Yearly Archives: 2010

Two Questions on Canadian Postal Codes

I find it interesting that Postal Codes in Canada are not freely available. No our postal service charges a nasty license fee to get them. This means that people who want to explore creating interest apps that might use postal codes to locate services… don’t. As one would expect, zip codes in the US are freely available for anyone to hack with (this great blog post really shows you all the options).

So, two questions.

First, with all the fuss the competition bureau has kicked up around the MLS data – are Canadian postal codes being used to extend the monopoly of Canada Post? Shouldn’t this be data that, if shared, would improve competition? (Let’s forget the fact that Canadian tax dollars created the Post Office and that it might be nice if Canadian citizens could freely use the capital created with their tax dollars to generate further innovation (like the US counterparts can). Sadly, UK citizens are stuck with the same terrible boat as us.

Second, I’d heard rumours that someone was trying to crowd source the location of postal codes in the UK, essentially asking people to simply type in their address and postal in a website to create a parallel dataset. I was wondering if that might be legal here or if Canada Post would launch a legal battle against it. Can you prevent someone from recreating (not copying) at data set like this? My assumption is no…

Either way, it would be nice if Canada Post joined the rest of North America and made this information freely available. It would certainly generate far more new businesses, innovations and efficiencies that would generate further tax dollars for the government and productivity for the Canadian economy… but then, the Post Office would lose a few dollars in revenue. Sigh.

Fixing the Access to Information System in Government

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A few weeks ago I came across this piece about Freedom of Information Act requests (FOIA) in the United States. These are requests made by the public (usually by curious citizens and reporters) to get access to government documents. In Canada, there is a similar act – called Access to Information Act and the Privacy Act (ATIP) – that does more or less the same thing but has a slightly differently named and was passed almost two decades later.

Frequently, in talks I’ve given, I’m mentioned how the ATIP process is deeply broken. It frequently takes months for an ATIP request to be processed. Moreover, there is growing evidence that political staff have been interfering with the ATIP process, violating rules to ensure that citizens do not get the information they legally have a right to.

There is an old line about the internet, first quoted by John Gilmore: “The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.” I think the same may increasingly true about government. Whether documents are actually be censored by conservative staffers or whether they simply take 6 months to arrive – in either case, for anyone who grew up with google – these are acts of censorship. For a growing number of people, an opaque and slow moving government is simple “damage” that must be routed around. That isn’t always possible, but where it is, people will ignore government. This is not a good outcome – having a generation of citizens growing up ignoring government is a disaster from a recruiting perspective, but also from a regulatory compliance, legal and democratic engagement perspective.

So, I was fascinated to read, in Government Executive, how Open Data and posting information online (in Machine Readable formats) can radically reduce the pressure of the FOIA or ATIP process. Radically reduce it. Indeed, the Environmental Protection Agency in the US claims it reduced FOIA requests by 96%! As the article states:

Larry Gottesman, national FOIA officer for the Environmental Protection Agency, said emerging technologies present significant opportunities for agencies trying to eliminate FOIA pileups. EPA has reduced its pending requests by about 96 percent, in part by creating databases of popular information. The agency’s online reading rooms reduce the need to file a request in the first place, according to Gottesman.

The key here is not using PDFs to share information and not to have lame search engines that limit what citizens can search, or that return information in a manner that makes it hard to analyze or search. Just give us all the information and let us use our own search tools. That should always be at least one option. It will help government reduce the insane ATIP burden that sucks up precious resources and it will help citizens find what they need faster.

ATIP is broken, but there are ways to make it much, much better using technology.

Urban Aboriginal Peoples Survey Launched

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I’m very excited to share that today is the launch of the Urban Aboriginal Peoples Survey. For the last two years, more than 125 people have been working at various times to make this project a reality – the first ever survey of First Nations, Metis and Inuit who live in Canada’s major urban areas. I was lucky enough to sit on the steering committee of this project and so have had a very, very small role to play in this project. I’m happy to put anyone in touch with the amazing people who made this ambitious project a reality. People like Ginger Gosnell and David Newhouse (who is intelligent, compassionate and wise beyond description) are Canadians everyone should get to know.

