ITSP Committee Board Recap 2017

December 9, 2017

Dear Board of Directors,

First off I would like to give a big thank you to the 2017 ITSP Committee members,

I was honoured to once again server as the ITSP Committee Chair for the second year and I was pleased that we had a full 2017 ITSP committee represented by all Regions; we had some returning members and friends as well as a few new members for the 2017 ITSP committee.

ITSP Committee Members for 2017:

• Greg Scriver – Chair, NCR Regional Director
• Karim Chaggani – Member from British Columbia / Yukon
• Todd McCoy – Member from Prairie / NWT
• Yvonne Snaddon – Bilbija – Member from Ontario
• Kimberley Tombs – Member from NCR
• Christian Gaboury – Member from Quebec
• Nicholas Isenor – Member from Atlantic
• Tony Goddard – Friend of Committee
• Cheryl Jennings – Friend of Committee
• Kathees Anandavel – Friend of Committee

The 2017 ITSP committee held 4 meetings this year all at the National Office in Ottawa, our first meeting was held on Monday April 10, 2017. During our first meeting Phil Keast (Director of Informatics) presented the 2017 Projects and Priority for the Informatics group to the ITSP Committee. The ITSP Committee then identified the 7 top priority projects that the ITSP Committee would work on in collaboration with the Director of Informatics and the rest of the PIPSC Informatics team. Most of these projects were started in 2016 and are part of the overall PIPSC IM/IT Operational Plan.

List of the top 7 priority projects for 2016 ITSP Committee:

2017 ITSP Projects

The 2017 ITSP Mandate and Work Plan was presented to the Board in May 2017 and was approved by the Board of Directors. In April 2017 the ITSP committee was informed that Phil Keast – Director Informatics would be leaving the Institute to take on new challenges. The whole committee wished Phil success in his endeavours.

Our second ITSP committee meeting was held on Saturday July 8^th, 2017. The committee was informed that the Board of Directors had approved the 2017 ITSP Mandate and Work Plan and of course had been informed of Phil’s departure. During this meeting we received an update and demo of the new PIPSC website that was going to be launched on Monday July 10, 2017. The ITSP committee then spent the rest of our time testing the new website prior to its launch.

Our third ITSP committee meeting was held on Saturday September 23, 2017. Eric Ritchie (Manager Informatics) was invited to attend our meeting to provide the committee with an update on the Informatics projects and to advise the committee that we could/would be involved in some of the testing of the new email system and List Servers. Kiavash Najafi (Director, Policy and Communications) was also invited to give a review of NationBuilder website; unfortunately the timing wasn’t very good. Kiavash was not able to attend due to the birth of his first child (congratulations to Kiavash’s new family). As Chair of the ITSP Committee I met with Kiavash a few days prior and received the PowerPoint presentation that I then presented to the ITSP committee during our meeting.

Our last and final meeting for 2017 was held on Saturday December 9, 2017. Once again Eric Ritchie (Manager Informatics) was invited to attend our meeting to provide the committee with an update on all of Informatics projects for this year. The committee was pleased to hear all of the great work the Informatics staff have been working on and are looking forward to the continued work in 2018 on the rollout of these projects. Kiavash Najafi (Director, Policy and Communications) and Jill Piebiak Digital Strategist was also invited to give a full demo and review of our new NationBuilder website; The ITSP committee was very impressed with the knowledge that Jill and Kiavash have with this new tool and are looking forward to working the team as next steps in rolling this out to members and continuant bodies over the next 18 months. These types’ of technology tools are the way forward for the Institute to better engage and communicate our message and allow our members to take Action.

I personally would like to thank the 2017 ITSP Committee members Yvonne Snaddon-Bilbija, Karim Chaggani, Nicholas Isenor, Christian Gaboury, Kimberley Toms and Todd McCoy, also the ITSP friends of the Committee Cheryl Jennings, Tony Goddard and Kathees Anandavel. Thank you all for your support and thank you to the PIPSC Informatics staff for the continued professional working relationship with our Committee, and the added support from Eric Ritchie (Manager Informatics) and Kiavash Naijafi (Director, Policy and Communications).  We are Better Together!

In solidarity,

Greg

Greg Scriver
ITSP Committee Chair
Board of Directors - NCR Regional Director