the needs of residents. One person suggested that, “we should try to put the focus on community needs, rather than the tools and features we [in local government] would like to get onto the web site. [The end product] should be user driven rather than what we like.” The sense among many of the interviewees was that if there was greater commitment on the part of the municipal partners to serving the interests of residents there would have been greater collaboration and consensus on the direction of the project and people would have felt stronger ownership of the portal outcome. The project, they felt, had a “misguided focus” on municipal governments.

Another challenge was overcoming the perception by many partners that they might have to give something up in order to gain something through collaboration. “With their established websites it was hard to get [organizations] to give up what they had because it was part of their identity. The City already had a well established website, the Chamber was also well established, and so it was difficult to convince them that a regional portal would only improve their position? In Elgin, they were starting from scratch and so nothing was lost when they worked together.” In the end the portal team wasn’t able to persuade them to give anything up but was able, in some cases, to persuade them to participate in something larger.

Another issue that was identified was the lack of coordination with provincial initiatives. The portal team recognized the potential for the community if several

87 This feature was launched in February 2006 but is difficult to find on the site unless one knows it is there.

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Provincial online initiatives, such as BizPal and Service Ontario, could be integrated. However, there appeared to be little interest or appreciation by these agencies of local realities.

A technical source of frustration early on arose for one partner related to the submission of their information to the portal. For security reasons, access to the portal server was restricted to specific partner IP addresses. While most partners had static IP addresses, one partner - the Volunteer Centre - had a dynamic IP address that changed on a regular basis. The Centre’s webmaster therefore wasn’t able to connect to the portal remotely, and had to personally travel to City Hall to update their information (approximately 1 block away). This was eventually resolved when the City provided the Volunteer Centre with remote access via a Citrix account.

Another concern was the sharing of information and the fact the databases being used in the WG portal were not relational. Unlike Hamilton and Windsor both of whom used the Community Information Online Consortium (CIOC) platform where the community information databases are connected, WG used the database provided by the Chamber.

A more recent challenge has arisen subsequent to the June launch. A concern has arisen because it has been that it has become increasingly difficult to keep people onboard since the project was launched. The portal team believed this issue revolved around the need to define a new shared focus on what should come next. They said, “we need a new target, almost a separate launch to get people to finish the portal.” It raised the question of whether they should have launched the portal when it was so incomplete. This has also contributed to concerns about insufficient marketing (there’s not much to get excited about as yet) and uncertainty about whether the portal will be sustainable in the short term let alone long term.

Finally, there were change management issues within individual organizations. For example, there was a concern that the technology would eliminate some jobs. “How can we enlist staff support to a project that may make their jobs redundant?” The feeling was that these types of issues needed to be discussed with employees in advance to encourage their support. As indicated in all other COPSC projects, the application of technology only helped eliminate routine tasks making more time available for staff to do more creative and value adding tasks for clients and citizens. A more effective system of knowledge transfer from project to project might have helped in this regard.

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NEW OPPORTUNITIES THAT EMERGED

See explanations related to PatientDr. Connect service.

SUSTAINABILITY

The project is currently supported entirely by the City of Guelph. The other municipal partners have been asked to contribute toward the costs of the upkeep of the portal and to this end the partners attended a sustainability workshop in Toronto in 2005. However, the seven lower tier municipalities have felt intimidated by the City’s lead and so in response they opted not to fulfill their obligations as yet and contribute to the portal’s maintenance.

Another challenge was in the group discovering the value proposition, for the existing membership to see the value down the road and be prepared to provide sustainability, or to help canvas the local community. Rather than just give the motherhood statements, they would like to be able to really explain why it is worthwhile, first by discovering it.

Another main concern was that the portal may not meet the community’s needs and therefore may not be generally adopted. We were told functionality and pure practical benefit were the key marketing tools, as apposed to advertising glitz. It was suggested for example, that the ATM’s of 20 years ago met a certain need. While ATMs had adoption issues, those issues were ultimately overcome by the convenience and functionality they offered. “So until the portal can find the equivalent benefit, it will be tough to make it sustainable in the long term.”

Short term In the short term, the WG portal group has purchased and paid for the software until 2007. The required equipment was all purchased. The costs that remain are the human ones – partner management, data and content maintenance, and marketing. A 2006 portal budget has been finalized; however, funding for it has not been fully secured. To date only two of the eight partners have contributed. The City has prodded the remaining partners to contribute, but their uncertainty about the value of the portal to them or their fears of the City meant they were still wavering in their support calling into question not only any long term sustainability but also short term as well.

Long term

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Some suggestions have been made to try and secure RED funding but with the lower tiers really only looking for ways to transfer dollars to the local municipalities, the commitments for in-kind and sustainability do not seem realistic.

The long-term sustainability picture therefore for WG is very uncertain, but since the project has been municipally driven and supported by the City of Guelph, it is currently OK financially.

There also appears to be growing pains around the roles and responsibilities. Who will be the new ”champion”? Who will be responsible for data quality control? The City has stepped back somewhat because their predominance at this stage is discouraging the other municipal players. “That is why five of the seven rural municipalities are not embracing it,” said one informant. They feel the portal would have more of a chance for sustainability if someone else took the lead. However, none of the rural municipalities wants the City to stop contributing financially.

Related to the issues around sustainability is the issue of coordination. “It is going to be an issue, as there are eight municipal players, the Chambers, etc., all doing their own thing in their own way… so coordination will be an important challenge when there are a million other things happening.”

GOOD PRACTICES

• The PatientDr. Connect service looks like a promising new tool to help deal with the need for residents to have access to physicians so as to reduce wait times and critical care.

LESSONS LEARNED

The lessons learned by the project • A portal has the “potential to be a regional enabler.” It is tool that can be very useful in facilitating a regional perspective and enabling more effective action based on more available and comprehensive local information. • The territory issue among municipal partners must be better addressed. The lead partner is critical to this process and to solicit better cooperation must be seen as non-aligned with any municipal partner. • A longer-term provincial commitment would have been beneficial; not in terms of more funds but in terms of an extended time frame to implement and adopt the portal along with a better capacity to share best practices to avoid problems. They felt the application for funds should include selection criteria with suggestions for

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more targeted implementation processes. Ongoing discussions and mentoring throughout the project would have helped to avoid pitfalls88.

The lessons learned by Invenire • While the Wellington County Public Sector Consortium was in place at the outset and provided a framework for collaboration among senior managers in the region’s MUSH sector the project lacked a champion (or neutral broker) that was credible and acceptable among competing municipal partners. WG’s experience underscores the importance of selecting the ‘right’ kind of champion. As in chemistry when a catalyst is introduced, it induces a reaction among other chemicals but does not itself take place in the reaction. The project leadership was initially too closely aligned with the City and ineffectual at building and sustaining the partnership and so contributed to the suspicions of the rural communities. • The project required someone who could help meet “the needs of all stakeholders” and could speak on behalf of the entire team89. In WG’s case the perception of the rural communities was that the project was too closely driven by the City of Guelph, and has led to five of the seven rural municipalities opting out. • Wellington-Guelph case was interesting from the perspective that it had so much going for it at the outset but failed to sustain the partnership or achieve as much as other smaller less sophisticated centres. They had a well developed infrastructure. They certainly had lots of local talent. The interviewees were some of the most talented people we spoke to in all the various portal projects. They understood the idea of collaboration. They had a clear vision of why the portal was being developed. They understood the issues of the community; the need for sustainability, and the need for a clear value proposition to assure adoption. They had a well resourced partner willing to see the project through. What they appeared to lack, at least initially, was the neutral broker, the connector, who could bring all the partners together, manage their conflicts and allow each partner to contribute and benefit maximally.

GAP ASSESSMENT

• There was a significant disconnect between the vision of the portal outlined in the business plan, and the reality of what was possible to accomplish within the project’s constraints of time and resources, especially given the ‘lukewarm’ commitment of its partners.

88 The project officer spent a significant amount of time helping this project group. 89 The Niagara experience provided a similar partnership challenge but their choice of neutral broker made their project much more manageable.

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• There are strong indications at this time that the portal will not be sustainable beyond the two year commitment past its launch date.

NEW TECHNOLOGY DIRECTIONS

• The physician recruitment feature (PatientDr. Connect) may be of value in other community portals. The portal was seen as helping physician recruitment from three broad perspectives: − it would help get the word out to physicians through online means (physicians are notoriously inundated with paper offers and promotions) − It would allows them to see the community in a more comprehensive perspective, and − Physicians could collect the names of potential patients, so they have an instant practice. A physician could select only those patients they wanted (rightly or wrongly).

The patient application process had two purposes: first it prevented the physician from being swamped with patients, and second it reduced the risk to new physicians ensuring that they would indeed get patients.

• The portal is also considering adding a virtual waiting room where patients could log in and schedule an appointment time with a physician. The value being that they can choose convenient times for them without a lot of back and forth delay. The risk for the physician was losing control of bookings. However, in reality it would give them greater control as they could block out certain times to prevent overbooking. Another advantage was that people could print up their own appointment card and the system would initiate automatic patient reminder notices through emails, reducing the staff requirement for appointment reminders. It would also eliminate the response complaint, “I tried phoning three times and couldn’t get an answer.” People can also book after hours.

RECOMMENDATIONS BY THE PROJECT FOR FUTURE CONSIDERATION

• Residents think government is all one. “People just want to get the service and don’t want to know where it comes from.” We can see the need for cross-jurisdictional access. A consumer will just want to find the information. It becomes a challenge if they need to know which branch of government is providing which service. Therefore the community would like to see more front-end / back-end integration with the Province.