Below is the press release that went out earlier today and you should be able to download the report here. This is a tremendously important piece of work as First Nations increasingly live in urban settings – indeed over half of the First Nation population now lives cities. Yes. Over half. And despite this, Canadians know almost nothing about this important group of citizens. Who they are or what they want. In short, there is almost no dialogue. I, like many involved in this project, hope this survey serves as a one starting point for changing that.

Urban Aboriginal peoples (First Nations peoples, Métis, and Inuit) are an increasingly significant social, political and economic presence in Canadian cities today.

First-of-a-kind Research Study takes new, in-depth look at growing population in 11 cities.

TORONTO, April 6, 2010 – An extensive new research study has gone beyond the numbers to capture the values and aspirations of this growing population.

By speaking directly with a representative group of 2,614 First Nations peoples, Métis and Inuit living in major Canadian cities, as well as 2,501 non Aboriginal Canadians, the Environics Institute, led by Michael Adams, has released the Urban Aboriginal Peoples Study (UAPS), which offers Canadians a new perspective of their Aboriginal neighbors living in Canada’s eleven largest cities. In the 2006 Census 1.172 million people self-identified themselves as “Aboriginal”, half of whom (one in two) reported living in urban centres.

“This study is about the future, not the past. The Urban Aboriginal Peoples Study offers Canadians a new picture of Aboriginal peoples in cities. Ideally, the things we have learned will help people understand each other better, have better conversations, and live together better in our urban communities.” ~Michael Adams, President, Environics Institute

Guided by an Advisory Circle, Aboriginal people designed the research themes, methodology, and executed the main survey. The Urban Aboriginal Peoples Study may be downloaded free from www.uaps.ca.

“When urban Aboriginal peoples are researched it’s often about problems like homelessness and sexual exploitation. There are hundreds of thousands of us living in cities, and there are a lot of positive things happening in our communities; it’s not all crises. But unless someone comes along and says, ‘This is interesting. Tell me about your choices; tell me about your community,’ then people don’t notice that they’re part of a wider social change.” ~Ginger Gosnell-Myers, UAPS Project Manager

KEY FINDINGS

For most, the city is home, but urban Aboriginal peoples stay connected to their communities of origin. Six in ten feel a close connection to these communities – links that are integral to strong family and social ties, and to traditional and contemporary Aboriginal culture. Notwithstanding these links, majorities of First Nations peoples, Métis and Inuit consider their current city of residence home (71%), including those who are the first generation of their family to live in their city.

Eight in ten participants said they were “very proud” of their specific Aboriginal identity, i.e., First Nations, Métis or Inuk. Slightly fewer – 70 per cent – said the same about being Canadian.

Urban Aboriginal peoples are seeking to become a significant and visible part of the urban landscape. Six in ten feel they can make their city a better place to live, a proportion similar to non-Aboriginal urban dwellers.

Six in ten were completely or somewhat unworried about losing contact with their culture, while a minority were totally (17 per cent) or somewhat (21 per cent) concerned. As well, by a wide margin (6:1), First Nations peoples, Métis and Inuit think Aboriginal culture in their communities has become stronger rather than weaker in the last five years.

They display a higher tolerance for other cultures than their non-Aboriginal neighbours: 77% of urban Aboriginal peoples believe there is room for a variety of languages and cultures in this country in contrast to 54% of non-Aboriginal urbanites.

Almost all believe they are consistently viewed in negative ways by non-Aboriginal people. Almost three in four participants perceived assumptions about addiction problems, while many felt negative stereotypes about laziness (30 per cent), lack of intelligence (20 per cent) and poverty (20 per cent).

Education is their top priority, and an enduring aspiration for the next generation. Twenty per cent want the next generation to understand the importance of education, 18 per cent hope younger individuals will stay connected to their cultural community and 17 per cent hope the next generation will experience life without racism.)

Money was cited as the No.1 barrier to getting a post-secondary education among 36 per cent of those planning to attend – and 45 per cent of those already enrolled in – a university or college.

Urban Aboriginal peoples do not have great confidence in the criminal justice system in Canada. More than half (55%) have little confidence in the criminal justice system and majorities support the idea of a separate Aboriginal justice system.

