Brison envisions one federal online site
Treasury Board president says there is work to be done to improve Internet access
OTTAWA— Treasury Board President Scott Brison says he can see a future where all levels of government provide services to Canadians through a single online portal.
Granted, Brison says, he’s thinking in the very long term. But with most Canadians not thinking long and hard about the division of responsibilities between different levels of government, why not give them onestop shopping?
“When Canadians have an issue with government, they’re not necessarily aware of whether the issue is related to federal or provincial government, (or) in some cases municipal,” Brison told the Star in an interview last week.
“Long term, we should be thinking not just to work such that all the departments and agencies of the federal government are accessible through a single portal approach . . . but, in time, once we get that right, I think there will be opportunities to work with other levels of government as well.”
The new Liberal government has promised to put in place a single point of online access for all federal government services, as well as to create a website where Canadians can securely access all personal information the government has on them.
Brison, who is responsible making those commitments a reality, acknowledged there’s work to be done. The Star reported on Tuesday that 77 per cent of all federal government services still require pen and paper forms filled out in person or via snail mail.
But even after getting the federal government fully online, Carleton professor Amanda Clarke said there would be serious barriers to bringing the provinces, territories, and municipalities under one system.
“That would be the dream, for sure. I appreciate his ambition,” said Clarke, who studies digital govern- ment and public administration.
“(But) how would you brand that website? . . . Every jurisdiction now has created, with higher or lower levels of sophistication, some kind of colour scheme and organization and logos that they use. And these (choices) are also politically powerful, as well.”
Clarke said there would be definite advantages to consolidating the services of multiple governments under one roof — such as being able to pool investment in web design and functionality, or scaling responses to policy issues.
The data harvested on such a site would be invaluable, as well. Looking at who is requesting what services in different regions would be a government data geek’s dream, and could inform policy responses from all levels of government.
But Clarke said as governments are increasingly “becoming their websites” — that is, moving to a point where the website will be the primary interaction between citizens and government — all the traditional arguments over jurisdiction and responsibility apply.
“All the challenges that are always at play when you talk about crossjurisdictional collaboration or co-ordination in Canada would come in play when you were dealing with websites,” Clarke said.
Despite the challenges, Clarke said Canada is actually starting from a pretty good position.
The federal government’s web presence was largely centralized under the previous Conservative government, avoiding the balkanized situation giving countries like the U.K. trouble.
To build from that starting point, Clarke suggested the government could create a team loosely based on the model of large U.S. tech companies to provide a more agile approach to web development.