Date: April 10th 2006

Open Source Software and Government
The Intellectual Resources Canada (IRCan) Initiative

Presented by Joseph Potvin, Treasury Board of Canada

Date: Thursday April 20, 2006
Time: 7:00 - 9:00 PM
Location: Adobe Systems Canada

Abstract
Intellectual Resources Canada (IRCan) is an emerging inter-departmental and inter-sectoral initiative to rationalize public spending on custom intellectual assets, including software. It is being created to support collective evolution of such assets across combinations of public sector, commercial, academic and civil society participants, while engaging the full spectrum of business methods and legislation, agreements, policies and guidelines. Through FY2006-07, IRCan will be piloted as a limited program led by Enterprise Stewardship, CIO Branch, Treasury Board Secretariat, with the participation of several departments and agencies, as well as other jurisdictions. Eventually, it is hoped that numerous organizations will be able to draw upon the policy framework, business design, and systems infrastructure of the IRCan Initiative to assist communities engaged in the creation and evolution of any intellectual assets under joint and collective copyright, that are of interest to
the Government of Canada.

In this sesssion, the business requirements of two open source project communities initiated by the Canadian Government will be outlined to explain the underlying purpose and strategy of the IRCan Initiative:

"OPA" (Online Proposal Appraisal) is an open source (GNU-GPL) grants and contributions management system started in 1999 at the International Development Research Centre (IDRC). For five years OPA has been used to run the largest international development research grants initiative at the World Bank.
"ITERation" (IT for Expenditure Reporting Automation) is the first open source (GNU-GPL) solution to be initiated and shared by Treasury Board Secretariat. By facilitating more timely and auditable reporting from authoritative sources for any defined profile of investments or expenditures, ITERation should help Canadian federal organizations to meet the goals of the government's planned Accountability Act. The Reference Implementation should also be useful to other types of organizations.


Biography
Joseph Potvin is an IT economist with the Enterprise Stewardship and Internal Services Strategies division, Chief Information Officer Branch, Treasury Board Secretariat, Government of Canada. He coordinates the synthesis of Government of Canada's IT expenditure reporting, and he initiated the ITERation Project to convert this process to an architected solution for expenditure data assembly, management, statistical analysis and reporting. For three years Mr. Potvin has also coordinated planning towards the creation of Intellectual Resources Canada (Ressources Intellectuelles Canada).

After working internationally in the private sector, Mr. Potvin joined the federal government in 1999, first with the International Development Research Centre. There he served as the lead architect and project manager of the third open source (GNU-GPL) software release by the Government of Canada, a grants and contributions management system for the Online Proposal Appraisal (OPA). In 2001, Mr. Potvin was invited to joined the IT Services Branch of PWGSC, to help broaden the use of open source methods in the Government. He represented the branch at the Inter-departmental Open Source Committee hosted by Treasury Board Secretariat.

On his own time, Potvin is co-coordinator of GOSLING (Getting Open Source Logic INto Governments), a voluntary, informal learning and knowledge-sharing community of practice, involving civil servants and other citizens who actively assist the engagement of free/libre open source methods and software solutions in government operations. www.goslingcommunity.org

Mr. Potvin completed an Honors BA (economics) at McGill University in 1983, and a Masters Degree (economics and technology) at Cambridge University, England in 1986. In the late 1980s he taught economic project appraisal, as well as macroeconomic development theory, at three universities in South America.


Where and When?
The meeting takes place on Thursday April 20, 2006 at 7:00 pm in the Klondike Room at Adobe Systems Canada in Ottawa, located at 785 Carling Avenue (near Dow's Lake, between Rochester and Preston streets) Ottawa, ON K1S 5H4 Canada.

Free parking available on site after 6:00 PM; entrance is on Rochester St.
Bus routes 6 and 85 passes in front of the Adobe Systems Canada office on Carling Ave.
Bus route 3 stops on Preston St. at Carling Ave., near the Adobe Systems Canada office.
Bus route 4 stops on Bronson Avenue at Carling Ave., near the Adobe Systems Canada offices (10-15 minute walk)
The O-Train stops at Carling Station; you can walk east long Carling Ave. from the station (3-5 minute walk).

Note: All attending will be required to register with security. Please arrive 5-10 minutes earlier to allow for registering.

The meeting fee is $5 for non-members and free for CapCHI members ($10/year*). Membership is for the session period (September 2005-August 2006) - anyone can join!

Refreshments will be provided for the meeting.

*updated fee for the remainder of this season