A significant minority (4 in 10) feel there is no one Aboriginal organization or National political party that best represent them, or cannot say.

The perspective of non-Aboriginal urban Canadians:

Non-Aboriginal urban Canadians are divided on where Aboriginal people fit in the Canadian mosaic: 54 percent believe Aboriginal people should have special rights and 39 percent think they are just like any other cultural or ethnic group (this divide varies across cities).

Perceptions of the current state of relations between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people are divided, but there are signs of optimism.

NA urban Canadians are starting to recognize the urban Aboriginal community and their cultural presence, but have limited knowledge of Aboriginal people and issues, although they do demonstrate a desire to learn more. There is a widespread belief among NA urban Canadians that Aboriginal people experience discrimination.

The Study

Through UAPS, more than100 interviewers, almost all of whom were themselves Aboriginal, conducted 2,614 in- person interviews with Métis, Inuit and First Nations (status and non-status) individuals living in eleven Canadian cities: Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Regina, Saskatoon, Winnipeg, Thunder Bay, Toronto, Montreal, Halifax and Ottawa (Inuit only).

The study also investigated how non-Aboriginal people view Aboriginal people in Canada today through a telephone survey with 2,501 non-Aboriginal urban Canadians living in these same cities (excluding Ottawa).

This first-of-its-kind study, conducted by the Environics Institute, and guided by an Advisory Circle of recognized experts from academia and from Aboriginal communities, is designed to better understand the values, identities, experiences and aspirations of Aboriginal Peoples (First Nations, Métis and Inuit) living in Canadian cities.

Findings and insights from this research are intended to establish a baseline of information on the urban Aboriginal population in Canada, prompt discussion within Aboriginal communities and between Aboriginal and non- Aboriginal peoples, and inform public policy and planning initiatives that pertain to urban Aboriginal peoples.

Major sponsors:
INAC – Federal Interlocutor
Trillium Foundation
Province of Alberta
Province of Saskatchewan
Province of Manitoba/Manitoba Hydro
Province of Ontario (Aboriginal Affairs)

Sponsors:
Canadian Millennium Scholarship Foundation
Calgary Foundation
Elections Canada
The Mental Health Commission
City of Edmonton
City of Toronto
Province of Nova Scotia (Aboriginal Affairs)
Winnipeg Foundation
John Lefebrve
Tides
Edmonton Community Foundation
Toronto Community Foundation
Vancouver Foundation
Halifax Regional Municipality
Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami

Media contact:
Claire M. Tallarico: 416-616-9940, uaps@rogers.com.

The Environics Institute for Survey Research was established in 2006 to sponsor relevant and original public opinion, attitude and social values research related to issues of public policy and social change. We wish to survey those not usually heard from, using questions not usually asked.

Articles I'm Digesting 4/4/2010

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Why Hasn’t Scientific Publishing Been Disrupted Already? by Michael Clark

A couple of months ago I gave a talk at the Regenstrief Institute about collaboration and open science. This article sums up one part of the talk – about the evils of closed publishing models in science. Clark writes everything I was thinking plus more, dissecting the problem in a manner that is far more concise that I dreamed of. It is a joy to read.

The challenge? That that making science more open is impossible because of the technology, it is cultural/economic. The entire reward system in science is based around getting published… so while there are ways to share scientific information that would be more efficient (and thus better for both science, scientists and humanity) we are stuck in the 20th (or 19th) century because the culture and institutions of science trap us there. A brilliant read.

Government and the Good Life by Doug Saunders

Saunders article is classic globe – the very reason why I try to get a different perspective on their website. It’s a good read, thought provoking but also, very 20th century. Saunders article is about our quest to reconcile the paradox of “Now we’re all for big government. Yet we do not trust government.” We are again embarking on a question to relearn the lessons of the Great Depression and trust the state once again.

I have my doubts.