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11. WINDSOR-ESSEX PROJECT TITLE: CONNECTING WINDSOR-ESSEX™ (FORMERLY WECONNECT)

URL: http://www.windsor-essex.info Launch Date: February 10, 2004 Completion Date: May 31, 2004

PART A -- THE LOGIC MODEL

COMMUNITY PROFILE • The region includes the City of Windsor and the towns and townships in the County of Essex. It comprises 1,851.6sq. km. with a population of 374,975 and a population density of 202.5 persons per/ sq. km. • The region has a mix of local government with the City as a Tier 1 municipality with roughly 200,000 people and the County with about 175,000 people. There is limited interaction between the City and the County. • The area is located across the river from the major automotive firms of Detroit which play the dominant role in the region’s economy and underscore the importance of cross border issues. Detroit tends to be more economically and culturally significant to Windsor than Toronto. • Over the past decade in the region, leadership of a public sector collaboration called WEDnet™ is building broadband connectivity in the region, assisted through many initiatives including TAPP. • Household Internet use in the region was up from 47.5% in 2000 to 65.9% in 2003. • The importance of technology in the community seemed to be well recognized as illustrated by the efforts of Ford and the CAW to foster technology access in the community. • The administration and project management of selected technology based community projects were conducted with support from the University of Windsor, through its WEDnet™ activities. The University was well suited to the need for the type of project by project accountability required by Connect Ontario. • The Centre for Smart Community Innovation at the University of Windsor now houses WEDnet™, which is an important contributor of knowledge resources and leadership to projects in ways unavailable to most other COPSC projects.

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Demographics

Project: Connect Windsor Essex Employment All Industry sectors (2001) 192,500.0 Manufacturing 45,230.0 Project area coverage (sq km) 1,851.6 Retail 16,945.0 Health 14,415.0 Population (2001) 374,975 Accommodation & food services 12,715.0 Education 9,295.0 Construction 7,500.0 Population density (# /sq km) 202.5 Other services 6,690.0 Arts, entertainment and recreatio 6,660.0 Regional GDP (millions) 11,508.0 Professional, scientific & technic 6,490.0 Transportation and warehousing 5,990.0 Regional GDP per Capita ? Administrative, support, etc. 5,630.0 Public administration 4,975.0 Demography Wholesale 4,125.0 Median Age 36.0 Finance 3,850.0 Average household size 2.6 Agriculture, forestry, fishing and h 2,675.0 % Youth (< 25) 33.6 Real estate and rental and leasin 2,050.0 % students (5-14 + fulltime 15+) 22.9 Information and cultural industries 1,770.0 % Seniors (65+) 12.6 Utilities 935.0 Mining and oil and gas extraction 380.0 % visible minorities 11.3 Management of companies 100.0 % Aboriginal 1.2 % Immigrants (since 1991) 8.6 Internet Access (2003) % English 72.8 % Home 57.3 % French 3.8 % Business 31.0 % Non Eng or FR 23.0 % School 25.3 % w/ degrees/diplomas (20-64) 37.4 Overall 65.9 Average earnings 36578 Type (dial-up, wireless, cable, DS All Labourforce (2005) 192,500.0 # public internet access sites ? Participation rate (2005) 66.2 Employment rate (2005) 62.3 Eco-dev Unemployment rate (2005) 5.9 Local Venture capital ? Median Income 25,169.0 Destination Trips by Canadians (21,067,000.0 % from Earnings 79.9 Service Ontario Govt Info Centre % from Transfers 9.8 #1.0 % low income 13.2 Distance to nearest OSC - Kiosks 1.0 # Firms ? LEs (> 500 empl) Access to # 28.0 Airports # employees ? International 4.0 Revenue ? Local 1.0 % of GDP ? Distance to nearest in 0.0 Local Flights per mon 3,317.0 SMEs (< 500 emp) Health Hospitals ? #? Distance to nearest ho ? # employees ? Primary Medical care ? ratio of Small bus employment to ? Courts 1.0 Self employment ? Distance to nearest court - Colleges 1.0 Colleges w/in communting distan 1.0 University 1.0 Universities w/in communting dis 3.0 Invenire4 Ltd., Ottawa, Ontario 279 COPSC Cases Windsor-Essex

Geo-spatial The City of Windsor and County of Essex. It is located west of Chatham-Kent and south of Sarnia-Lambton and across the river from Detroit. The region of Windsor-Essex comprises 1,851.6sq. km. with an overall population of 374,975 with a population density is 202.5 persons per/ sq. km. The region has a mix of local government. The City of Windsor is an independent Tier 1 municipality with roughly 200,000 people. Adjacent to the City are a number of small towns and townships as well the County of Essex comprising about 175,000 people. While these smaller municipalities interact with the County dividing local and regional responsibilities, there is limited interaction between the City and the County.

Economic profile Over 4.5 million Americans live within a one hour drive. Long considered to be one of North America’s largest centres for automotive manufacturing, it is also a centre for Ontario’s agricultural and agri-food industries. It’s proximity to the USA has made it a focal point for cross border trade (about $400 million per day) and tourism, which attracts over 9 million people annually (over 80% of whom come from the USA) and over $800 million annually in revenues.

One of Windsor’s major challenges is to diversify its economy which is highly dependent on the auto industry. While Chrysler has made recent investments into the region, especially a technology research centre, recent downsizing by GM and Ford and their continuing precariousness has exposed just how vulnerable the community is to a single industry. There is also a degree of vulnerability with respect to cross border traffic.

Technology profile Basic infrastructure connectivity Due to the work of WEDnet™, now a component of the Centre for Smart Community Innovation, much of the public sector within the region has broadband access to the Internet. However, individuals and business within the region may not. It was estimated by one interviewee that 75% of the region (the City and some rural areas) has broadband access. A report from 2003, completed by Pacomm Consulting, Inc., in consultation with the Government of Ontario, described that high speed Internet connectivity in the Windsor area as being upwards of 97%. Later reviews, by the Regional Networks for Ontario criticized the methodology used in the Pacomm Report, suggesting that “simply accepting without verifying the word of telecom suppliers”, significantly overstated the actual level of high speed access in the Province. It was suggest the approach taken by the telco’s in reporting inflated values would boast their business case, while at the same time slowing community roll-out of broadband

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services. It seems to have accomplished just that, with the resulting consequence that many rural areas and some urban dead-zones, remain without true high-speed access.

Internet penetration rate Statistics Canada reported that household Internet use is up from 47.5% in 2000 to 65.9% in 2003.

User / business sophistication The sophistication of local users and business with regard to their use of the Internet and technology applications is considered moderate to good.

Social capital profile Private-public-civic interaction The region, in part as a result of the activities of WEDnet™, has had a very good relationship among its public sector organizations and the major not-for-profits, such as the United Way, and other human services organizations. However, the relationship with small business is less close.

Cross-linkages between organizations Although it is only the infrastructure component in a smart community model, WEDnet™ has become a foundation for an effective model of cooperation for the region’s public sector organizations for over a decade.

Aside from WEDnet™, the Essex Community Futures Development Corporation has become a crucial regional connector/facilitator for small business, the Chambers, the BIAs, and local economic development groups. The ECFDC is an important participant in CWE.

Local representatives of the Provincial government from various ministries have participated in the Smart Community committee structure, but that participation has been relatively passive. So unlike the catalyzing influence of the OMAFRA rep in Oxford, the ministry reps in Windsor-Essex have provided advisory insights only. With regards to the MEDT representatives, their presence appears to have been predominantly in a reporting capacity. According to interviewees, there was little evidence that the information and/or request passed through these representatives during the implementation period was ever acted upon.

Dominant player & relation to others The dominant player is the municipal sector, including the City of Windsor, and the County of Essex, but it is more or less balanced by the collective influence of the lower

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tier municipalities and other MUSH sector partners. The current trend is for the partners to embrace more of a regional perspective on issues, such as economic development, that go beyond the ability of single organizations to deal with them.

Role of champion There are several champions in this project including the University of Windsor, the County of Essex, the City of Windsor, the Smart Community Board, but most especially the staff within the Centre for Smart Community Innovation at the University of Windsor which also provided the project management and ongoing portal administration. The role of the latter, endowed with the neutral status of an academic institution, has also included partner management and brokering – building and sustaining the cooperation among the diverse stakeholders.

Culture/values There has been strong buy-in from the community to use computers and the Internet. Ford for instance, used to have a program to give computers to its employees. The Canadian Auto Workers were also locally involved in a program to see that children had better access to computers through Computers for Schools or by helping to create public computer access centres.

Windsor-Essex is the fourth most culturally diverse region in Ontario.

Generally the local Chambers of Commerce were small, social organizations. The Windsor Chamber was the obvious exception. Previously, there had existed a gap between the rural and urban Chambers, but it is one in which the Smart Community activities have been working towards bridging better.

Maturity profile • Market demand had been building for almost a decade as the basic technology infrastructure was being constructed by WEDnet™ participants. • Supplier market for technology providers and software applications was quite competitive. There was a lot of choice, which is why researching the solutions are important in selection, purchase and deployment.

