The Saskatchewan 3.0 Summit (or Sask 3.0 Summit) took place on April 24 until April 25, 2012. Over 350 people attended with the goal of accelerating the adoption of digital and social technologies Saskatchewan to help sustain Saskatchewan's economic growth. Topics discussed at the Summit centered on Saskatchewan’s rising economy, ensuring that it is sustainable. International speakers were present to speak about the progress made in other places around the world and provided their own implementation of different technologies as examples for Saskatchewan to consider.
The Saskatchewan 3.0 Summit took place on April 24 and April 25, 2012. The attending audience included both the end users of technology and technical professionals. To be sure the information was appropriate to the attendees' knowledge, there were two streams: a management and a technical stream. People from Saskatchewan’s various sectors were present in order to integrate both expertise and experience when it comes to discussing Saskatchewan’s future. There were ample opportunities for comingling with other guests to discuss recommendations for digital strategies and digital polling technology was used to determine attendee opinions.
The Saskatchewan 3.0 Summit took place in Regina, Saskatchewan at the Queensbury Convention Centre Queensbury Convention Centre.
Goals and Supporters
The Summit was designed to gather innovative ideas about integrating digital and social technologies into Saskatchewan’s growing economy. Discussions took place on how to help Saskatchewan to better compete in global economies. The Summit also served to gather some of the province’s most talented people together and help motivate active citizen participation in the future of Saskatchewan. The Summit also sparked interest in Open Government and Open Data and will hopefully result in more transparent government in Saskatchewan.
The following list of Saskatchewan 3.0 Summit supporters:
Information Technology Office
Information Services Corporation of Saskatchewan
Saskatchewan Chamber of Commerce
Canadian Information Procession Professionals Society
Regina Regional Opportunities Commission
University of Regina
University of Saskatchewan
SIAST
IBM
HP
Deloitte
Sierra Systems
Seccuris
International experts spoke about their experiences in other jurisdictions around the world. There were six individuals who were keynote speakers at the Summit:
Annesh Chopra
Dr. Nicholas Gruen, an Australian economist. He was chair position in the Australian Government 2.0 Taskforce in 2009, which shares many common goals with the Saskatchewan 3.0 Summit. He is described as “strong public advocate for economic reform, innovation and open government in the context of the extraordinary opportunities provided by the internet.”
David Eaves, who is a public policy entrepreneur who supports an open government. He helped draft the Open Motion for the Vancouver, British Columbia city’s government, which helped advise the Mayor of Vancouver in moving Vancouver towards an open government with open data.
Louis Zacharilla
Dave Nikolejsin, who serves as Chief Information Officer in British Columbia. Before this, he was Assistant Deputy Minister working with the Network BC initiative. He has worked in management for twenty years, employed in positions with SaskTel in Regina, Saskatchewan and with the British Columbian government.
Joan McCusker, former teacher and Olympic Gold medalist. She will talk about how the right attitudes and teamwork can help build success. She has won numerous awards for her accomplishments in curling. Joan McCusker is a motivational speaker who discusses the characteristics of successful people, teamwork, and leadership.
The Saskatchewan 3.0 Summit discussions mainly involved the current technologies available and understanding how they affect businesses and organizations, as well as dealing with the risks accompanying each of these technologies. The following section mentions the topics as found on the Saskatchewan 3.0 Summit’s website.
The first topic involves helping Saskatchewan evolve to using more digital technologies. This would benefit Saskatchewan by opening access to global markets and drawing people with knowledge and talent to Saskatchewan. The adoption of digital technologies will foster what the Summit calls an “Intelligent Community” as well as promoting the development of an information technology ecosystem.
Another topic is dealing with mobile technology. The main idea of this discussion is to introduce available mobile applications. By learning to understand them, organizations can profit from taking advantage these mobile technologies.
A third topic focuses on coming to understand social networking. When used properly, social networking can benefit many organizations. Most importantly, the discussion serves to make organizations aware of the affect social networking. Organizations can learn to monitor these technologies and discover the opinions of their customers and what is being said about their organization. Internally, an organization can learn to develop a social media policy, which will work against the misuse of social networks.
The fourth topic of interest is discussing an open government and the movement towards open data. The economic and social rewards of democratising data will be made clear. The Summit will stand by their opinion on promoting transparency and an open government. They also believe it is important to advance services that would benefit Saskatchewan’s citizens.
The next point deals with the risks of loss of privacy and inadequate online security. While advocating the movement towards an open government, the Summit recognized there should be a balance between transparency and privacy when using digital technologies. This discussion will focus on developing social media policies for organizations to follow. Cloud computing (link) and privacy will also be discussed.
The sixth topic deals with collaboration and efficiency within the various sectors of Saskatchewan, motivating them all towards the common goals of technology adaptation. By doing this, the Summit believes government silos can be broken down. This would improve citizen and business services in Saskatchewan.
The final topic to be mentioned deals with online engagement. With the introduction of new digital and social technologies, this topic will cover the changes in the ways people will interact, such as through online conversations, and the benefits this will have towards customer service. Furthermore, the discussion on observing online content about organizations will be continued, as well as the proper responses these organizations can make to what they find.
