ITAC pitching new ‘matchmaking’ innovation hub to gov’t

Andre Leduc recalls introducing Microsoft Inc. Canada president Kevin Peesker to a Montreal-based astrophysicist with a social media analytics company. The impromptu meeting at a cybersecurity event last year was intended to get Claude Théoret’s Nexalogy, which provides users with deeper Twitter Inc. insights, on Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform. Peesker, who is chair of the Information Technology Association of Canada (ITAC), expressed interest in the company’s technology to better manage social media accounts. The company was purchased by big data company Datametrex AI Ltd. in 2017 for $5.75 million. The meeting was “happenstance” because the two happened to be in the room at the same time, said Leduc, who is vice-president of government relations and policy at ITAC. But that meeting would come to illustrate just what ITAC wants to do: set up a national hub run by a not yet named not-for-profit bringing Canadian companies closer to global tech platforms to develop public sector technologies for a digital government. “It’s that type of matchmaking,” Leduc said of the meeting. “We’d like to create environments that we can do that on a massive scale,” adding it would be the first initiative of its kind in the world. “It’s going to create an environment where startups and and academia are partnering with large multinationals and with large public sector, whether it’s municipalities, provinces or federal the folks operating in this hub to provide them with technology-based solutions,” Leduc said over the phone. ITAC wants those technologies to run on existing platforms provided by these global private sector companies. Currently, the federal government uses technology from Amazon.com Inc.’s AWS cloud platform and Microsoft, but Leduc said the government’s cloud tech adoption is way behind the United States. Amazon expanded its cloud services into Canada in 2016. On Oct. 12, ITAC presented the "Global Govtech Innovation Hub" concept to government officials, including Innovation Canada, and recently registered the meeting on its lobby files. It plans to connect academia, small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), startups, governments and cities to bring the ecosystem much closer together, according to a powerpoint slide presentation posted on its website. To do this, it expects to leverage several partnerships. It has Canarie to provide the high-speed network connecting universities across Canada; it’s working with existing Ottawa innovation hub Bayview Yards, which Leduc said is connected to 30 other incubators across the country; and the Centre of Excellence in Next Generation Networks (CENGN) -- a test bed and incubator for SMEs. "We are in support of this initiative," CENGN spokesman Rick Penwarden said in an email Thursday. "It is common for large bodies like governments to have tech specifications, requirements, and performance well outlined before committing to a contract. CENGN will be this initiative’s go-to organization for testing and validating of the performance of any networking technology." ITAC wants to bring those existing hubs together virtually -- through a future web portal -- and physically through centres, something Leduc calls a “network of initiatives” to come up with ideas in areas including 5G, artificial intelligence, Internet of Things (IoT) and cybersecurity. The hub will not only get the three levels of government, academic institutions and industry talking to each other about what the governments need, but it will also serve as a testing ground for these technologies before a government purchase. Its aim is to help Canadian companies take their technologies further, especially on global markets, while at the same time improve government productivity through new technologies. According to a 2017 McKinsey and Company study, improving government productivity would save the world’s governments as much as $3.5 trillion a year by 2021. Beside Bayview Yards, ITAC is also working with an innovation hub in Gatineau, Quebec -- it also has the support of Quebec -- and startup incubator and accelerator Invest Ottawa, and is in contact with other provinces, Leduc noted. The proposal plots out a future centre in Ottawa that easily connects to Gatineau. Leduc said the future not-for-profit will be able to lease 60,000 square feet of space on Zibi Island, a sustainable development site on the Ottawa river, in the fall of this year to get started. The board of the not-for-profit will include industry, government and academia, Leduc said. The October slide presentation includes a quote from Scott Brison, minister of digital government, a position created by the government last year. “If a company fails to get digital right, it’s out of business,” the Minister is quoted. “If a government fails to get digital right, it’s out of touch with its citizens.” Part of the ITAC’s ask is seed funding from the federal government’s Strategic Innovation Fund. Whatever funding the initiative gets, ITAC aims to generate a return of 50 times that. Leduc gave a range of between $50 to $100 million to get the project off the ground, but said the actual cost could be just $50 million. Afterward, the project will become self-sustaining because the players involved will need to lease space to use the program, he said. Leduc said the idea received praise from political figures. “ISED is like, ‘This is genius,’” Leduc recalled. It’s currently working on a more thorough model outlining how many jobs and how much money the endeavour is expected to produce that was requested by the National Capital Region Caucus, Leduc said. ITAC has brought on some of the most prestigious companies to make sure its business model suffices: partners include three of the Big Four accounting firms (KPMG, PwC, and Deloitte), which are doing work on the project’s expected economic impacts. That report is expected by the end of January, Leduc said. As well, the organization has brought on management consulting companies McKinsey and Company, and Accenture. The organization, whose membership extends to 350 companies, has another advantage: its board includes some of the largest companies in Canada and around the world, including BCE Inc., Rogers Communications Inc., Telus Corp., Amazon.com Inc., IBM Corp., Intel Corp., and Microsoft. Microsoft’s Azure is used by 57 governments around the world, Leduc said, meaning that Canadian inventions could in the future just plug into what those governments already use. It’s also easy to replicate global sales if users can just “plug and play,” he added. One example is Ottawa-based AirShare Inc., whose technology helps detect and capture wayward drones in the sky. As an incident Tuesday that saw London’s Heathrow airport temporarily halt departing flights due to a drone sighting shows, that kind of tech could draw global interest. AirShare’s growth began with a seeding round from Bayview, and Leduc, citing Azure’s global reach, said he wants to see the proposed hub expose this kind of Canadian technology to global markets. For November, Shaw Communications Inc. led all telecoms with 16 communications, followed by Telus with seven, and Bell and Rogers with five each. Telecom and broadcast lobbying fell 21 and 57 per cent, respectively, compared to the previous month. — With reporting by Ahmad Hathout at ahathout@thewirereport.ca and editing by Anja Karadeglija at akarad@thewirereport.ca

ITAC pitching new ‘matchmaking’ innovation hub to gov’t

News | January 9, 2019

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ITAC pitching new ‘matchmaking’ innovation hub to gov’t

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