Needs assessment Stimulate economic development • Need to offset vendor reluctance to invest in the region’s ICT infrastructure due the downturn in the telecom industry • Need to better coordinate the City, the municipalities, the County and other public sectors actors and develop a common vision of a healthy, sustainable, community

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• Need to be able to provide more and better quality information to potential visitors to the region

Social service delivery • Need to provide a reliable and accurate referencing system (especially addressing information) for rural municipalities (Note: This need was addressed, in part through activities which were funded through the GeoSmart program, after the Connect Ontario and GeoSmart were divided.) • Need for a centralized site in which public sector providers can communicate with each other and with their clients • Need to able to apply for permits and receive zoning information online (Note: This need was addressed, in part through activities which were funded through the GeoSmart program, after the Connect Ontario and GeoSmart were divided.) • Need for a more consolidated approach to service delivery • Need to provide services and information 24X7 in a community reliant on shift work

Municipal efficiencies • Need to ensure that public good and public sector interests are considered as the area’s ICT infrastructures are deployed • Need to provide online transactional services • Need to streamline communication infrastructures among local governments, libraries and other community organizations • Need to reduce the time required by citizens to identify and locate services in the region. • Need to more effectively engage citizens in local decision-making • Need to for more reduce the duplication (eg. Street names) caused by the recent amalgamation Note: This need was addressed, in part through activities which were funded through the GeoSmart program, after the Connect Ontario and GeoSmart were divided.)

Strengthen sense of community & regional heritage • Need to provide a central source of region-wide information • Need to bridge the digital divide, level the plying field and improve ICT literacy among local citizens • Need to ensure participant’s privacy and security

Assumptions • An improved ICT infrastructure and applications are necessary for the municipalities to remain competitive. • Internet applications increase opportunities for connectivity within communities • A portal builds greater social cohesion and improves information dissemination.

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• Migrating some municipal service delivery to electronic transactional service delivery over the Internet will permit greater efficiencies at the local level. • The Connect Ontario project will increase the awareness and marketability of Windsor-Essex as a place to do business.

PROJECT PROFILE90

Partners Lead Organization: The County of Essex

Other Partners:

Public Partners The Corporation of the City of Windsor Hotel Dieu Grace Hospital The Corporation of the County of Essex Leamington District Memorial Hospital The Corporation of the Municipality of Windsor Regional Cancer Centre Leamington The Corporation of the Town of Windsor Regional Hospital Amherstburg The Corporation of the Town of Essex Windsor-Essex County Health Unit The Corporation of the Town of Kingsville Greater Essex County District School Board The Corporation of the Town of Conseil Scolaire des Ecoles Catholiques Sud-Ouest Lakeshore The Corporation of the Town of LaSalle Windsor-Essex Catholic District School Board The Corporation of the Town of Tecumseh College Boreal The Corporation of the Township of Pelee St. Clair College Essex County Library University of Windsor Windsor Public Library The Windsor and District Chamber of Commerce United Way of Windsor and Essex County Windsor-Essex Tourist C.V. Bureau Essex CFDC Information Windsor Windsor-Essex Development Commission South Essex Community Centre Private Partners Cisco Systems Applied Computer Solutions Metasecure MaXess Networx™, a division of Enwin Utilities IBM Canada Essex Power Corporation Viviale

90 The Connecting Windsor-Essex™ project made an application for funding but because of its well-developed infrastructure and community strategy it did not go through the Business Plan step of other COPSC projects.

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The governance of the project was facilitated through a lead partner (the County of Essex) in cooperation with the 11 member WEDnet™ Board of Directors. The CWE Project Officer reported to an Executive Director who then reported to the Board.

The Windsor and Essex County Smart Community was an affiliation of public and private sector partners who had agreed to cooperate on more than simply regional technology and infrastructure issues. It was a joint venture with contractual obligations. The partners had signed participation agreements to govern and support Connecting Windsor-Essex™ as a Smart Community. The participants cooperate on projects of interest to them, which means that not all are involved on each and every project. To facilitate, the University of Windsor provides administrative support through the Centre for Smart Community Innovation (CSCI). In this context the University of Windsor’s CSCI is also providing the administrative support for Connecting Windsor- Essex™. The project’s support staff, including the Executive Director and the Research and Development Officer, were employed through the University of Windsor, with the overall direction of the Smart Community provided by a Board.

Investment (direct and in-direct)

Total Project Cost: $2,797,125

Provincial Funding: $1,000,000 Leverage: 2.8

Partner Funding: $1,797,125 Direct: $1,047,040 In-kind: $750,085

Information & Services to be provided Connecting Windsor-Essex™ (CWE) focused on three key deliverables, as it related to this investment: the Community Connector (the community portal with geospatial capabilities; e-government services; and enhancing the information architecture in the rural environment. The project was led by the Corporation of the County of Essex and implementation and management was provided by the Centre for Smart Community Innovation. The portal promised to provide the following content and services:

Municipal Services X Agriculture Services Municipal Information X Agriculture Information X Business Services X Youth Services X Business Information X Youth Information X Children’s Services Senior Services Children’s Information X Senior Information X Small Business Services X Employment Services

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Small Business Information X Employment Information X Health Services Recreation Services X Health Information X Recreation Information X Education Services Library Services X Education Information X Library Information X Cultural Directory X Community Services Cultural Events X Community Information X Tourism information X Gateway to Provincial Services X Virtual Tours X Gateway to Provincial Information X Gateway to Federal Services X Gateway to News providers X Gateway to Federal Information X

The Portal contained two levels of content detail. One relative to general and publicly accessible content and the other to content available to a registered user’s secured PKI access. The above listing refers only to the public access view.

Applications to be provided The Connect Windsor-Essex applications would provide interactive/seamless tools with which to conduct business, deliver e-government, enhance social service delivery, and encourage citizens to use the Internet. Among those applications were:

Prior Proposed via COPSC91 Distributed websites for partner institutions Gateway Portal (The Connecting Windsor- without a coherent navigation through them Essex™ Smart Community Portal) Information Windsor - information on health Secure PKI online space with Identity and human services and programs, as well as Management non-profit and government organizations available in printed format Online Licensing Requests Online Parking Ticket Payment Online Parks and Rec Registration Secure, online Collaboration Tools (The Community Connector) Information Windsor - Online access to information on health and human services and programs, as well as non-profit and government organizations

91 The Directory and Service Locator, the Tourist Routing & the EMS Routing were applications included in the original proposal but were moved to a GeoSmart

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ACHIEVEMENTS Outputs

Completed/ incomplete Connecting Windsor Essex™ has completed all its targeted applications with respect to Connect Ontario, and has been adding new services as well. There has been a substantial investment in the principles and policy aspects of secure user based registration and authentication, voice over movie playback for education of users, collaborative space support documentation, and basic information provisioning using web-based form submissions to prevent against email address scraping, had a simpler, less secure solution been deployed. The intent and priority was to ensure that new applications be implemented on top of a robust underlying support and services platform, in addition to addressing aspects of concurrent user load for one or more applications.

Connecting Windsor Essex™ is the only Connect Ontario project to make use of a PKI enabled identity management system to assist in minimizing online security and privacy risks for participants, and the first community portal to make use of IBM’s WebSphere intranet technology, the same being used for the development of the Ontario Government Portal.

The original proposal included a plan to develop webcasting for use in citizen engagement and e-government, and while the capacity to do webcasting is present with CWE, it is not frequently used due to its load balancing demands on the two server groups and the lack of a dedicated video server within the portal infrastructure.

Next phase • French translation and French language content • Continued work with provincial and federal government on inter-jurisdictional portal projects • Creation of immigration sub-portal • Outreach and education to community groups and small businesses • More extensive marketing effort to residents and local corporations • More involvement in the direction of the portal by not-for-profit and human services organizations

Outcomes • Awareness of some of the more fundamental aspects of a user experience as it relates to known identity access requirements, where many organizations may have used less robust (and less secure) processes prior to the existence of the portal.

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• Integration of a distributed model for portal delivery and support, among organizations that in many ways have been relatively autonomous in their web- services delivery model.

Impacts • The development of a new regional perspective on economic development and a new Windsor-Essex Economic development council that involves all the regional municipal players.

Indications of ROI • The City noted that the direct benefit of its participation in Connecting Windsor- Essex™ was a contribution of $326,800 towards upgrading electronic services and networks. Additional indirect benefits associated with the WEDnet™ partnership that oversees Connecting Windsor-Essex™ have included a reduction in the City’s connectivity costs. Utilizing the WEDnet™ network these connectivity fees have been reduced to $59,190, which allowed the City to realize a savings of $192,810 annually. After WEDnet member fees the total positive benefit of the partnership to the City in 2005 was $161,465.

PART B – The WINDSOR-ESSEX STORY

The story of Connect Windsor-Essex (CWE) begins with the Windsor-Essex Development Network or WEDnet™. WEDnet™ was formed in November 1994 by the University of Windsor, in partnership with St. Clair College, the hospitals and the cancer centre in the region, and the Windsor and Essex County school boards for the specific purpose of developing a high-speed communications infrastructure for the area.

In July 1996, WEDnet™ received funding from CANARIE to connect a high-speed wide area network that involved both AT&T Canada and SHAW Cable (now COGECO Cable Solutions in the area). These providers support long-haul and local loop unmanaged access services to their infrastructure, respectively. In March 1997, WEDnet™ received TAP funding to expand its services beyond the Windsor-Essex Community to implement a shared regional and community network, involving partners from the education, health care, municipal and industrial sectors, both public and private, to improve access to advanced applications across a major portion of southwestern Ontario. WEDnet™ is currently facilitating an optical network connection to ORION, which as the Provincial ORAN, connects the local organizations to CANARIE and other research networks.