Today we aren’t choosing between the market and the state. We recognize that both are essential. But we trust neither, and I suspect, will continue to trust neither. Rather than markets or governments, we are choosing between Open and Closed. Who are the villains of today? Swiss bankers who’ve ripped millions off of families, the Roman Catholic Church that hides and protects priests who molested small children, Government’s that refuse to disclose documents (even to parliament), companies that offer enormous bonuses to executives in confidential board meetings. Who are the heroes? The whistleblowers, the journalists, the computer programmers who make government more transparent… This isn’t about trust. In a world of opacity vs. transparency, it’s about verification. If I have to pick the great paradox, it isn’t about government’s versus markets, its about opacity vs transparency…. where do draw the line. That’s the big questions that we’ll be wrestling with.

Results From Dungeons & Dragons Online Going Free: Revenue Up 500% via Techdirt

Score one for the freemies. Great article about how, after giving the entire game away for free, the game attracted another 1million users and increased revenues by 500%.

The Total Growth of Open Source by Amit Deshpande and Dirk Riehle at SAP Labs

The graph below pretty much sums up the story. Open source projects, both the total number and the amount of code being submitted to them, is growing. Fast. At an exponential rate.

Of course, Government IT departments still can’t even think about Open Source software (more on this later this week) but it is clear that this model for software development is expanding. Nice to read an article that tries to measure this growth accurately.

What April Fools' Says about the internet (and eaves.ca is not ending)

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So yesterday, as an April Fools’ Day prank I announced that I was retiring my blog. Nothing could be further from the truth of course. I love blogging and, for the foreseeable future, find it hard to imagine not putting thoughts to words to posts. It’s also been heartwarming (and guilt inducing) to get dozens of emails and tweets from friends and readers I’ve never met expressing disappointment and congratulations.

But also interesting is how social media – and the internet generally – has revived April Fools’ Day, made it more widespread and protected us against it.

More sophisticated:

Now That's a Prank!

I’ll confess I have no data to support this argument, but I feel like there are more April Fools’ pranks these days. Part of this is because April Fools’ pranks have to be gentle and non-permanent (or at least the prankster should have both the responsibility and capacity to reverse the prank). In the physical world this is harder to do. But in a virtual space a prank is easily undone. Unlike disassembling a car, creating a misleading and humorous story is a lot easier. It is also, most of the time, easy to correct.

More people:

Of course, creating stories is not new. Just look at the BBC’s famous 1957 April Fools’ prank in which the TV news show panorama featured a story about Swiss-Italian farmers harvesting their spagetti crop (pure genius). Huge numbers of viewers fell for the joke (and many were, apparently, not amused). But just as we are now all journalists, we are now all pranksters. It is also easier for more of us to do April Fools’ jokes since more of us tweet and blog. It also means that a joke or prank is likely to spread wider and faster.

Internet as protection:

But just as the internet makes it easier for everyone to engage in April Fools’ pranks, and for those pranks to disseminate more widely, it also provides us with new tools to assess their veracity. Just take a look at the comments on my own blog. Many of my readers new immediately that the post was a hoax, and said as much right below the story. Same was true on twitter and facebook. Indeed what was interesting is that most people who commented on facebook knew the post was a joke, whereas tweets were more likely to have taken the piece seriously. Not sure what that is… Possibly because facebook has more people who know me personally and were more likely to be skeptical of me… :) Either way, in a world where the audience speaks back our capacity to sniff out – and notify others – of problems in a story are there, and we use them. It was much harder to do this in 1957 with the BBC.

All this to say, I never meant for this to be a petri dish experiment around critical media skills but what a wonderful demonstration that the medium is the message. I love that the internet has renewed a great tradition but I’m even happier to see how it empowers us all to be skeptical and to warn others.

Hopefully, I haven’t lost too many readers in the process. Hope you had a good April Fools’ day yesterday.

The End of Eaves.ca

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I’ve been thinking about this for quite some time and I’ve decided to not blog anymore. The reasons are numerous. Part of it is how much time it consumes, I spend at least 7 hours a week on the blog and the demands have become too great. But the more exciting reason is that I’ve accepted a job as an columnist at the Vancouver Courier. There I will be writing about the intersection between open source, politics, and policy for my neighbours in Kerrisdale – a beautiful suburb of Vancouver with a large retirement community.

It’s been fun and thanks for reading!

