Internet & social media - Official Languages examination - Senate Committee videos

The Senate Official Languages Committee is conducting an "Examination on the use of the Internet, new media and social media and the respect for Canadians’ language rights".

There have been two meetings so far and the next is scheduled for October 31, 2011.

The first meeting was on October 24, 2011.  Video and audio are available from ParlVU.  This meeting was with the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages.

Video format is Window Media Video (WMV).  In order to view this video on a Mac you will need to install Flip4Mac WMV (free).

Transcripts have not been posted yet.

The second meeting was on October 27, 2011.  Video and audio are available from ParlVU.  This meeting was with Treasury Board Secretariat.  Notably, President of the Treasury Board Tony Clement.

The discussions included social media, the Digital Economy Strategy, and open data.

iPolitics.ca did an article based on the meeting and post-meeting interviews: Twitter, Facebook and social media ‘critical’ to government, Clement says.  Some quotes from the article:

"It would be quite bizarre if we’re trying to hire the best and the brightest young people with great vitality coming into the public service and they’re used to having tethered tablets and instant social media feedback and they can do half of their work at the coffee shop without any difficulty and then suddenly they are transformed into a public servant and none of that is available. That would be a bizarre situation." - Tony Clement

...

Corinne Charette, the government’s chief information officer, said 66 federal government institutions now have bilingual twitter accounts and official government communications are presented in both official languages.

It’s also popular with government employees, she said.

“Social media is an exciting development. It is widely requested by public servants..."

...

Clement told senators he is also pushing ahead with his open data initiative, to get more raw data out of institutions like Statistics Canada and make it public.
“The more data we can get out there, the more applications can be thought of by brilliant people, entrepreneurs.”

The next meeting will be on October 31, 2011.  Live video and audio will be available from ParlVU.  The meeting will again be with Treasury Board Secretariat.

Witnesses

Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat

- Corinne Charette, Chief Information Officer of the Government of Canada

- Sue Lajoie, Senior Director, Community and Collaboration

- Ryan Androsoff, Senior Policy Advisor, Web 2.0, Community and Collaboration

- Marc Tremblay, Executive Director, Official Languages Centre of Excellence, Office of the Chief Human Resources Officer

The Senate tweets at @SenateCA / @senatCA

Hashtags (as declared in the Senate video stream) are #senCA and #OLLO

Twitter accounts:

• Tony Clement @TonyClementCPC
• Ryan Androsoff @RyanAndrosoff
• iPolitics.ca @iPoliticsca
• Elizabeth Thompson @LizT1

Previously:
October 19, 2011 Treasury Board President Clement speaks about open government at GTEC
January 28, 2011  open government in Canada [ETHI committee]

Here's a Storify of some of the Twitter traffic from October 27, 2011