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WEDnet™ has proven to be an effective method for leveraging resources for the region. For example, according to a report made to Windsor City Council92, since 1996 the WEDnet™ consortium has secured in excess of $ 6.2 million in grant funding for the public sector in the region which has resulted in $2.4 million in direct benefits to the City or roughly a 3:1 ratio of annual benefit to annual cost of membership for the City.

The Connecting Windsor-Essex™ initiative that was launched on February 10, 2004 has been a milestone for the community towards electronically enabling the City of Windsor and the County of Essex. WEDnet™ is now part of the Centre for Smart Community Innovation at the University of Windsor, which is positioning itself to understand better the innovative aspects of technology deployment in communities and in Windsor and Essex County in particular, as part of its smart community focus.

WEDnet™ has been a unique collaboration of largely public sector stakeholders who were bound together through a common interest in technology issues in a series of mutual covenants. It was not a formal corporation, a not-for-profit organization or an equitable joint venture partnership. Members paid annual member fees and each had authority within the consortium. Among the many initiatives WEDnet™ has undertaken, the lead and active participants have shifted from project to project in order to be able to flexibly respond to the opportunities that came their way. Therefore, the lead on any initiative may change (like Essex County in Connect Ontario) but there was continuity through the University’s administration of the projects. The University of Windsor acted like the managing partner by providing administrative support throughout. This fact has helped reduce the overall administrative burden on the community as the University was ideally suited for managing multiple, independent projects, unlike municipalities that manage by lines of business.

The governance has focused significantly on keeping people informed and onside. Members were free to participate in any project they chose, but their choices as organizations could result in problems for the community if they were not fully informed of everything going on. Managing those relationships was crucial. For example, an IT manager under pressure to cut costs may have chosen to trim his budget in areas where the demands of a collaborative initiative would require increasing it. Keeping senior managers informed via the Smart Community permitted a CIO, and an IT manager to avoid cutting costs without penalty.

92 City of Windsor Corporate Services , Information Technology. “Report to Mayor and Members of City Council re: WEDnet™ membership”, August 17, 2005

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WEDnet™’s core business initially was around building infrastructure in the region. Now that that infrastructure is largely in place, its activities have come under the larger umbrella of a smart community focussed initiative. The focus is now more on what to do with the infrastructure and how best to use it to serve the interests of the community. This is what prompted an evolution of its administrative arm into the Centre for Smart Community Innovation. Recognizing the public institutions alone are not the entire community recent efforts have been towards bringing the activities of WEDnet™ closer to where people and to involve a wider cross section of community stakeholders. “The next phase is to ensure that more of the private sector is involved,” said one interviewee. “But that’s easier said than done. This is a public funded entity, so to what degree can you allow privatization? We don’t know yet.”

“One of the things we tried to address early on is where we would fit on the continuum of what is meant by a community portal. At one end a portal may just be simply a web page with a variety of links to other web pages. It may include news and information of interest to the community. It may also include interactive tools like chat and file exchanges like those on MSN. It may include applications for conducting secure transactions like e-commerce or registration. Finally, the entire space may be secure, an umbrella under which all exchanges can be conducted securely and with each participant endowed with only specific access rights that limit their access to information or their ability to transact in that space. We chose to build a portal with both a secure space and a public space.”

Before Connect Ontario, there were a couple of private companies that tried to start their own community portals but they were not successful. They were not able to encourage sufficient take-up among residents because they lacked sufficient content. They lacked sufficient content because they tried to provide all the content themselves. Having many people develop content, therefore, became important to CWE.

The partnership and collaboration required for the portal project drove a better appreciation among the region’s political leaders of the ‘digital divide’ that existed between urban and rural areas of the region. It wasn’t that the more urban municipalities were unaware of the rural needs, but more that the local municipalities and politicians hadn’t got their minds around the significance of technology for their communities. They were more focused on potholes than servers. Technology was not a priority item for the majority of them. Some municipalities had no connectivity themselves and operated solely on stand-alone PCs. “Now we have servers that service every municipality by means of a shared infrastructure that cuts down the costs and improves the speed of access.”

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Because WEDnet™ had been developing the infrastructure connectivity for many years, there had been a lot of pent up desire to begin making use of that enhanced capacity through applications that could better serve the community. Today, municipalities all have their own websites, publish their agendas and minutes, and regularly connect to their citizens through email and, in some instances to each other via the Portal’s secure space. This increased transparency has led to public decisions being more closely scrutinized but politicians feel and an increased sense that they are closer to the citizens and therefore more able to respond to their needs. Interestingly, the fact there is a portal for the region has not deterred each municipality from developing its own website. The CWE portal has in fact encouraged them.

The experience of working together on the portal has sown the seeds of cooperation in other areas of local government interaction, particularly in economic development. In this region there were three groups of local government. First, there were the seven lower tier municipalities ranging in size from 19,000 to 28,000 people. Then, there was the County of Essex, which had responsibilities for delivering certain regional services to the lower tiers. Lastly there is the City of Windsor which is a totally independent Tier I municipality that has no direct relation to the County or any of the other municipalities. In cooperating on the Portal, all these municipalities have begun to appreciate the area as a single economic region -- one in which their community is also seen as being interdependent with all the others. In effect, “what’s good for one is good for all.”

The opposite is also true as the uncertainties in the automotive sector have underscored. The troubles at GM, Ford and Delphi have sensitized both the public sector and the region’s politicians to the need to diversify the economy, to make it more innovative and knowledge-based, and to move the region’s economy beyond just surviving to excelling globally. The confidence from the portal experience that cooperation can indeed work and the awareness that they all sink or swim together has culminated in the creation of a new Windsor-Essex Economic Development Council which, will develop and implement economic development strategies for the region.

“One of the biggest surprises since the Portal was launched was just how insatiable the appetite for e-information, collaboration and innovation is among key stakeholders. They [the municipalities] now seem to express a degree of friendly competition to see who can demonstrate the best use of technology.” The biggest constraint appeared to be financial which was due to the lack of political buy-in in some quarters and which was tempering the speed at which they were moving forward. “The politicians need to see the benefits to them.”

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Implementation One cornerstone of the CWE portal has been its use of PKI to ensure that the interactions of registered users are safe and secure, but this aspect is as much for the risk management of the providers and owners of the Portal, as it is for the users. Registration on the portal was certificate based and PIPEDA compliant. Although registration was free, it was somewhat time consuming (approx. 1/2 hour), requiring the user’s legal name, and for strong authentication and registration principles to apply, the need to present some formal identification to complete the registration process is required. A digital certificate needs to be created and installed on each machine the user will access the Portal resources from. In some cases, this could lead to the inconvenience of re-registration if the machine crashed and the user had not safely stored their certificates elsewhere.

In the secure collaboration space, control over security was given to the participating organization. The organization could even remove the portal administrator from access. This has meant that primary responsibility for managing content and compliance with Portal policy rested with each participating community organization (those using the Portal space) rather than with the central Portal administration.

Due to the limited COPSC budget, additional funding was also sought from Industry Canada for this Identity Management System. A successful application through the Knowledge Based Economy Fund program from Industry Canada provided the additional funding necessary to develop the toolset to meet the Identity Management needs of the Portal.

Rural municipalities received significant enhancements to their connectivity levels. All main municipal offices received edge gear capable of receiving optical network carrier interfaces. With the exceptions of the Towns of Essex, Kingsville and Lakeshore (which upgraded to 10MB per sec capacity) the rural communities received an upgrade to a level of 100MB per second connectivity. The only issue that prevented all municipalities from having the same 100MB fibre-based connections was the need for policies or incentives to encourage the private service providers to work collaboratively to achieve ubiquitous service levels. According to the interviewees, the funding available through Connect Ontario was insufficient to obtain the necessary equity given the existing climate of telecommunication provider infrastructure.

A significant amount of time (over one year) was spent in developing the policies necessary to manage the e-space. This work included defining partner roles and responsibilities, acceptable use policies, and privacy policies. The site has also met several basic portal standards. It passed the tests to meet the minimum standards for

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use by government; its classification system was designed to align with government; and it relies on public standards such as XML, IMS metadata, RSS, SOAP and LDAP.

As a final comment, while the uptake in the use of the e-commerce for the payment of parking tickets, parks and recreation registration, and online licensing and permitting was good with the City of Windsor, it has been slower with the lower tier municipalities which did not implement these systems at the same time.

Administration One of the administrative difficulties experienced by the Smart Community was the lack of responsiveness among many of the region’s public sector managers, many of whom were busy doing their regular jobs and regarded reporting for the project as ‘extra’. One lever to promote increased participation has been the introduction of discounted pricing on Blackberry hand-held devices and aggressive pricing plans by TELUS. Within two weeks of announcing the Blackberry discount, most of the backlog of outstanding paperwork and administrative reporting had been eliminated.

One interviewee said they would like to see more regular feedback from the Portal that tracked the number of hits, the number of registered users, the number of contributing and supportive partners, their in-kind contributions and especially the time (and value) contributed by the management team. It was suggested that this would improve not only the transparency among the partners, but more importantly, it would provide needed data to support new funding applications.

The goal of the Portal has been to become viewed as the “one official source for all community information that people should go to.” The corollary of this is that the Portal and its partners must be continually vigilant to ensure that the information provided over the portal is current and up-to-date. “As soon as the information becomes dated you lose your credibility.” As a case in point, (although not related to the Portal or Connect Ontario project) one municipality wasn’t keeping up to date its database of street addresses as new subdivisions were being built. When a fire occurred in one of them, the firefighters, who are all now directed by GIS information, couldn’t find the location. The municipality learned the hard way of their responsibility and liability for maintaining such information once the decision was made to rely on it.

