Welcome to JobsEZ.com - Information on Job Search Engines For Canada

When Bob Porter took over the job of director general of Industry Canada's Information Management and Business Branch of the Chief Information Office about two years ago, the department ran on a project, rather than business, basis. His first task was to turn that around. Porter is in charge of the department's enterprise portal ICWeb, key reference intranet LibraryLink and its award-winning business information Web site Strategis.gc.ca.

Launched about five years ago, Strategis put the information resources and services of Industry Canada and its public and business sector partners directly into the hands of business people via the Internet.

TIG: What is the role of the business branch within the Chief Information Office?

BP: Our branch is really an operational branch. We are kind of an internal service provider for the department. For example, we run the technical services, the infrastructure and the applications development facilities for major Web site properties like Strategis. In this department we have a distributed publishing environment, so any of the 5,000 employees of the department can actually publish to the Web. We provide that infrastructure at the desktop that allows people to publish directly to the Web. We will build specific applications for them to the extent that they need some transactional or interface kind of design work done. We also run behind the scenes a number of core services, such as secure registration, financial settlement, deployment and management of the search engines and this kind of stuff. We also run internal information management services for an electronic library and we deal with some core services, such as marketing, performance management and reporting and standards and policies.

TIG: Describe LibraryLink.

BP: It's our internal service that provides online access at the desktop to not only our electronic library catalogue, but to 10 Canadian dailies. We have premium services that provide online access to a variety of national and international materials.

TIG: What is ICWeb?

BP: Right now we have a variety of intranets run by various lines of business across the department, but there's no broad access point for all of those services, whether it's HR services or financial services or reference services. ICWeb is what we're moving toward to put a fully functioning enterprise portal on the desktop.

TIG: And BusinessGateway?

BP: It's one of the Government of Canada portals. In terms of government online delivery, much of that in terms of consolidation is going through a series of branded Government of Canada portals. It starts with the Government of Canada site and below the Canada site there are three main gateways: one for business, one for Canadians and one for non-Canadians. We happen to run the BusinessGateway portal for the Government of Canada, and a number of other ones simply because we have the in-house capability.

TIG: What is the most interesting project you have worked on with Industry Canada?

BP: The lead product on Strategis is a large directory called Canadian Company Capabilities -- essentially a profile of Canadian companies and what they're interested in. It was probably the first of the online company directories available in Canada and it's a very significant one. It has listings of about 50,000 Canadian companies. It's by far the most popular product on Strategis.

The real asset to the department is that you have one company directory. It is one of the core components of any business-type portal. Canadian companies listed in it have only one place to update their record as opposed to three or four places. We've been able to leverage that asset in terms of additional functionality.

Because we've got a consolidated company database now, we've been able to use that statement of Canadian company interests and capabilities, and match them against procurement opportunities.

They start to lead to some new value-add in the forms of specific targeted bid opportunities as a result of their participation in the database.

TIG: How popular is this directory?

BP: It's highly used. We get 120,000 to 130,000 records accessed a week off that database. Because we have the statement of (companies') capabilities and their interests, there are a number of procurement interests that come in to governments from the U.S. and so forth. In the past these have been matched up on a manual basis.

TIG: Is Strategis making a difference to Canadian business?

BP: I think it's beginning to. It's a fairly new thing, but the trick here is that it costs very little to do because it's all done electronically. The tender fees were bought by various government organizations, but the technology will allow you to do that matching and push out an e-mail to them for close to nothing. In the past, it was expensive and time-consuming to match these people up manually and you'd never reach this many people.

TIG: When you first took the helm of the business branch, what was the first challenge you set for yourself?

BP: When I came into the organization it was still operating more on a project basis rather than a business basis.

The first couple of years I was here it was basically taking what started off as a project and moving it into a secure, reliable, valued business process that supports the department's business.

So it was making sure performance standards, service level commitments and management reporting structure was all such that we knew we were managing this piece of Industry Canada's business in an appropriate fashion and that senior managers, as well as line people, could understand exactly how well they were doing relative to their investment in an online delivery presence.

If you could live anywhere in the world, where would it

I'd love to live on a beach in the South China sea, as long as I had a satellite uplink to the rest of the world.

Most rewarding moment of your career?

I think it was when my chief librarian won the Agatha Bystrom award a couple of years ago, which is the Academy Awards of innovative information management work in the public service. Our department has won it three of the last four years.

Favourite book/author?

I'll ready anything by Tom Clancy or Robert Ludlum. I'm into more entertainment value than serious reading.

Favourite TV show?

CBC News with Peter Mansbridge at 10 p.m.

Best reason for staying in the public sector?

I think the public sector's biggest advantage is flexibility in intellectual stimulation.

Favourite Web site?

I like Google.com. A good search engine is just the best you can have and it's just delicate in simplicity. It's perfect. It's my default page.

Name someone you admire in your field?

I've got a lot of respect for Todd Ramsey at IBM. He's part of (IBM's) international e-government group in Washington. He's extremely knowledgeable.

[Graph Not Transcribed]

Robert Porter