That struck me as odd, because here at ITBusiness.ca, we get a huge number of pitches from vendors about public sector projects, many more than we could possibly cover. I realized, though, in reading some of the submissions, why I hadn’t heard of many of them. There’s a section in the award application that asks the applicant organization if the project has received any media exposure. Only one or two seemed to understand what was being asked: Did anyone in the mainstream or trade press write about this project? One applicant responded by saying it had managed to “avoid media exposure.” Ah-ha. That explains it. I can understand that attitude to a certain point. The media has not always been kind to the government, especially if there’s bad news to report, such as the situation that occurred with the gun registry. So the public sector prefers the axiom no news is good news, apparently. That’s unfortunate, particularly in view of the federal government’s whole service transformation effort and its general move to improve access to citizen services and to increase transparency. TIG doesn’t target the average citizen. Our readership is you — the IT professional in the public sector. I think, from the kinds of questions I always hear at public sector IT conferences, that this audience wants to know what everybody else is doing and doesn’t have enough opportunities to find out.
In view of that fact, here’s a piece of unsolicited advice, the kind you don’t want to hear because it’s often right: don’t hide your light under a bushel. If your department or agency has done something you think makes a difference to Canadians or to the way the government operates, don’t rely on vendors to spread the word. Don’t try to hide it from the media, because often the media is the only way your colleagues actually find out how you overcame a problem, which in turn helps them in their efforts. Like the cliche says, you’re all winners.