Community engagement The Connect Ontario project has demonstrated that communities can work together cooperatively and that positive relationships can develop among people who do not normally interact. But many organizations were ‘contingent co-operators’, that is they were willing to cooperate as long as others did as well. One person indicated they

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would not have taken on the leadership of a project taskforce without knowing that others were doing similar tasks which would also benefit their organization. The presence of this ‘contingent cooperation’ underscored the need for transparency and monitoring so that everyone could be assured of the levels of cooperation and commitment of the other partners.

The Smart Community has had a strong focus on responding to community demand. For instance, “We heard that people wanted to know about gas prices so we included a main page link to OntarioGasPrices.com so they can find the cheapest gas in the region”. This has drawn a lot of attention to the Portal as has a similar link to Movie Showtimes.

The Portal has integrated the human service database information from Information Windsor. The Smart Community project funded the acquisition the CIOC database software and has continued to support its ongoing maintenance. The portal contributed to enhancements to the CIOC community resources software while making use of the CIOC community information and volunteer database software.

The connection with Cogeco Cable has become increasingly important. Cogeco Cable purchased SHAW Cable, the original supplier of local access to core network equipment supported by WEDnet™. Today, Cogeco Cable offers a standard high-speed (5+ Mb) residential service for smart community participants, that is exclusive to Windsor and Essex County. They have contributed to building the user base by offering discounts on local high speed Internet subscriptions for registered users to properly access the portal. There is also a local Credit Union involved for managing the deductions at source for City employees.

The big challenge from a community perspective is that many community and human services organizations did not see the need for the level of security the portal offers. For instance, according to one informant, “the Library seems to be becoming less committed because they don’t see the need for PKI.” However, none of the partner organizations, including the Library, were willing to assume the risks of a lower security model being used.

Governance The Windsor and Essex County Smart Community is an affiliation of public and private sector partners who have agreed to cooperate on regional technology and infrastructure issues. The following Figure depicts the governance structure used during the Connect Ontario project:

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This governance model was built upon the unique form of a “joint venture” arrangement with contractual obligations used for the WEDnet™ activities. Each of the partners signed cooperation agreements with the Connecting Windsor-Essex™ Smart Community. The partners cooperated on projects relevant to them, which meant that not all partners participated on each and every project. Like other WEDnet™ related projects, the University of Windsor provided administrative support through the Centre for Smart Community Innovation (CSCI) to facilitate cooperation. In this context the University of Windsor’s CSCI was also providing the administrative support for the Connecting Windsor-Essex™ project. The project’s support staff, including the Executive Director and the Project Officer, were employed through the University of Windsor but the overall direction of the project was provided by the Smart Community Board.

The Smart Community governance required a more formal structure than WEDnet™, with detailed terms of reference for each committee, formal minutes and meeting schedules. The Portal provides an underlying component in the delivery of information, in the line responsibility in the current governance. The new structure of Smart Community governance can be seen in the figure below.

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Sustainability Connecting Windsor-Essex™ was driven and largely supported by the public sector in the region. However, the assessment of several members of the project team was that there would eventually be a limit to public sector investment. Other sources of revenue will

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be necessary to sustain the smart community in the long run and currently the team was directing their attention on engaging the private sector to this end.

Small business In the region there were a lot of small tool and dye businesses, many of whom came out of larger tool and dye operations some 10-15 years ago when technology wasn’t as integral to the industry. So these people were not as familiar with the use of technology as their larger counterparts today. Most of their output was exported. From a regional perspective, “we can help them by assisting them to export their products by electronically connecting them to their customers.” The smart community team was exploring the possibility of a partnership with various private sector companies to help make this type of connection.

While a focus on small business wasn’t part of the original proposal, the Community Futures organization has been trying to engage the various Chamber and Business Improvement Area organizations and to encourage them to register as portal users to facilitate their interactions. So too has the County. An appropriate strategy to help engage small business on the portal has been agreed upon, and the approach now is one of mostly marketing a solution.

However, one informant commented that some small businesses might actually see the portal as adding to the cost of competition. For instance, a business wanting to bring its clients onto the portal and do business with them there could not include those clients in its own membership. Each client must obtain a separate membership which adds cost to the client or the provider and therefore reduces the competitiveness of any business using the portal.

According to one interviewee, “this is a business case issue more than it is a technical or political issue, and the stance taken by the participants, is that if an organization is a separately governed decision-making body, they must be part of the joint venture in the same way as any other participant, so as not to provide for any assumed liability.” The statement is true only where it relates to the clients wanting their own portal space, not where a participant’s portal space is used by any number of registrants (who can register and access space supported by the cost of others, at no cost to them as clients). In effect, this does not translate into an equal cost-share. This is because some organizations pay costs for more than themselves for certain uses, albeit that in participating with anyone other than their own entity, if those entities decide that they need their own space, then they are indeed larger and using more resources. Thus, they should cover a higher cost than organizations that participate independent of any other organization (i.e. clients). The financial model used in Connecting Windsor-Essex™

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compensates for competition described above, by providing an ability for organizations to present business case models for assisting with the cost-sharing of participating in their use of the Portal.

The challenge with the size of the small business sector in this region (approx 96%) was making them see the benefits and that approach essentially required many one-on-one education sessions. The smart community team does not have the manpower to do this. Some of this type of basic Internet education did take place at CAP sites, but those sites were not specifically geared to businesses. They’re more geared to youth and seniors. We were told that the need for hand holding that is frequently used to support SMEs won’t go away, but the provision of basic information and some services such as ‘site selector’ to SMEs can help provide more convenience to small business while reducing the administrative cost of providing routine information.

The Portal’s development of a region-wide business directory has been important to creating a community wide business picture of suppliers and customers. It was suggested that this could be a basis for better economic development planning and for generating more effective strategies for business retention. It was also suggested that since this directory was compliant with Provincial database standards it could also be a basis for data sharing with the Province, for instance, with Workplace Safety and Insurance Board.

In 2004, the region had an estimated five million visitors who generated about $515 million in tourism spending. Many of the tourism operators were small businesses but to date there were no numbers that could indicate the level of portal usage among this group or the impact that the portal may be having on steering visitors to Windsor- Essex. It was suggested that such a survey would be very useful to both operators and community economic development planners.

Economic development “Our goal in economic development is to improve what we have to offer to companies, the ‘product’, and to improve the branding of the region. In this, the Smart Community plays an integral part.” For instance, it was pointed out that for Canadian Tire to open a new store, one of the first things it has to be assured of is its access to broadband connectivity. “The vitality and quality of life of the region are absolutely essential to our ‘product’ and a lot of this can be represented on the Portal.” Beyond attracting new companies, however, the political interest in securing jobs has demanded that local leaders pay strong attention to job retention through industry diversification since more jobs can be created there. The uncertainty in the automotive sector and the region’s dependence on it have given much food for thought among politicians and public

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sector managers as to what to do to backfill when (not if) there are more cutbacks in the auto industry. This was the impetus for creating the Windsor-Essex Economic Development Council. The Portal is seen as a potential vehicle for having this discussion and for inspiring new opportunities.

Marketing A major challenge with the portal’s PKI enabled ‘secure space’ is the ‘entry barrier’ associated with the registration process. Despite well documented help files and four ‘Flash’ videos to assist people with the registration process, for individuals, not-for- profit organizations or for time-pressured small business people who may be slightly intimidated by technology this may be perceived as a non-inconsequential hurdle. The perception that the registration process is onerous leads to the incorrect expectation that the whole website may be onerous to use. According to interviewees, this expectation is anecdotally supported by the low levels of buy-in and registration from small businesses and small not-for-profits. “Unless we can change this, said one interviewee, “I don’t see the Portal being sustainable in the long run.”

The portal was built under the direction of public sector managers and the larger not- for-profits. “There is a policy that the portal not include paid advertising as a revenue source, and it is hard to see where business interests can find a home”, other than as registered users working in a secure space. As a result business interest in the Portal seemed to be only lukewarm with some even resisting its use, where it may be somewhat competitive in nature.

The marketing budget for the entire project is only $27,000 and is obviously insufficient for this kind of project. According to one interviewee, “we need at least one full time person committed for 2-3 years to focus on marketing. Right now the Research and Development Officer does this in their ‘spare time’ as one many other responsibilities. We need dedicated staff.”

The Portal has a solid constituency of committed public sector managers and a well established community of practice. It has also created an alliance of opinion leaders and a speakers’ bureau of key spokespeople who can aid in making presentations to companies and other organizations in the region. These people can help spread the gospel and engage people across the community. However, such influential people can not be relied upon to entirely conduct the educational effort that several interviewees indicated was essential. This is particularly true with respect to the small business sector. The local Chambers are not technology focussed and are limited in their ability to promote aspects of technology they are unfamiliar with.

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One interviewee indicated that there was a need to establish more of a feedback loop in order to make continuous refinements of the Portal and how the Portal can better service and add value to the community.

Looking ahead The Smart Community was interested in continuing to work with the Province on the inter-jurisdictional portal projects that continue to evolve, provided that the Province remains sensitive to the uniqueness of the various regions and the local investments in Portal development that have occurred.

The Portal group was also interested in developing links with the francophone community and working towards a degree of bilingual content. To this end, it is also exploring the use of web content translation tools. IBM, for instance, has real-time translation tools for web content as part of its WebSphere solution.

