Discussion questions
Increasing technology adoption and transfer among Ontario businesses
It is important to:
- Help small businesses and Ontario’s foundational economic sectors—such as agriculture, construction, and manufacturing—to understand and adopt new data-driven technologies more easily, including expanding digital infrastructure.
- Create a stronger ecosystem of innovation and commercialization by connecting data-driven businesses and their products with key markets.
Discussion questions
- How do we incentivize businesses in Ontario to increase their adoption of data-driven technologies to drive growth?
- The Ontario government has established a number of programs and initiatives to incentivize businesses’ adoption of data-driven technologies. In your view, what has worked? What hasn’t worked?
- How can we help businesses in Ontario to compete more actively and successfully with international players in the data economy?
Enhancing data access for businesses
It is important to:
- Build new collaboration models between government and businesses to determine which government data assets can best help drive business growth.
- Ensure that strong governance structures and standards are in place to promote privacy-protective data business growth.
Discussion questions
- How does your business currently use open data to support growth and productivity? Are there examples of how and why access to data has helped your business?
- What steps can government take to make its data more available to business, and what types of data would be most helpful for businesses to access?
- How can we ensure that businesses generate, collect and resell data in a way that is consent-based and drives growth, but ensures transparency and prevents discrimination?
Streamlining public procurement
It is important to:
- Remove barriers so that Ontario’s small businesses can access government procurement data and opportunities more easily and fairly.
- Promote government procurement of new, innovative data-driven products and services particularly for sectors with barriers to technology adoption and application.
Discussion questions
- What steps can we take to make it easier for businesses to participate in the procurement process for data-driven services and products?
- How can we prioritize innovation procurement and help businesses develop solutions for government that can be commercialized for wider markets?
Building data skills and talent
It is important to:
- Expand access to re-training and upskilling programs, and enable more on-the-job training, to build a pool of data talent in Ontario.
- Build a talent retention and attraction strategy by attracting highly skilled immigrants and creating more opportunities for work-based learning.
Discussion questions
- How can we better enable on-the-job training in key data skills, particularly for employees at small businesses, without creating undue burdens on these employers?
- How can we maximize data-focused talent retention in Ontario?
- How can we better align K-12 and post-secondary curricula with industry needs to build data and digital competency in Ontario?
Comments on this discussion paper will be collected until October 9, 2019. We will post a summary of what we heard on engage.ontario.ca. Other consultations on subsequent discussion papers will follow in the coming months.
If you have questions or comments, please email us at digital.government@ontario.ca or send any other correspondence to the Ontario Digital Service, 595 Bay Street - Suite 1002, Toronto, Ontario, M7A 2C7.
Updated: February 02, 2024
Published: January 14, 2021