Opening Remarks Alfonso Gagliano , Minister of Public Works and Government Services Canada, Head, Ad Hoc Committee on Communications Keynote Speaker Brenda Laurel , Consultant and Founder of Purple Moon, California. The ideas that motivated his invention of Smalltalk flowed out into the world to influence almost every aspect of computing.
Great ideas have widespread ramifications.
One of the great inventions of our time is the Web. The ideas that motivated it had to do with communication and information-sharing. What has flowed from are new forms of communities and new means for creating and supporting them. In this session, we will look at these and other key characteristics of online communities to see how we can take advantage of them to shape the future of government service and citizen participation on the Net. As the Government of Canada moves towards a horizontal approach to citizen-centred service delivery, the commitment to respond to citizens' needs in a fast, reliable and efficient manner raises a number of critical challenges.