CBSA Awards

GTEC 2005

CBSA honoured for innovation and awarded five gold medals

October 2005 - The Canada Border Services Agency was awarded five gold medals at this year's GTEC Distinction Awards Gala. The GTEC Distinction Awards Program is a premier event that formally recognizes and celebrates leadership, innovation and excellence in enabling and managing e-government across all levels of government within the public sector in Canada.

• Innovative Service Delivery to Citizens and Businesses:
  NEXUS Highway
• Implementing Medium to Large IT Projects:
  TITAN – Leading the World in Virtual Border Management
• Career Achievement for Leadership in E-Government:
  Albert Malo, Director General, IT Strategy
• Supporting IM/IT Operations:
  Innovative Shared Services – From Theory to Reality
• Enabling E-Government in Canada:
  Government On-Line (GOL) Initiative

Innovative Service Delivery to Citizens and Businesses: NEXUS Highway

This award recognizes outstanding achievements by individuals or teams in developing and implementing innovative projects to improve electronic service delivery, with a specific focus on citizens or businesses as clients of government.

The NEXUS Highway program promotes the fast and efficient movement of low-risk Canadian and American travellers at highway border crossings. Canadian and U.S. border agencies can then concentrate their efforts on unknown or potentially high-risk travellers and goods, thereby enhancing security and protection at the border. The program includes a harmonized, bi-national enrolment process, jointly staffed enrolment centres, a single identity card and dedicated traffic lanes — all enabled by a world-leading passage technology solution using advanced licence-plate reader and proximity-card technologies.

Implementing Medium to Large IT Projects: TITAN – Leading the World in Virtual Border Management

This award recognizes the special risks and challenges associated with developing and implementing medium to large IT projects or phases of projects, and the outstanding individuals or teams who have managed and overcome these risks and challenges. Medium to large projects are defined as those with total expenditures in excess of $10 million, including hardware, software, professional services, and departmental staff costs.

The TITAN project is one of only two automated commercial risk-assessment systems in the world in support of border management. It provides continuous, automated risk assessments of all incoming marine cargo shipments prior to their arrival in Canada. This allows critical attention and resources to be directed to those shipments posing the highest risk to Canada’s health, safety and security. By focusing on high-risk shipments, the Canadian economy benefits via the fast and efficient flow of low-risk trade. The project’s successful execution and delivery were the direct result of extensive project and risk-management disciplines applied throughout the lifecycle of the project.

Career Achievement for Leadership in E-Government: Albert Malo, Director General, IT Strategy

This award recognizes the career of a public servant who has consistently demonstrated outstanding leadership in the development, implementation, and/or management of e-government in the public sector.

Albert Malo has dedicated 33 years of his career to the advancement of innovative, sophisticated information technology-based solutions and services. Recently, Mr. Malo has been the driving force behind the delivery of e-government services and solutions at the CBSA. He was instrumental in establishing the shared services arrangement between the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) and the CBSA for infrastructure services, a partnership that has become a model across government. He has also taken on international assignments in Iran, Algeria, Indonesia, Romania and Barbados. Mr. Malo’s foresight, leadership and commitment have gained him the respect of his staff, his peers, his business colleagues and the senior cadre of every organization he has worked in.

Supporting IM/IT Operations: Innovative Shared Services – From Theory to Reality

This award recognizes excellence in sustaining/supporting IT operations within government. Excellence in this category is defined by the efficiency, effectiveness and client satisfaction of a particular system or program over time. This includes, but is not limited to, individuals or teams working in areas such as operations, intranet/Internet management, infrastructure or existing application enhancement/maintenance, to ensure the delivery of a service or program to either internal or external clients.

This large-scale, real-life partnership developed and transitioned to a mission-critical shared service delivery model for both Corporate Administrative Systems and IT infrastructure service delivery. Developed without prior example or precedent, it is a national example of the values and challenges of the shared services and shared systems models. It is also a microcosm of the challenges that these models face: governance, change management, management frameworks, business challenges and priorities. The solutions derived from this shared services arrangement represent 20 percent of common administrative systems and as much as 50 percent of the Government of Canada’s computing capacity.

Enabling E-Government in Canada: Government On-Line (GOL) Initiative

This award recognizes the outstanding achievements of individuals or teams in addressing the strategic challenges of enabling e-government across Canada, including the development of infrastructure and governance policies, standards, measures to protect the security and privacy of citizens and businesses, as well as the strategic partnerships and alliances that will enable future e-government operations and service delivery.

Government On-Line (GOL) is a government-wide initiative to use information and communication technology to enhance Canadians’ access to improved and integrated services, anytime, anywhere and in the official language of their choice. Overall 130 of the most commonly used services are available on-line, and on-line transactions now account for 30 percent of all transactions. GOL has been a catalyst for transforming government services and improving multi-channel service delivery. It represents the continuous and collective effort of all participants to develop horizontal and integrated solutions involving the three levels of government. The significant and increasing use of on-line services by citizens and businesses today demonstrates the success of the initiative, as do independent assessments that have ranked Canada number one in the world for the last five years for e-government.