Information Management in the Government of Canada: The Vision

Architected

Ordered arrangement based on a set of defined rules.

Architecture

A set of defined rules used as instructions to build.

Asset

An economic resource belonging to a company or entity that has future economic benefit and is the result of a past business transaction; see also Resource below.

Best Practice

A documented and published best possible way of doing something.

BTEP

Business Transformation Enablement Program (abbreviation). A GC Program to enable coherent business design across the government with a formal, standards-based approach that will guide and expedite business transformation to meet the government's high-level business objectives.

BTEP (SD&P Methodology)

Part of the BTEP toolkit.  Provides an overall process methodology for transformation; see also SD&P below.

Capability

An aptitude, talent or ability that has the potential for development or use.

Capacity

An ability to produce goods and services.

Enterprise

The level of organization at which its stakeholders (in the case of government, citizens) grant the authority to act.

Enterprise

Management

Those roles responsible for managing the government as an enterprise on behalf of taxpayers and citizens, which:

Set direction, plan and manage the Government of Canada as a whole to attain enterprise level outcomes; and,

Direct, control and unify Government of Canada public and provider programs (see also Program below) from a top-of-government perspective through the deployment and manipulation of resources and through the implementation of laws, policies, standards and best practices.

Federated Approach

(Information Management)

A common government-wide approach to planning, designing and implementing the Government's strategic IM infrastructure with the responsibility for the processes and resources that realize IM services distributed across Government of Canada institutions.

GC

Government of Canada (abbreviation)

Information

Data presented in the context of other data for use in decision making and the generation of knowledge, including information that the Government of Canada creates, uses – including from external to Government of Canada sources – or publishes, at all levels from legislation to individual service delivery records, from formal publications to working papers and without regard to the storage or publication mechanisms.

Information Management

Information management is the handling – creating, protecting, using, sharing and disposing – of information produced or acquired by the Government of Canada in a way that enables optimized use by all who have a share in that information or a right to that information.

Information Management Business Domain

All roles in the Government of Canada that govern, design, develop, deliver or utilize IM services, tools, rules and best practices.

Information Management Community

The Information Management Community is made up of specialists and managers responsible for the provision of information management services in the Public Service in Canada. It includes records managers, librarians, records and library technicians and clerks, controlled vocabulary and metadata specialists, and a host of other specialists some of whom also belong to IT communities or other business domains.

Information Management Program Outcome

A beneficial trend in an IM Program target group's need; for example, IM Program will ensure availability of a program's information to its collaborators – at present, while some program information is made available to collaborators when/as needed, usually via program and organization specific memoranda of understanding, there is currently no "universal where appropriate" availability.

Information Management Specialist

Information Management Specialists are experts in one or more of the information management disciplines that support the effective and efficient management of information.

Information Repository

A system for storing, retrieving, and controlling access to information.

Innovation

A new process, capability, standard, method, tool or use of a tool, often contrary to or radically different from established standards, processes or tools.

Institutionalized

To make part of a structured, well-established system.

Legislation

Law enacted by a legislature or other governing body; may refer to a single law, or the collective body of enacted law.

Need

A lack of something essential, desirable, or useful to an individual or a group of people.

Outcome

A beneficial trend in an IM Program target group's need; for example, IM Program will ensure availability of a program's information to its collaborators – at present, while some program information is made available to collaborators when/as needed, usually via program and organization specific Memoranda of Understand, there is currently no "universal, where appropriate" availability.

Policy

Formal direction under legislated authority that imposes specific responsibilities and accountabilities for action on departments, agencies, and other players.

Principles and Strategies

A principle is a rule that defines or constrains decisions about design.

A strategy provides explicit guidance about the direction to be taken in a design.

Problem

Situation that occurs when there are unmet or poorly met needs typically expressed in terms of outcomes not met but include observable symptoms (i.e., things that can be seen and measured). The root causes of a problem are typically identified through analysis; see also Root Cause below.

Program

An accountable mandate to address recognized needs of eligible target groups and to achieve specified outcomes by producing service outputs using resources; a mandate to achieve outcomes. There are two types of Government of Canada programs:

Public program – A program that has one or more target group(s) outside of the Government of Canada.

Provider program – A program that has other government programs as its target groups.

Quality

The distinctive characteristics or properties of a thing that denote some degree of its compliance with specifications.

Resource

An input to support and enable delivery of a business; see also Asset above.

Root Cause

The fundamental reason for an action or condition (e.g., problem); the problem should not reoccur when the root cause is addressed; see also Problem above.

SD&P

Strategic Design and Planning (abbreviation); see also BTEP (SD&P Methodology) above.

Service

A means, administered by a program, of producing a final valued output (i.e. service output) to address one or more target group needs.

Service Output

The desired, or anticipated, measurable product of a service.

Transformation

Implementation of a change for which the motivation is explicitly related to a significant improvement to program outcomes; see also Business Transformation Enablement Program (BTEP) above.