Open Source Economic Development
I would like to start by commending the city for working hard to provide Opinion Ottawa as a forum on economic development. This is a good initiative and anyone in Ottawa that has any comments, concerns or suggestions on economic development should take the opportunity to offer their thoughts.
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If Ottawa is to remain a going concern in the creative economy we as a city need assess our economic development efforts based on the OAR equation. OAR stands for Open Accountable Results. It is extremely important that all of the economic development OARs are rowing in the same direction.
First and foremost the city needs to adopt an OPEN as in open source economic development model (the term open source economic development was coined by TheCodeFactory). The model should be open and accommodating to organizations capable of efficiently delivering on the city’s economic development agenda. Based on my personal experiences the current economic development system is sole sourced and closed.
ACCOUNTABLITY is another important aspect. Economic Development organizations that receive the majority of their funding through public sources should be obligated and held accountable to the public. Public accountability would include full disclosure of;
- financial statements,
- procurement policy/procedure and
- salaries greater than $100k.
This is the same standard as the rest of the city of Ottawa. I have searched for but never been able to find any of this information with respect to OCRI.
Economic development for the city of Ottawa should be RESULTS oriented. I have often questioned the value of large expensive events like the Ottawa Venture Technology Summit, The Eastern Ontario Economic Development forum (with Donald Trump speaking) and other large and expensive initiatives like 82000reasons.
Some open and transparent discussion around a cost benefit analysis of these types of expenditures versus alernatives is in my opinion a worthy discussion. We need to focus on continuous improvement in our economic development.
“However beautiful the strategy … you should occasionally look at the results.” – Winston Churchill
Ian Graham
Couldn’t agree more Ian.
The recent announcement of Ottawa’s Innovation Leadership Team is a case in point.
Same people. Same organizations.
Not sure how that is going to lead to fresh ideas – unless they’ve all been holding back because they didn’t have the “Innovation” label.
That’s not to say there isn’t some good work there BUT to dress up the same vested interests as the leaders of innovation is to admit that the status quo is the expected outcome.
What’s needed is both broader unfiltered participation.