The region’s Essex Community Futures Development Corporation secured funding to develop a series of virtual tours of the area’s historical attractions and is interested in expanding these resources on the Portal.

Now that the Portal has been active for a while, there were several comments that it was time to understand better how it may be affecting the community’s social fabric. This could be an effort of the Centre for Smart Community Innovation. It could also be associated with a campaign to increase public use of the Portal.

Accessibility has tended to be a sleeper issue because the ‘new’ digital divide is not between urban and rural or rich and poor, it is between those who are physically and mentally able to use the Internet and those who aren’t and those who are literate enough to use the Internet and those who aren’t. In addition, there continue to be segments within the wired infrastructure community that are not serviced and the security issues with wireless communications do not seem to support the investment required to blanket all areas with access to the Internet, and hence, the Portal. The seeming lack of attention here stems from the large technology and support costs associated with these types of initiatives. These are areas where the Province could play an extremely important role in levelling the playing field for these under serviced groups. So too could the federal government through additional CAP funding of public internet access sites or a new program that builds upon the previous, yet outdated model for the Community Access Program.

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PART C – ASSESSMENT

FOCUS Municipal vs broader community The Connecting Windsor-Essex™ Portal is not municipally focused, but its focus does seem strongly public sector. “The Portal is clearly driven by a public sector mindset that is not as sensitive to the imperatives of marketing or the need to quickly secure the Portal’s place in the consciousness of the community (before a competitor does).” The risk this entails is that since public sector participation and cooperation are driven by the interests of the broader community if the interest in the portal by general public fails to ignite or remains lukewarm, then public support for the Portal may diminish and public sector cooperation may fragment.

The CWE experience suggests that a community needs both very secure and less-secure online spaces in order to play out the full range of community relationships and exchanges. A less-secure more user friendly space can, as amply demonstrated by Sudbury, can allow residents and organizations of every stripe to take a degree of ownership in the Portal. It becomes their space. As Windsor demonstrates the need for a very secure space -- one in which participants can feel completely confident in the privacy of their interactions -- is also important. Much of the e-government agenda that has been discussed for a decade falls into this category. Windsor and Essex County also appears to be the first integrated use of secure and less-secure spaces among Connect Ontario projects. Users can have greater security confidence using the CWE Portal than with other resources where identity management is weaker, and security and privacy risks higher.

Therefore the big challenge for Windsor (and all the other portals for that matter) will be how to integrate the two sides of this portal coin.

Economic development In the context of Windsor-Essex, economic development was primarily focused on border crossing and trade, tourism, and diversification from the auto sector towards more knowledge based industries. Each of these elements were addressed on the Portal.

However, the economic development focus was not a prominent part of the public view of the Portal (nor was it supposed to be). There were links on the topic to local and provincial organizations and a separate space for trade and border crossing information, although little additional content has as yet been contributed. Within the secure space there is the opportunity for the stakeholders to interact privately but from the reviewer’s perspective that space remained ‘in camera’. Nonetheless, from

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interviewees we learned that economic development is a very significant concern for the portal partners, and the experience of cooperation on the Portal has contributed to a more regional (Windsor-Essex) attitude to economic development and the creation of a new economic development council involving the City, the County and the lower tier municipalities. It is safe, therefore, to assume that the Portal is a top of mind tool for the stakeholders to use for economic development when appropriate. One such use, mentioned by one interviewee, involved linking the portal with back-end informational Provincial databases with data on local businesses, such as Ontario’s Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB).

The site selector tool on the Portal has become a necessary and important marketing tool for the region. Almost all preliminary contact by prospective firms interested in the area is over the Internet. However, the information provided by the Site Selector tool has been constrained somewhat by data sharing agreements with the Province and local real estate boards.

Small business This focus, like economic development, was not prominent on the Portal nor was it intended to be. There was on the portal a well developed business directory enabled with GIS and routing tools. There were also nine other directories for smaller areas of the region as well. There were links to the various Chambers and BIA organizations, there were links to the Enterprise Centre, the Essex Community Futures, to employment service organizations and other provincial and federal resources supporting small businesses. Several interviewees commented that small business does need to become a more significant focus for the Portal in order to make the Portal sustainable in the long run.

Service delivery Many of the Portal’s transactional services take place within the secure space of the portal. Exceptions include parking ticket payment, and registration for leisure and recreational activities. Many events and life long learning courses still require telephone registration or registration via a separate online tool, due to the lack of technological capacity on the part of the sponsoring organization. Migrating some of these service delivery models into the more secure aspects of use for registered users on the Portal requires additional investment.

The presence of the GIS locator service, (which was moved from Connect Ontario to GeoSmart in the middle of the project) was ubiquitous throughout all aspects of the portal and the locator/search function was prominent on the Portal’s navigational menu.

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Other The secure space developed in the Portal has the capability to permit any kind of transaction, particularly those associated with a need for privacy, such as e-government transactions, including tax related transactions; health related transactions; or any number of others. Each theme on the Portal has its own Portal Manager drawn from an organization associated with the theme.

Tourism Tourism was a element of the portal and was developed in cooperation with the Convention and Visitors Bureau of Windsor, Essex County and Pelee Island. It includes basic tourism and travel resources; links to key attractions; virtual tours of the area; mapping; online reservation capability with local hotels; and convention resources.

Health The resources on the health sub portal informational and relate to: community health, crisis services and emergency care, clinics, and hospital services. It provides a search tool to find a doctor or other health professional. It also provides access to various health library resources for parents, teens and others.

Education The education sub portal covers information on early years, elementary, secondary, post secondary and life long learning, however, there was not much content in these areas, since Portal Managers have not been identified until recently by the participants.

Culture The culture sub portal directs users to arts, heritage, library, multicultural, and spiritual resources in the region. It includes calendars to events but does not have the capability for online ticketing. Tickets must be purchased over the telephone, unless the sponsoring organization or host has provided an online tool.

CHALLENGES

Changing environment The CWE group is a Canadian leader in community portal development. The Portal’s related challenge is to match the pace of its development with the pace of appreciation among local residents and stakeholders – always leading but never outdistancing them. The same challenge also exists with respect the Provincial Government Portal and its relevant departmental databases. Since intentionally slowing progress is not advisable, the need seems to be to find more ways to educate and persuade these groups of the current and future value of the Windsor-Essex Portal -- in essence lifting them up.

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Technology (Infrastructure) Due to the infrastructure developments led by WEDnet™ over the last decade and including the CAP program, the access to the Internet problem has been largely addressed although service levels would improve if there were policies or incentives to encourage service providers to work collaboratively to achieve ubiquitous service levels.

Technology (applications) The big technology challenge is also the same as the best feature of the Portal’s technology – its PKI enabled infrastructure. While the solution itself may be technically superior to other portal implementations, the ‘barrier to entry’ perceived by small business, most small not-for-profits and residents is forestalling their quick adoption of the Portal for anything other than cursory use and diminishing its perceived value. The situation is reminiscent of the BetaMax dilemma in which the technologically superior BetaMax video recorder was beat of the marketplace by the cheaper, less sophisticated VHS format because the latter was adopted more quickly by home users.

Consequently there may be a need to construct a less secure, more user friendly version of the portal (for individuals, small business and not-for-profits) as an entry way for them into the secure space. Once on the less secure site the jump to the more secure site would likely be seen as less dramatic. There also seems to be a need, as indicated by several interviewees, for more staff to undertake more one-on-one education on the portal’s benefits and use.

Implementation More direct involvement in the Portal from the small business and not-for-profit sectors would likely help the adoption issues and sustainability issues.

Adoption (see Technology (applications))

Local Governance The public sector governance model of CWE and their use of simple mechanisms (such as Blackberry discounts) for engaging the participation of public sector managers have proven well suited to the region and the public sector collaboration which has been leading the community. The portal experience has reinforced the basic collaborative tendencies that existed and identified new opportunities for cross sector cooperation to occur. The need now is to find similar mechanisms to provide ‘hooks’ for small business and not-for-profit organizations to participate.

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Provincial partnership The major challenge in this regard, according to several interviewees, has been and still is the lack of direction and support from the Province. In this vacuum, communities like Windsor-Essex have had to fend for themselves without any knowledge of whether their decisions will ultimately align (as they must) with the future decisions of the Province. The Province continues to support the development of advanced infrastructures, such as networks and portals, and in some cases funding is being handed out without regard to existing resources or requirements for collaboration or consultation. Investment is provided for the development of web sites (such as $60,000 provided to the Children’s Aid Society) while the multi-million dollar CWE Portal has been created with Provincial assistance to support this type of information service delivery. As this example illustrates, from the perspective of the communities there is little evidence of progress in breaking down provincial silos, although the e-OPS agenda of the Province clearly recognizes the need to do so.

The communities generally felt they were doing the ‘catch-up’ work for the Province. They were engaging the citizens and businesses; they were taking the initiative on completing the infrastructure and developing online services; and they were the ones that were actively looking for ways to make it all sustainable in the long run. And when the Province did do something, they wanted to migrate their whole solution intact and in its entirety to the local level. “The community wants to assist in the delivery of provincial (or federal for that matter) content” not in the delivery of provincial solutions.

According to one interviewee, “the Smart Systems for Health,” for example, “pays little attention to how information flows in a community or how local institutions are connected. Therefore they can’t get the fit.” As another example, the Province’s decision in defining how metadata would be used on their portal with no input from communities was considered completely arbitrary, despite the acknowledged need to one day have it connect to the communities. To date there is no mechanism for communities to work with the provincial government as a sole source provider of certain data. Still another example, MPAC was not making its data set available locally on the grounds that the community portal organization was not considered ‘government’ despite the involvements of the County, the City and other government organizations.