Eaves.ca November 5th 2006 – April 1st, 2010.

The Future of Media in Canada – Thoughts for the Canadian Parliamentary Committee

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Yesterday, Google presented to a House of Commons Heritage Committee which has launched a study of “new media.” Already some disturbing squawks have been heard from some of the MPs. For those who believe in an open internet, and in an individuals right to choose, there is no need to be alarmed just yet, but this is definitely worth keeping an eye on. It is however, a good thing that the parliamentary committee is looking at this (finally) since the landscape has radically changed and the Canadian government needs to adjust.

In his SXSWi talk Clay Shirky talked about how abundance changes things. One an item ceases to be scarce – when it is freely available – the dynamics of what we do with it and how we use it radically change.

It is something government’s have a hard time wrestling with. One basic assumption that often (but hardly always) underlies public policy is that one is dealing with how to manage scarce resources like natural resources. But what happens when something that was previously scarce suddenly becomes abundant? The system breaks. This is the central challenge the Heritage Committee MPs need to wrap their heads around.

Why?

Because this is precisely what is happening with the broadcast industry generally and Canadian content rules specifically. And it explains why Canadian content rules are so deeply, deeply broken.

In the old era the Government policy on Canadian content rested on two pillars:

First, the CRTC was able to create scarcity. It controlled the spectrum and could regulate the number of channels. This meant that broadcasters had to do what it said if they wanted to maintain the right to broadcast. This allowed the CRTC to mandate that a certain percentage of content be Canadian (CanCon).

The second pillar was funding. The Government could fund projects that would foster Canadian content. Hence the CBC, the National Film Board of Canada and various other granting bodies.

The problem is, in the digital era, creating scarcity gets a lot more complicated. There are no channels to regulate on the internet. There is just the abundant infinity of internet content. Moreover you can’t force websites to produce or create Canadian content nor can you force Canadians to go to websites that do (at least god hopes that isn’t a crazy idea the committee gets into its head). The scarcity is gone. The Government can no longer compel Canadians to watch Canadian content.

So what does that mean? There are three implications in my mind.

First. Stop telling Canadians what culture is. The most offensive quote from yesterday’s Globe article was, to quote the piece Bloc Québécois MP Carole Lavallée quote:

Bloc Québécois MP Carole Lavallée highlighted the often low-brow, low-budget fare on YouTube. She accused Google of confusing leisure with culture.

“Leisure is people who play Star Wars in their basement and film one another and put that on YouTube,” she said. “ But culture is something else.”

Effectively, she is telling me – the blog and new media writer – and the 100,000s if not millions of other Canadians who have created something that they do not create Canadian culture. Really? I thought the whole point of the Heritage Ministry, and tools like the CBC was to give voice to Canadians. The internet, a tools like YouTube have done more on that front than any Government program of the last 5 decades. Lavallée may not like what she sees, but today, more Canadian content is created and watched around the world, than ever before.

Second. Be prepared to phase out the CRTC. The CRTC’s regulatory capacity depends on being able to create scarcity. If there is no more scarcity, then it seizes to have a lever. Yes, the TV industry is still with us. But for how long? Canadians, like people everywhere, want to watch what they want, when they want. Thanks to the internet, increasingly they can. The CRTC no longer serves the interests of Canadians, it serves to perpetuate both the broadcast industry and the cable industry (yes, even when they fight) by creating a legal scaffolding that props up their business models. Michael Geist understands this – the committee should definitely be talking to him as well.

Third, if the first pillar is dead, the second pillar is going to have to take on a heavier load and in new and creative ways. The recent National Film Board iPhone app is fantastic example of how new media can be used to promote Canadian content. If the Commons committee is really worried about YouTube, why not have Heritage Canada create a “Canadian channel” on YouTube where it can post the best videos by Canadians and about Canada? Maybe it can even offer grants to the video creaters that get the most views on the channel – clearly they’ve demonstrated an ability to attract an audience. Thinking about more micro-grants that will allow communities to create their own content is another possibility. Ultimately, the Government can’t shape demand, or control the vehicle by which supply is delivered. But it can help encourage more supply – or better still reward Canadians who do well online and enable them to create more ambitious content.

