6.2 How to Move Forward to Create a Digital Strategy
At a national level, Canada retains a familiar set of jurisdictional divides between Industry Canada, Canadian Heritage, and the CRTC – and other contributing departments and agencies. In framing a digital policy, Canada should aim for a process that overcomes the polarization that can ensue from this fragmented responsibility.
The implementation of a national digital strategy will require innovation in horizontal policy development across departments and agencies. There is an important provincial dimension as well, since provincial governments have evolved their own incentives for the growth of digital media.
If Canada were to follow the lead established by Digital Britain, the national digital strategy should be a collaborative process across relevant departments and agencies – and between the federal and provincial governments. The efforts of individual governmental entities are commendable, but working in relative isolation of each other is a serious hindrance to substantive progress. To this end we suggest institutional design principles that we judge to be most likely to result in developing an effective national digital strategy.
Design Principle #1: Make it Political
We suggest that the development of a national digital strategy directly involve relevant ministers and parliamentarians.
In Digital Britain, the UK avoided the sclerosis of a royal commission by setting up a more nimble ministerial process involving roughly the equivalents of Industry Canada, Canadian Heritage and the Ministry of Human Resources and Skills Development. The lesson is that any process established to develop a national strategy has to be initiated at the highest political level and involve those ministers directly accountable for the relevant subjects.33
We should not simply task selected eminent citizens to look at the issues, and thus absolve Canada from further action until they report back in some leisurely timetable. Rather, we need to fully engage the political process, so that a national digital policy is viewed as strategic to our future prosperity. Canada’s parliamentarians need to engage the citizenry in this dialog. In the British precedent parliamentarians were fully engaged. Even the Conservative loyal opposition in the UK created its own Digital Britain task force.34
Of course there are antecedents to what we are calling for here. Over a decade ago, Canada organized around the concept of the "information highway."35 There were provincial initiatives, as well, e.g. Quebec’s l’autoroute de l’information. However, there have been so many developments in this “info highway” that that kind of focused attention is necessary again. Canada once led the world in bringing the Internet to schools and broadband to homes, but now has some catching up to do.
Design Principle #2: Establish a National Digital Panel
We suggest that in order to pen a national strategy, a digital panel be struck. It should be high level, nimble and authoritative.
Canada should avoid the cumbersome nature of a royal commission or the narrowness of a task force defined around infrastructure. We suggest the establishment of a high level, nimble, and authoritative national digital panel that represents major stakeholders inside and outside government.
Such a panel can seek the views of all the major stakeholders and conduct selected policy analyses. Its composition should include experienced executives knowledgeable about technological innovation, creative industries, training and HR development, investment incentives, and telecommunications. The timeframe should be adequate to generate input from stakeholders and unaligned citizens – of course using the new tools of social media enabled by the Internet.
Design Principle #3: Create Accountability Mechanisms
We suggest that the national digital panel have the mandate to create mechanisms of accountability and also outline which departments and other governmental agencies are responsible for each initiative in the national digital strategy.
In addition to addressing the issues discussed in this paper, it should be the role of the national digital panel to create the structures of how a strategy will work in practice. This kind of recommendation would include delineating ministerial responsibilities and divisions of power, and monitoring progress and creating accountability mechanisms.
Design Principle #4: Establish a Priority Setting Process
We suggest that the national digital panel establish a process to set criteria and a process to set priorities that recognize the limited fiscal room of government, and that leverage private funding for each initiative in the national digital strategy.
This priority process is particularly important in the context of the massive debt taken on by the federal and all governments in Canada. While major investments are needed a national digital strategy cannot simply put forward a wish list of projects whose funding requirements are beyond any conceivable federal fiscal framework. Therefore, an important part of the broad accountability is to design a process in which the panel has to operate within a responsible fiscal framework, and one that constantly looks for ways to leverage private investment.
Design Principle #5: Seek Consensus with the Provinces
Invite the provinces to plan for a series of meetings in which the parameters of a national digital strategy can be reviewed with the provinces and take into account their own strategies.
Because of the importance of provincial initiatives, the national digital panel should take measures to reach out to the provinces. The objective would to develop an effective meshing of federal policy with provincial programs and tax incentives. The coordination required to pull this off will be immense, but in the end, the inefficiencies created by misalignment would be counterproductive.
Design Principle #6: Recognize Role of Regional and Local Initiatives
Incorporate the concept of regional and local clusters in the design of objectives, measures, and priorities.
Design Principle #7: Digital Panel reports to Special Cabinet Committee
We further suggest that the panel should have the ability to directly report to a special cabinet committee with its recommendations.
This national digital panel could report to a special cabinet committee, so that it can facilitate decision-making along the way, rather than react to a full report at the end of the process. Cabinet ministers are better equipped to decide rather than consult, as the latter takes too much time. Therefore, the panel can do the consultation and Ministers can set the digital course for the future. The process should take 15 to 18 months to develop and start implementing a national digital strategy.
33 In France there is a Minister of the Digital Economy (ministre de l’économie numérique)
34 Chaired by Greg Dyke, the ex-Director General of the BBC.
35 The Info Highway Task Force was seen to be successful in raising awareness, but some skeptics point out that it addressed potentially serious issues that never emerged and ignored the full growth potential of the Internet.