Said one interviewee, “the people at the provincial level locally are frequently not knowledgeable about what they actually need to do to accomplish a certain task or deliver a certain technology.” In the case of the CWE project, the portal team has on

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several occasions responded to requests for their involvement in other portal initiatives, by saying “sorry you don’t meet our minimal technical requirements.” One interviewee asked rhetorically “how could a Ministry project officer expect to understand our Portal without registering on it?” None did93.

There were questions about how serious the Province was when it came to acting like a real participant. “How can you have a partnership with someone who is unwilling to take any risk whatsoever?” The Province clearly demonstrated a willingness to invest, but “it tries to do this at no risk to itself, without getting involved and while reserving for itself the right to redirect the project at will. This is not effective partnership.” While collaboration has been talked about and is technically feasible, the clear perception by the community was that “collaboration was not a provincial priority”. That perception is reinforced by an apparent lack of investment in local human resources. “There is a sense locally that provincial field staff are not as well trained as they could be in the use of advanced technology, Internet technologies or even their own computers. Therefore those people who are the Province’s local points of contact tend to reflect a world view and level of understanding that may be somewhat at odds with the smart community model, as it appears they are limited in their abilities for moving alternative models forward with any sort of direct support.”

A continuing irritant was the Province’s unwillingness to attend the launch of the Portal. While the Province has made attempts to make up for this and the slight to some may seem small, to others it has not been forgotten and several felt this lack of appreciation was typical of the Province’s insensitivity to the demands of a ‘true’ participant role of government in the smart community model of this region.

Another issue observed in Windsor-Essex was the preference OMAFRA gave to Elgin County in providing them with data resources on grain markets which were not offered to the same extent to Connecting Windsor-Essex™. Elgin’s agriculturally related web tools, developed with Provincial support, have created unfair competition between the portals serving these two regions. Touted as a ‘best practice’ success story application in Elgin, there has not been a general roll-out of this application (nor have other ‘best practice’ applications for that matter) across portal projects as one might have expected if the goal were to collectively enhance all Ontario communities. Instead, OMAFRA’s preferential treatment has increased local competition among the projects, and will force application research and development in Windsor-Essex in directions that will help reduce the impact of this competition, wasting valuable time and resources that

93 This is disputed by COPSC staff.

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might otherwise be better spent on alternative applications to could potentially serve other Ontario markets.

PROJECT STATISTICS None at present but the need for them is well recognized.

NEW OPPORTUNITIES

It is apparent that much has been accomplished over and above the original project, in all areas of smart community evolution. This includes: governance, community engagement, infrastructure, on-line services and smart results valuation methods. Work is actively continuing in these areas.

SUSTAINABILITY

Short term Short term the Connecting Windsor–Essex™ Portal has sufficient support from its public sector partner organizations at this stage to continue into the medium term.

Long term It is in the long term that questions arise. These questions centre on whether the Portal is sustainable socially across the entire community and not just in the public sector. Without more successful efforts at engaging not-for-profits and small businesses, it was suggested that the portal may lose its ability to act as a community-wide vehicle, and end up facing competition from other alternatives more capable of meeting the needs of these groups. CWE would then be relegated to being a portal for the public sector only.

GOOD PRACTICES

Applications • The use of IBM’s WebSphere application is the first time an enterprise-wide, corporate intranet application has been applied to work as a community portal in Canada. The addition of the PKI enabled ‘secure space’ offers the freedom to work securely within assigned access constraints but also complete traceability should those rights be abused in any way. Registered users can work in complete confidence that their private interactions remain private. Unlike other portals, however, the CWE makes little effort to monitor or police what people say on the portal because any uncivil comments can be traced to individual users. It is believed that awareness of this and the normal rules and laws against uncivil behaviour will keep people polite. “There is no way to hide behind anonymity.” The secure space

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offers the opportunity to conduct all manner of transactions and interactions, including health and security, or wherever privacy is a concern. • The “Community Connector™” which is a space for registered users to collaborate using a variety of tools including file sharing, threaded discussions, polling, chat, calendars, etc. – all under a secure umbrella.

Process • The model for governing the Portal that has emerged out of WEDnet™ that encourages participants to lead where their interests are most engaged and to follow in other areas.

LESSONS LEARNED

The lessons learned by the project • Avoid initial involvement with politicians. As the project develops and begins collecting public support the politicians will come on board. • Verifying a person’s identity, an essential element of PKI, is best done locally through the many trusted on-site locations that a community can offer. Why would the provincial government want, as it appears to the portal team, to do this centrally or through the few ministry channels available locally, unless portal projects like this have a possibility to serve as agents in the process?

The lessons learned by Invenire Portals • The Windsor-Essex Portal stands as a counterpoint to the other portals which have generally opted to maximize local engagement on their portals (for example Sudbury). CWE opted for creating a secure space in which the interactions that occur within it (organization-to-organization; organization-to-individual; individual-to-individual) can all occur privately. In any community both these types of interactions, private and open, have a necessary place. Thus, if a portal is to reflect its community the opportunities for both types of interactions must also be present. The real question for communities is whether it is better to get people engaged on the portal first and then introduce a more secure infrastructure or to do as Windsor Essex has done, develop the secure infrastructure and then engage people on it. This review does not have sufficient evidence to decide which approach might be better. In reality, they both may work, but in the former case, grandfathering established policy with new more stringent policy for a large number of users (and the enforcement issues that result), may be more difficult than providing a more robust solution early on, supplemented with the necessary education and awareness to smaller numbers of users as they first engage. CWE has selected the latter model.

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• The emergence of Internet Protocol version 6 (IPV6) as we have learned, should be an issue of concern to any organization developing a new portal today. Since IPV6 is in use today, its rollout generally across the Internet appears likely to occur in the next 3-5 years. To protect current portal investments it would seem prudent to determine, and decide upon a migration strategy, that changes like this will have on the type of portals that have been supported by COPSC.

Economic development • While Windsor-Essex is beginning to act as a regional entity as far as economic development is concerned, the natural economic region in which it participates crosses a national border not just a provincial one. Windsor-Essex is in very real terms a suburb community of Detroit, as typified by the dominating presence of the GM headquarters just across the river. Therefore, to contribute to the economic development of Windsor–Essex the portal most likely needs to contribute to the development of Windsor-Essex-Detroit. Helping the portal to do that may be only in part a Provincial responsibility and more likely a federal one.

Small & Medium business • There needs to be a separate educational effort to engage the small business sector even when there exists a well-oiled public sector collaboration. The basis of their involvement will have to be practical, “what’s in it for me” type benefits that overcome their inertia about trying something new.

Delivery of public services • Windsor highlights an impending challenge for both the Provincial and federal governments. That is, that those public services which require the establishment of a citizen’s or company’s identity and need to be conducted privately and securely will not be perceived as user friendly by most people, except the most ardent technophiles. Thus Windsor-Essex, and both the provincial and federal governments, face the challenge of effecting a cultural change, which, until completed, will drastically diminish the effectiveness of online service solutions particularly among high needs segments of the population. • Windsor’s experience should be a wake-up call to other governments to begin making the necessary steps towards fostering cultural change today, or risk that their large technology investments show little adoption or ROI.

Community partnerships • The Windsor-Essex model that allows members to opt in or out of projects that are of interest to them optimizes the levels of motivation and participation, while

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ensuring the entire community benefits. This works well for the ‘contingent cooperators’ at the local level because monitoring (usually informal) of everybody’s actions can be facilitated with one or two people making a point of keeping everyone informed. This is also why community partnerships with the Province are more problematic. It is much more difficult to generate this level of transparency informally and therefore more difficult to sustain a collaboration.

Provincial intervention • The province needs to support those who are actually developing and leading the community initiative. That leadership does not necessarily align with municipalities (and in the case of many COPSC projects it did not) and so the Province needs to be careful about defaulting to their relationship with municipal governments out of convenience. They risk hitching themselves to the wrong post since the leadership in most municipalities have themselves to be dragged forward.

As an example of this type of mistake, one interviewee pointed to the decision by the political leadership at the AMO to wait until the Province has made up its mind around defining the Ontario Portal before beginning discussions about how to link it with the municipalities. “This decision completely ignores the fact that some communities were already beyond where the Province wants to go. At the political level, “there is not a great deal of appreciation of where the communities themselves are at.” At the same time when the political leadership at the municipal level discovers the difference, “the local investments will not be thrown away once the Province finally makes up its mind.”

• In some cases, municipalities have been lauded with awards for their support of their portal, but the COPSC program guidelines were much broader in scope and solution provision, than replacing a municipal website with an advanced portal architecture. This has led to mixed messages to some communities about the importance of having a good municipal website as opposed to a next generation portal. This tends to undermine the potential of some COPSC solutions that follow international best practices, where municipal focus is integral, but not the sole focus of the portal solution. Given that the Province has come to recognize that one size doesn’t fit all in terms of portal solutions because of local capacities, needs, goals, etc., its recognition of community progress in this area should not be one size fits all either.

• One approach to managing the local-provincial relationship that might be considered as a means of improving coordination and fostering better information exchange is the Vancouver Agreement model that has been shown to be effective at

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bringing together community, municipal, provincial and federal organizations to resuscitate areas of downtown Vancouver.

