The Digital Challenge: Identifying the New Role for Universities

The release of Canada's Digital Strategy Consultation document provides a vital opportunity, at a vital time, for Canadians to collaborate on the development of a competitive and forward–looking digital strategy.

The Digital Challenge: Identifying the New Role for Universities.

Canada's universities have a major role to play in Canada's digital future. Canada has to be more aggressive, more creative, and more integrated if the country is to succeed in the digital economy. The country needs bolder actions, more substantial investments and great co–ordination among business, government, and universities. The country's impressive strengths in the digital sector need to be mobilized. Universities will have to change to meet the challenge of the digital age, if only to catch up to developments underway in other countries.

To be successful, Canada's universities must:

• Maintain and enhance the level of accomplishment in basic research in engineering and science;
• Expand the contributions of the social sciences and humanities, emphasizing commercially related activities;
• Be open to stronger and more sustained research and development collaboration with business and industry;
• Develop more career–ready undergraduate and graduate programming, with extensive business involvement;
• Collaborate between institutions on a globally competitive scale (i.e. through co–location) in the interest of national and regional economic and employment development;
• Establish a national digital education project designed to research, implement, and support international best practices in elementary and high schools, colleges, universities, and professional development.

Equally, for the university system to make a maximum contribution to Canadian competitiveness in the digital economy, business and government must:

• Expand investments in social science, humanities, and human factors research;
• Ensure that Canada's digital scientific and technological research capacity remains globally competitive;
• Establish a world–leading, regionally distributed development agency focusing on the digital commercialization of Canadian creative content, with universities playing a significant role in this initiative;
• Undertake a major national research project on the nature of and barriers to digital innovation and digital commercialization in Canada (drawing on global developments for insight and innovation);
• Make a sustained commitment to putting Canadian content online and available to Canadians and the world and develop specific programs to capitalize on the project for commercial, cultural, and educational purposes;
• Ensure major business investment directly in a sustained manner in commercially oriented research and training programs;
• Make a major investment in a small number of substantial dedicated research and development centres, all with a commitment to commercialization, supported by private sector and government (federal and provincial) funding.

Canada has a substantial digital presence on a global scale. Sustaining and expanding that base will not be easy. Canada's policy, financial and institutional environments are not globally competitive. The country's digital sector is one of the most mobile in the world, meaning that many talented people, new companies, and commercial ideas leave the country. There is no assurance of success in a sector that is intensely competitive, fast–moving, technologically innovative , and increasingly Asia–centric. Canada's medium– to long–term prosperity rests, substantially, on building a national digital economy.

If Canada is serious about its digital future — and its leaders declare themselves to be — unprecedented levels of co–operation and investment are required. Federal and provincial governments, universities and colleges, the private sector, and public institutions will have to collaborate on a level never before seen in this country. This is not an option. Canada's competitors in the digital space have put aside institutional and sectoral interests in order to do what is best for their countries. The same must happen if Canada hopes to become a truly digital nation.