The latest public-private partnership was struck today in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, as the four Atlantic Premiers signed an agreement with a consortium led by Unisys Canada Inc. to set up and run Atlantic Canada On-Line.
Atlantic Canada On-Line (ACOL) will be an innovative commercial information service, designed to make government information more easily accessible to the business and consumer audiences who use it on a regular basis. For example, information held by deeds and registries could be made available by the ACOL service and marketed to law firms, who could easily access the information from their office computer terminal.
"Unisys is proud to be a member of this public-private partnership. It speaks highly for what can be accomplished with cooperation between the public and private sector and with the cooperation of all of the Atlantic provinces," said Unisys Canada President and Chief Executive Officer, David Wagner. "We are committed to this project and will be investing over $10 million over the next five years to turn the government information and data into a commercially marketable service."
According to Nova Scotia Premier John Savage, "This project is proof of what can be accomplished through regional cooperation. The economic implications, in terms of revenue generation, are tremendous. Existing data will be made more accessible and will be re-packaged such that it is more commercially desirable. In essence, we will be enhancing the public's ability to do business with government."
"As for taxpayers, they will get an indirect return on the data they pay us to collect, without any financial investment in the project. The provinces will see increased revenues as a result of new and increased use of the information currently available," added Savage.
Revenue will be generated by fees paid for access to the databases. A percentage of fees, dependent on contracts agreed upon by each participating government department, will be shared by the government and Unisys.
The Atlantic provincial governments will retain controlling ownership of the data, and the right to exercise veto power over its use and marketing. All statutes and regulations of the four governments concerning privacy and confidentiality of information will apply. In addition, government investment will be limited to supplying its publicly available information to Unisys and its partners.
Unisys' major partners in this venture are Ameritech, recognized specialists in electronic access to government records, headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, The CCL Group of companies, including CorporaTel, Corporate Communications Limited and Corporate Research Associates; and Software Kinetics, an ISO 9001 certified software engineering company.
All services to the public and government information providers will be available in both official languages in New Brunswick, with provisions for future designations of other areas to receive dual linguistic services.