Technology projects • From a technology perspective Windsor-Essex has done well in aligning its technology to the goals of the project. The public sector mindset that has been prominent in the portal has been very aware of the need for a private medium for exchanging information between themselves and with citizens. The technology used by the portal fits neatly with this view and has created this secure space not only for the public sector but for citizens and other sector organizations to interact privately.

GAP ASSESSMENT

Things they failed to do • The one thing in the original proposal that isn’t apparent on the portal is the use video streaming or webcasting. It was pointed out that the portal’s servers were not web servers and that although the capacity to do webcasting was there, it was not often used because of the need for load balancing between the portal’s two groups of server environments. The tourism site does use web-based video clips for its virtual tours. This highlights the difference between “web-based only” solutions and “portal-based” solutions, although both may be accessible using the Internet. This distinction in how services are delivered and managed through advanced portal architectures is frequently lacking in understanding how portals work and how they need to integrate with a user’s technology. As a result, some portal proponents tend to prefer the quick gratification of “web-based only” solutions and are reluctant to invest or become part of advanced solutions that may benefit them much more down the road.

Missed opportunities • Because of the ‘barrier to entry’ presented by the certificate registration process, individuals, small businesses and not-for-profit organizations have been slow to adopt the use of the secure areas of the portal. In so far as these groups have an undervalued perspective of the portal and its resources this represents a missed opportunity. To overcome this will require a concerted educational effort to demonstrate that the temporal cost of registration is worth the benefit of registration (There is no financial cost to registration on the CWE portal today for individual users). To not take part in this educational effort, risks the portal being a valued tool for public sector interactions, but being viewed as not particularly useful for the population at large, which could limit its sustainability, its reach across the community and its political support.

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POTENTIAL NEW USES/NEW SERVICES

• CWE will be developing a local version of the Seniors’ portal under the proviso that it will be adapted to include local information for senior’s and a local front-end. The challenge here for CWE centred on the Seniors’ portal being developed for a community with a non-extent portal resource and at least initially a lack of flexibility or willingness to adapt it to any other context. That difficulty has now been addressed. • CWE will be working with the Ministry of Citizenship and Immigration on the creation of a Immigration and Settlement virtual portal that will contain information from all three levels of government in both official languages.

NEW TECHNOLOGY DIRECTIONS

• One suggestion revolved around the creation of better front-office/back-office links between the portal and the provincial government. For example, a link could be made between the portal’s business directory and WSIB. It was suggested that a WSIB transaction involving the creation of a new business could trigger an update on the relevant data fields in the portal’s business directory once established. The business directory was not an initial focus of the CWE project. The portal could make the ʺExportʺ field in the business directory mandatory, so that information could be ‘grazed’ by MEDT or local partners such as the CFDC could sort, send and follow up with businesses locally on information provided by MEDT to businesses who are interested in exporting particular products or services or interested in exporting to a particular economic region. It was suggested that this could be done across the province for all the Economic Development regions. • As a further illustration of this possibility, it was pointed out that the Province of Alberta has a data sharing arrangement with its municipalities under its Alberta First initiative (http://www.albertafirst.com ). It was suggested that accomplishing this in Ontario would go a long way to creating new value for small businesses over the portal. • IPV694, the new Internet addressing format that is just emerging and according to interviewees will be on the scene in 3-5 years. This is likely to change radically the way in which Internet space is allocated. The new Ontario portal is based on the old IPV4 standard and according to one interviewee there appears to be little understanding at the provincial level of the impacts of IPV6 on the Ontario portal’s performance. The suggestion was to conduct some research on the matter and if need be use the Windsor portal as a test platform.

94 see http://www.ipv6.org/ and also http://playground.sun.com/ipv6/ipng-main.html

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• The Windsor portal runs on the same IBM WebSphere platform as the Ontario Government portal. The Province could be looking to Windsor as a pilot to determine the potential hurdles they might encounter when they roll out their portal province –wide, especially since CWE is upgrading to the next generation WebSphere version beyond the one in use by the Province. The CWE portal would also be useful to test the types of integration they might occur between a community and the Province. • Allow community portal projects to share and use specific technologies that have been created by the Province, such as the ‘portlets’ used on its own portal, but which are unavailable to municipalities, or others due to their high cost. This would leverage the investment in technology by the Province beyond Toronto.

RECOMMENDATIONS BY THE PROJECT FOR FUTURE CONSIDERATION

Portals • The Ontario Portal Guide has been very good at mapping the interconnections between provincial government departments but makes no mention of the fact that the Ontario portal will, according to the current e-public sector concept, ultimately mesh with community portals, nor does it describe how a conversation with communities to achieve this may even begin. The community recommendation is that this conversation should begin now before the Ontario Portal structure is finalized.

Economic development • The Province should develop data sharing protocols to link to local data and for the user on a local portal to be able to access provincial data in real time. • It was suggested that the Province might support a survey to explore the level of portal usage among tourism operators in the region and the impact that the portal may be having on steering visitors to Windsor-Essex.

Small & Medium business • Create data sharing protocols so changes at one end (local or provincial) can be automatically updated when a change is made at the other on databases that collect information on small business in Ontario such as WSIB.

Delivery of public services • The drive from citizens and communities is to have secure transactions with government – municipal, provincial and federal. Since most provincial services are delivered by municipalities anyway, the Province should encourage communities to

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develop that secure facility while enhancing their capacity to provide a 2-way link with provincial data. The province should let the communities verify user identities. • There is a need for more provincial funding of accessibility efforts for the disabled and those who are illiterate.

Community partnerships • The Province should not rely on the leadership in a municipality to take the lead on technology projects. The knowledge isn’t there with municipalities by themselves, or with their collective extension, the AMO. Communities are leading as an expression of their collective intelligence, but that is not the same as municipalities. • Community partnerships require the need to engage partners while limiting their involvement to those things that motivate them individually. Every partner can not and should not be involved in everything. Thus flexible arrangements need to be used so that partners are sometimes leaders and sometimes followers.

Technology projects • There is a need for the Province to foster the creation of technical communities of practice that can involve municipalities in the conceptual and development phases and not just after the fact. This would permit the development of tools that could be potentially used throughout all Ontario communities. • The Province should investigate the impact of IPV6 on its portal and, if need be, use CWE as a test bed to explore impacts.

Provincial relationship • The Province should not wait to get its own house in order before engaging communities. “Do they think nothing is happening at the community level? The communities are already passing them by. What to say of 2-5 years from now when the Province might finally be ‘ready’?” • The Province needs to develop a more effective means of information sharing with communities (communities here in the broad sense not just with municipalities which tend to be slower at adopting new technologies). In this context the local representatives of provincial ministries need to be more effective in conveying information, and to work more closely with the local portal initiatives. One suggestion was to make better use of the RNO (Regional Networks of Ontario) which is already supported by the Province and which has in the past played a role as an interface between the Province and the implementation of broadband infrastructure. • Stop making arbitrary decisions. Define a collaborative model (possibly like the Vancouver Agreement) and stick with it.

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• The COPSC guidelines were always in draft form and therefore difficult to interpret because material kept changing. It became more onerous as time went on, so it would be helpful in future if they were clearer. If flexibility is needed it should be applied to the diversities of Ontario communities, rather than simply municipality diversity.

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ABOUT INVENIRE

Invenire specializes in the issues of governance and stewardship that belong to today’s fast-paced, ever- changing, and interdependent world. We help organizations govern themselves better by aiding them in the discovery of coordination solutions that work for them -- often in terms of designing better information flows that enable more effective social learning. We enable decision makers to become more successful by helping them to re-frame their business models, to share power, to act horizontally, and to devise creative learning systems and processes that can enhance leadership capacity and the ability to work in environments where there are multiple accountabilities.

Every Invenire engagement works towards achieving results that support the objectives of its client organization. Invenire has developed both an expertise and a toolbox to help organizations track down the sources of dysfunction in their governance and stewardship, and then to help them devise practical reforms. Invenireʹs partners have successfully applied their knowledge and experience in many diverse fields ranging from the governance of smart communities, to board governance, to the governance of education, the governance of healthcare, the governance of oceans, the governance of cultural diversity, the governance of intellectual property regimes, and the governance of ethical research.

Government, industry and NGO clients across Canada have chosen to work with Invenire because of:

9Client Relationships – Invenire works with its clients, not just for them. We strive to create long-term partnerships by providing much needed perspective on the organization, its people and its activities so that the organization’s innate knowledge and skills can be optimized, that ownership of initiatives can be assured and long-term progress can be secured.

9Creative solutions – In learning from our clients and working with them to better define issues, Invenire’s consultants strive to articulate what is practically possible, not just what is minimally necessary to patch a broken system. Invenire will work to produce more than just an expert report but a process of stakeholder engagement that will ensure engagement around subsequent policies and programs. Invenire will make use of ‘best practice’ mechanisms of collaboration wherever they may be found – in corporations, in government, in education or in the voluntary sector – and utilize them to create a system of governance and accountability appropriate for a smart community environment.

9Proven Methodologies – Invenire leverages well developed comparative and interview methodologies that have evolved over many years and in numerous engagements into processes that clients can be confident in -- and we have highly skilled and experienced consultants who direct and implement these methodologies.

9World-class Consulting Professionals – Invenire is comprised of a dedicated resource group of qualified senior consultants that offers clients professional services specifically tailored to their requirements.

Contact Invenire: PO Box 62024, Ottawa, ON K1C7H8, Tel: 613-232-1528 or at http://www.invenire.ca

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