The world of new media is significantly democratizing who can create content and what people can watch. Whatever the heritage committee does I hope they don’t try to put the cork back on that bottle. It will, in effect, be muzzling all the new emerging Canadian voices.

Update: Just saw that Sara Bannerman has a very good post about how Canadian content could be regulated online. Like much of what is in her post, but don’t think “regulation” is the right word. Indeed, most of what she asks for makes business sense – people will likely want Canadian filters for searching (be it for books, content, etc…) as long as those filters are optional.

What the Liberals needed to Learn in Montreal

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There’s been a lot of ink shed about the Liberals and Montreal. Some seizes on the corporate tax freeze, others on Robert Fowler’s blistering critique of the party, still others on the age of the participants in the room. My sense is that, in the short term, the issues discussed at Montreal – on the surface – won’t matter. It is the deeper changes, to thinking, to culture and to processes that take time to manifest, that will determine if Montreal was a success.

Are these deeper shifts happening? Hard to say, but here are three lessons the party will need to take away from Montreal if it is to succeed in the long term:

Lighten up. The scariest thing about the images from Montreal is the uniformity. The participants were older. And white. And male. That is a problem easily (and repeatedly) identified. It also needs to be fixed. But there was another interesting challenge – one more subtle and less commented on.

Ignore the uniform demographics and count how many people are in suits. And a tie. On a Saturday.

Most Canadians I know don’t wear suits. Ever. Even when working with in Fortune 500 companies, or at the banks, people look professional, but suits? Increasingly less and less. So does the Liberal Party need a new dress code? No. But it speaks to the culture of the party elite. When people look at a party they want to see themselves – people they trust and believe in. Even if Canada were populated only by white, older men, most people would probably still look at the conference and not see themselves there. Moreover, many would imagine the event as unapproachable, or unwelcoming – teeming with operatives. If the Liberals are going to win again, they’ll need to be approachable, a group many people feel like they can belong to. Keep the suits if you must, but think about the culture.

Learn the right lesson about the internet. Many participants were amazed by how many people were participating and asking questions online through skype or twitter. This belies a lack of understanding of how the internet is reshaping the way people live, work and organize. Over the past few decades, before campaign finance reform, the party had become accustomed to relying on big donations and it so its capacity to reach out to party members diminished. The Reform/Conservatives were the opposite. Early on they were too scary for traditional big companies and cultivated a vast network of small donors. For them, the internet was a blessing – it enhanced their strategy – and campaign finance was a godsend – it meant their strategy was the only effective one. Today, the Conservative donor network keeps them well financed and effective.

The danger from all this is that the Liberals will walk away understanding the power of the network, but believing they can can control it, rather than simply harness it. You can’t. All those people online, they aren’t there to do the bidding of some communications director. They are there to share their story and engage with peers. Working with such a network requires a radically different skill set then dealing with the media or cultivating a big donor. It also means getting comfortable with the fact that you aren’t in control of the message (your just seeding it) or the medium (your just a platform for others to play on). If Montreal did anything it let the younger leaders show the old timers what social networks and a connective network can do. Will be interesting if the right lessons get drawn. But the Party had better figure it out soon – the Conservatives have a serious head start.

Be honest and clear. The weekends highlight moments occurred when speakers bluntly and firmly pushed back on basic ideas or assumptions. Janice Stein responding to a questions about women’s issues in Foreign Policy by saying she was much more concerned about the destabilizing effect of large groups of unemployed young men. Roger Martin talking about how Canada’s healthcare system is one of the most expensive and inefficient in the G7. Pierre Fortin (who gave a model speech) spoke bluntly about how little money there will be, for anything. Parties need to give people hope, but they also have to be honest.

Most Canadians still struggle to understand what the Liberal Party stands for. The public knows what both the NDP stands and Conservatives stand for. Both parties have been happy to eschew certain voters in order to stay focused on what makes them who they are. It is sometimes hard to know who the Liberals will eschew. Injecting a little dose of honesty and clarity a la Janice Stein into the party’s communications might help. Sometimes you have to tell the public that their priority isn’t the number one and that there are bigger fish to fry. It isn’t easy. Especially for politicians. But being honest and clear about where the party stands and where it doesn’t may produce better results than the status quo. The Conservatives may have had a scandal rife year, but they aren’t going anywhere so long as people know who they are and don’t have a clue about their rivals.

