An ICTC White Paper
ICTC’s Perspectives on a Data Economy Strategy
Empowering Canada’s 4th Industrial Revolution
Published by ICTC, November 2018
This white paper highlights ICTC’s response to ISED’s Digital and Data Consultations. It addresses the needs of a new era, where a data-driven economy is essential for fledgling entrepreneurs and emerging industries to create and commercialize new Intellectual Property (IP) and achieve national, economic, and social aspirations.
This paper addresses:
Innovation: Canada’s ability to fully partake in a global data-driven race will heavily depend on our ability as a nation to unleash open data innovations while maintaining public privacy, enhancing security, and enabling inclusive growth.
Privacy and Trust: Highly publicized data breaches and data privacy issues have eroded public confidence in both the private and public sectors’ ability to responsibly collect, manage, and analyze their personal information. The environment created by the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has motivated Canada to review its own data and privacy legislation and ICTC recommends action is required to better address the areas of consent, data breach notification and enforcement mechanisms, and the importance of data portability rights.
The Future of Work: ICTC’s labour market foresight points to the demand to fill 216,000 critical ICT positions by 2021, and job growth in ICT is outpacing the overall economy by 6 to 1. At the same time, non-digital jobs are being displaced by AI, robots, and other disruptive technologies. Comprehensive, national skills development initiatives are necessary to maintain and improve Canada’s data and digital competitiveness.
Read the full report to learn about ICTC’s perspective on a National Data Strategy for Canada.
Written by Namir Anani (President & CEO) and Rob Davidson (Manager, Data Analytics & Research), with generous support from the ICTC Research & Policy team.
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