Thank you.
That's an excellent question. I've been thinking a lot about this over the last year, especially when Senator Lundy and her staff invited me to Australia earlier this year.
My concern is that a number of years ago we had a leadership position in the world when it came to e-governance and web transactions. In talking to people in Australia—and this year I've also been in Seoul, and in Manila a few weeks ago—I really believe that we have lost our leadership position as a country. I think it would be relatively easy to get it back, because we do have good collaboration among orders of government across the country. In terms of doing something, the question is, where do you start?
The work that was done in early September by the information and privacy commissioners, federally and provincially and territorially, I think was unique. I've not seen that in any of the other countries that have a Government 2.0 strategy. Typically, in the other countries—Australia, New Zealand, and the U.S.—you get really driven by the party or the politician, which is difficult at times, because if the players change, as they did in Australia, how do you know if the strategy is going to survive? There was a period of time when they didn't even know who was leading the country.
The Government 2.0 task force, or the work that was done in Australia, I would absolutely say is a model. The neat thing they did and the important thing that we've discovered at a local level is that you need the engagement. You need the engagement of the community. The question is, who is the community?
I was speaking this morning at an event over at the War Museum, GoC3, a gathering of civil servants, Web 2.0 practitioners, and social media. They were talking about technology. I told them this morning, and I'll tell you the same thing, that we have, among 240,000 civil servants, so many creative and very inspiring people—for me. They know what needs to be done. We just need some kind of a rallying cry, some kind of a strategy to bring them all together. I think we have all of the elements in the country. We have engaged civil servants, we have engaged politicians at all levels, and we have the ability to work together.
I really think, if we pull something together as a country, all orders of government, we could actually surpass the other countries, because the other countries are really led more from their national or central government, and don't typically engage the local or state or provincial governments.