Jane Taber noted that at the last “thinkers conference” in Aylmer the Liberal Party shed its protectionist past in favour of globalization. But that took some time to become clear. The impact – if any – of this conference will likewise take a few years to be fully realized. But maybe a similar transition will take place, with the famously centralist party favouring a more networked, open and engaging approach to both the party, and governing. It will be interesting to see what unfolds.

An oldy but a goody…

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Considering the non-partisan events going on in Montreal this weekend this post seems particularly poignant. It is still unclear if this conference will be about new ideas or safe and well trodden ideas. It will be interesting to read what the media thinks.

My sense is that fear of ideas has gripped Canadian politics. Ideas are seen as communication liabilities in an election. But I continue to believe it remains the only way out of the current morass, for Liberals, Conservatives, NDP or Bloc. Sadly, there isn’t much going in that department on any of those fronts. Maybe this weekend will help change that. Or maybe it will not.

Competitive Bureaucracies: Why is IDRC a Success?

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A long time ago a friend of mine was talking about how some organizations thrive by being under constant threat. His favourite example was the US Navy’s Marine Corp. The Marines are, operationally, the cheapest army corp in the United States forces, among the most mobile and, many would argue, possibly the most effective.Why, he asked, do you think the Marine Corp is considered so excellent? Why does it work so hard to excel in every way?

Well, he claimed, it was because the Marines are always an obvious target for budget cutters and larger rivals. If were looking cut duplicating services it would be easy to look over at the Marine Corp and ask… Why does the Navy need an army? Isn’t the army supposed to be our… army?

And trust me, this is a questions the Army asks regularly. Indeed, reading the Wikipedia page about the Marines – one can quickly see how the Marine Corps dissolution has been sought at various points in history:

The Marine Corps combat capabilities in some ways overlap those of the United States Army, the latter having historically viewed the Corps as encroaching on the Army’s capabilities and competing for funding, missions, and renown. The attitude dates back to the founding of the Continental Marines, when General George Washington refused to allow the initial Marine battalions to be drawn from among his Continental Army. Most significantly, in the aftermath of World War II, Army efforts to restructure the American defense establishment included the dissolution of the Corps and the folding of its capabilities into the other services.

So what does this have to do with International Development Research Centre?

I confess that I am not involved in development issues that much. But every time I do stray into the space and am impressed with a project that is innovative or interesting, it seems the IDRC has had a hand in funding it.

For example, readers of this blog know that I’ve become involved with OpenMRS, a community-developed, open-source, enterprise electronic medical record system platform specifically designed for doctors in the developing world. IDRC is a funder. Or, guess who is helping fund a community driven approach to bring connectivity and the internet to developing countries… IDRC is. There have been others over the years that I’ve seen, but can’t remember.

Some of this relates to part of the IDRC’s mission, which centres around the use of Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D) but I also believe that part of it has to do with the fact that the bigger and more amply funded Canadian International Development Agency is just a kilometer away across the Ottawa river the IDRC must always be demonstrating that it is leaner, faster and more effective to justify its existence.

Just like the Marine corp must always justify its existence by being both excellent, effective and cheap. So to must the IDRC. It is the organization in government that – from what I can tell – is more likely to embrace technology, promote an innovative culture and, to be blunt, get the job done. Why? Because it has to.

This is not a defence of duplication of services (and, to be clear, I do not think that IDRC and CIDA’s services directly overlap – but they do operate in similar spaces). But it cannot be denied that competition helps. But I’m not sure it is enough, either. Sometimes, duplications of services simply leads to two poorly performing institutions. I would love to be able to explore what it is about the IDRC and Marine Corp that enable them to channel the threat to their existence into innovation. Is it history? Was it the personality of their founders? Corporate culture? I suspect it is more than the threat of the budgetary axe wielder. But what… I’m not sure.

Perhaps someone will make it a thesis topic some day. I’m going to give it more thought myself.