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GDPR - May 26th Onward

The GDPR is in effect. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) (EU) 2016/679 is a regulation in EU law that is now in effect. This affects all organizations that service European citizens. In North America, most organizations only became aware of it recently. The policies of the GDPR are quite broad and establish a bold Privacy by Design framework. Ann Cavoukian published the 7 Foundational Principles of privacy nearly a decade ago. At the time she was the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario. Since this time the amount of personally identifiable information (PII) has skyrocketed. The impact of corporate...

Accessibility Widgets

I've written on our decision to move ahead an accessibility widget in Personalization & Accessibility with Drupal . I thought it would be worthwhile highlighting some of the various options that are currently being used in a number of sites. I do now believe that they are an important part of building more accessible content. I wanted to highlight a few of the options for preference widgets because there are just so many and there are very few common patterns. Adding an accessibility feature is nice, but it is important that it is discoverable. Paralympic.ca Site Features: Nice simple visual...

Let's Rethink Procurement and Get Accessible ICT

Speakers at the meeting to produce a Canadian version of the OECD Playbook for ICT Procurement

Everybody wants their website to be accessible. Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) is key for any modern organization. In the Government of Canada, it is a clear part of the Liberal Party's mandate . Setting a strong policy direction is critical, but then what? Most departments still see accessibility as a one-liner that can be added to an ICT contract. Then the responsibility for any shortfalls lies on the vendor. Sadly, this doesn't work. Accessibility is a journey, not a destination. Web accessibility is complicated, the ecosystem and use cases change over time. So what can procurement do to fix...

Privacy is a Big Deal!

Cenotaph in Ottawa - Symbols of Privacy & Freedom

The tech sector has undermined personal privacy in the constant pursuit of the latest shiny thing. Privacy is a core component of our democracy and is essential for free expression. Most have assumed that it is built into the online tools that they use every day. This isn't the case. The media coverage of Cambridge Analytica and Facebook how dangerous this is. The model of surveillance capitalism put forward by Google is now very advanced. Big Data & Artificial Intelligence gives businesses more insights than Big Brother dreamed possible. Many people are coming to the realization that some state regulation...

AI Won't Solve Our Accessibility Problems

There is a lot of excitement about AI (Artificial Intelligence). It shows promise to solve many problems, including some for greater digital inclusion. I see great potential, but also some significant limitations. We need a measured approach to machine intelligence to learn how algorithms can best help. The Google Translate Problem Let’s admit it. Google Translate is getting pretty good . However, it isn’t good enough to be as good as a professional translator. At some point, for some languages, we’ll probably get there. However, I still do not see a point that for legal documents that we would blindly...

Owning a .ee - why I Chose to Start a European Company

Siim speaking about the Estonian Digital Government

I have to say that historically, I haven't had a good reason to think much about Estonia. It's just the first of the Baltic countries that we covered in history class in high-school. It wasn't until the FWD50 conference in Ottawa where this really shifted. Siim Sikkut spoke about Estonia building up a digital government from the ground up. The contemporary Estonian government started only 1992, shortly after the WWW started. There were some bold leaders who decided to start not with what other countries had done, but to start digital. He mentioned e-Residency & the ease of starting a...

Personalization & Accessibility with Drupal

OpenConcept Website with Fluid UI Preference Editor

Accessibility is complicated. There is no single site that is universally accessible. One of the best initiatives I've seen by an organization was the BBC with their My web my way accessibility section. Unfortunately, they have decided to archive it and stop maintaining these pages. It is unclear to me whether any of the personalization options defined here will continue to be supported or not within the BBC. I do think that sites could do more to help explain how their users can get the most out of their site. Most sites who do this put it alongside their Accessibility...

Office Waste Reduction

I am a Quaker and I was going to meeting on Sunday and came in from the cold with a bit of a runny nose. I grabbed a tissue, used it and then threw it into the trash. I didn’t even think about it until a member of our community picked it out of the trash (along with some other garbage) and put it into the compost. She then went on to talk about how discouraged that she was about our ability to do something as simple as manage our garbage. I definitely agreed with her concerns, and yet I...

2017 Environmental Report

OpenConcept is a Certified B Corporation . We understand that the economy exists within a fragile ecosystem. Capitalism is a powerful force but when it focused exclusively on profits it is also a serious threat to the future of humanity. We think that environmental reporting is something that all organizations should do to help us measure what matters. We put forward our first Environmental Report for 2016 just a few months ago, so this is mostly a matter of releasing our 2017 numbers: Natural Gas: 83 GJ Electricity: 34 GJ Water: 34k L Flights 10718 km or 990 kg of...

Actively Encouraging Open Government Engagement

I have been very encouraged by the growth of Open Government initiatives around the world. It’s done so much to help make governments more agile, responsive, accessible and affordable. Success of this model depends on a community of contributors, most of who who lie outside of government. This means that they also fall outside of the hierarchical chain of command. How the public sector engages with that community may well determine how effective these initiatives are. Supporting contributors Governments don’t have either the mechanism or capacity to give money to people who contribute good ideas to their policies or practices...

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