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A Consultation with Innovation Journal Readers

Thank you for your interest in this virtual consultation. As a participant you,
along with the other participants, will be able to contribute to a shared
understanding of the potential role that The Innovation Journal and a conference on innovation can play in addressing the long term issues around government innovation facing citizens everywhere.

This consultation is investigative and exploratory. It seeks to find ways to address the main public policy and administrative innovations that are occurring and that need to be invented in the government sector, and to find ways to alter the fundamental relationship between government and
innovation.

What would you like to see discussed at such a conference? Would you participate on an online workshop? What topic(s) would you address, and from what perspective? Who would you like to see speak at such a conference, on what topics?

A workshop/symposium held in Canada [this is the first workshop, and the Innovation Journal is headquartered in Canada, so we like the idea of holding it here the first time.

Who?

C. Ideas for Agenda Items and Suggested Speakersand Paper-Givers

I. Keynote Speaker:

Who? Everett Rogers, head of Dpt. of Communications, University of New Mexico, USA; author of The Diffusion of Innovations.

II. Focus on the Future.

–Develop a vision of government’s role in innovation three to five decades into the future.
–Identify the potential technologies, services and strategies that citizens could use in the period 2030 to 2050.
–Outline the boundaries and possibilities for the contribution of new technologies, fuels, strategies.
–Identify long-term priorities and advise appropriate and possible strategies for their development and possible commercialisation.
–Develop amongst a network of domestic and international experts a shared view of Canada’s long-term technology, human and policy needs, and seek their advice and opinion for future strategy and technology development.

III. The Innovation Process

–Is Innovation a Question or Will or Circumstance? Eleanor Glor

IV. Implications of Telecommunications Revolution for Government

–e-democracy: voting, citizen involvement
–Citizens are better informed
–Educating citizens so they can make decisions. e.g. Yetsel Dhror
–Government online (GOL): transactions with government online
–More information producing increased demands for government accountability:
–How taxes are being spent e.g. how increased expenditures on police relate to the crime rate.
–Greater access and links makes clearer who is doing what, so citizens and interest groups are asking: "Who is accountable?"
–The implications of European and Canadian Initiatives to Create Egovernment
–Canadian, American, European and Asian leaders (Singapore/Malaysia)
–How can governments govern now, with so much electronic access? e.g. Reg Alcock, M.P.; Duncan Bailey, TBS, doing Ph.D. on this.
– Implications of Ecommerce for Government
- Funding government in an international economy: Paula Tiihonen, Secretary, Committee for the Future, Parliament of Finland
- Possible innovations: The bit tax, etc.
- The technological future
- Technology
- Implications of hard-wired vs mobile
- Etc.

V. Innovations and Health

–Increased use of telecommunications
- Smartcards
- Online health info
- Health networks
- Delivering health care through the Internet
- diagnosis
- surgery
–The impact of technology on health:
–Climate change, changes in the nutrients of food, toxins.
–New medical technologies: Does technology make us healthier?
–Attempts toward a long-range integration of science thinking and issues
–Federal government interdepartmental committee

VI. Innovations in Intergovernmental and Public-Private Partnerships

–Examples of innovations: What has worked, what has not.
–The ethics of innovation
–Accountability
–Does government have the capacity to manage all these contracts and partnerships?

VII. The Role of Government in Innovation

- Support physical and research infrastructure
- Picking winners and losers
- Picking innovators
- Creating an environment, educating workers
- Scientific and Technological R&D
–Addressing inequality
–Innovation awards

VIII. Summary of the Results of the Workshop, by Section

–Session chairs report

Should there be/who should sponsor/participate in a subsequent workshop/symposium? Where should it be?

This Innovation Journal consultation commenced December 15, 2000. You may comment by completing and submitting the attached form. To learn more about the workshop and ideas for the scope of its activities you may write to: Eleanor Glor [hot link]

If you no longer wish to be part of the conference and you want to be deleted from the distribution list please send an e-mail at any time to: Eleanor Glor and type "unsubscribe to consultation in the subject area.

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Updated May 27, 2001