Gerry Matte Receives Peter Bennett Award 2009 
June 15, 2009 -- Gerry Matte, one of the hardest-working builders of MISA organizations in Canada and British Columbia, has received the 2009 Peter Bennett Award.
The presentation announcement was made in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, during the Lac Carling Congress by Daya Pillay, president of MISA/ASIM Canada.
“Gerry is a strong advocate of municipal cooperation and continues to provide leadership, demonstrate commitment, and encourage participation of all municipalities in MISA activities,” Pillay said.
Matte is manager of information technology for the District of Saanich, BC. He is a founder of MISA BC as well as MISA/ASIM Canada. He is active in both the provincial and national associations and has initiated many ideas and projects that have helped municipalities work together to improve efficiency and service to the public.
The Peter Bennett Award is the highest honour in Canada for municipal information-technology leaders. It is presented annually by MISA/ASIM Canada to a volunteer who has made an outstanding contribution to the municipal IT environment.
Matte is the fifth person to receive the award. The first was Peter Bennett himself, posthumously. He was manager of systems for the City of Winnipeg, a pioneer in the use of eGovernment technologies and a founder of MISA/ASIM Canada. He was co-chair of the Lac Carling Congress in 2004 and 2005, but died suddenly just days before the 2005 Congress was to begin.
Matte was a colleague of Bennett’s in bringing together the five regional associations that eventually formed MISA/ASIM Canada in 2006. He recently retired as the national association’s founding secretary but continues as a member of its Board of Directors.
Matte served for many years as a municipal representative on the Public Sector CIO Council (PSCIOC), working with federal and provincial officials to develop and coordinate policies and practices related to electronic service delivery.
From 2005 through 2008 he was a member of the PSCIOC’s XML Subcommittee and a member of the Steering Committee for its Task Force for Identity, Authentication and Authorization. He retains a keen interest in security and privacy issues and how they relate to making online transactions efficient and coordinated among governments.
Matte originated the idea for MISA special-offers programs, first provincially and then nationally, under which vendors offer special municipal pricing and services to municipalities in member associations. He is also a supporter and builder of open-source standards for municipalities.
All told, Matte has been involved with information technology for local governments for more than 20 years, in Saskatchewan and BC. Since helping to establish MISA BC in 1992 he has held the positions of webmaster, treasurer, vice-president and president, and is now past-president. He was co-chair and host for the 2000 MISA BC annual conference in Victoria.
Today Matte coordinates a monthly meeting of Capital Region IT managers, which identifies potential ways to gain economies of scale on projects and share experiences.
“Gerry is a tireless and inspirational leader in local government and a worthy recipient of the Peter Bennett Award,” Pillay said.
Roy Wiseman Receives Peter Bennett Award 2008
 Roy Wiseman, CIO of the Region of Peel, Ontario, has been named the 2008 recipient of the Peter Bennett Award.
Wiseman received the award June 2 in a ceremony at the Lac Carling Congress in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, before an audience of IT and service-delivery officials from all levels of government.
In presenting the award, Kevin Peacock of the City of Saskatoon, outgoing president of MISA/ASIM Canada, praised Wiseman as one of Canada’s most influential municipal IT executives.
“His work has been inspirational at local, provincial and national levels,” Peacock said.
The Peter Bennett Award is the highest award in the Canadian municipal IT community. MISA/ASIM Canada created it in 2005, shortly after the sudden death of the greatly respected municipal IT leader from Winnipeg for whom it is named.
The award trophy is presented annually to an individual who has made an outstanding contribution to the Canadian municipal IT community and to the MISA/ASIM Canada mission and objectives, while exemplifying Bennett’s spirit of demonstrated leadership and working “beyond the call” with humour and humanity.
In accepting the award, Wiseman said: “It has been a great pleasure to be part of the municipal community and the MISA community for so many years. I know probably every municipal IT director in Ontario and most of them across the country and they are a wonderful group of people.
“I love working in this broader community with our provincial and federal colleagues and I hope to keep doing it for a long time. I get a lot more out of this than I ever put into it.”
Peacock noted that Wiseman is one of a small group of people, including Bennett, who guided the creation of MISA/ASIM Canada. As founding secretary, he directed the association’s incorporation process. He is the principal author of the MISA/ASIM Canada By-Laws and Operations Manual.
Wiseman served as a municipal representative on the Public Service CIO Council from 2006 until this year and was for several years a municipal representative on the National CIO Subcommittee on Information Protection .
He has been the municipal co-chair of the Lac Carling Congress since 2006 and has attended every Congress since its inception 12 years ago. At present he is helping to organize a meeting of the Joint Councils planned for the fall of 2008 with co-hosts the City of Toronto, Peel Region and the Province of Ontario.
“He has embodied the MISA/ASIM Canada objectives of facilitation, sharing, co-operation and collaboration, service quality, and effective delivery of municipal services using IT,” Peacock said. “He has devoted his professional life to these objectives and the IT community in Canada has benefited greatly from his efforts, and continues to do so.”
Wiseman has made many contributions to MISA Ontario. He has served continuously on the Executive since 1991 and was president in 1992-93; he led the incorporation of MISA Ontario in 1992; was chair of annual conferences in 1995 and 1999 and chair of the MISA IT Security Conference in 2005.
Some of Wiseman’s work in Ontario has had national benefits. He helped initiate the development of Municipal Interface to a national professional journal that has raised the status of MISA/ASIM Canada as a thought leader. Today he is chair of the Municipal Reference Model Version 2 Steering Committee, working to unify the language of service delivery for municipalities across Canada and develop a Web-based reference service.
Wiseman was the first recipient of MISA Ontario’s Regena Lerke Distinguished Service Award in 2002 and was given the John Cushing Award of Merit in 1998 for long and exemplary service. At Lac Carling last year, he was presented with the Heintzman Leadership Award by the Institute for Citizen-Centred Service for outstanding leadership within the public sector in promoting citizen-centred service.
Wiseman is the fourth recipient of the Peter Bennett Award. The first was Bennett himself, posthumously. The 2006 recipient was Debbie Barrett, now CIO of McMaster University, formerly director of information technology for the City of Mississauga and past president of MISA Ontario. In 2007 the award went to Per Kristensen of the City of Nanaimo, a founder and long-time leader of MISA BC and co-founder of MISA/ASIM Canada as a member with Bennett of the organizing committee.
Peter Bennett, 1955-2005
Per Kristensen Receives Peter Bennett Award 2007
Per Kristensen of the City of Nanaimo, BC, a pioneering builder of municipal and IT organizations and a leader in establishing partnership status for municipalities in dealings with the British Columbia government, has been honoured by MISA/ASIM Canada with the 2007 Peter Bennett Award.
Kristensen was presented with the highest award in the Canadian municipal IT community on April 30 during the Lac Carling Congress at Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario. He was also honoured at a presentation ceremony May 28 at Nanaimo City Hall before the mayor and council.
Presenter Kevin Peacock, president of MISA/ASIM Canada, said, “Per has worked closely with his municipal colleagues, first in British Columbia and then nationally, to ensure that municipalities work together, that benefits are shared, and that municipal input is heard and contributes to the national strategy for governments’ electronic service delivery.”
The Peter Bennett Award was created in 2005, shortly after the sudden death of the greatly respected municipal leader from Winnipeg for whom it is named.
One of the first initiatives of the newly formed MISA/ASIM Canada Board of Directors, the award now is presented annually to a volunteer who has made an outstanding contribution to the municipal IT environment in Canada.
Kristensen is the third recipient of the award. The first was Peter Bennett himself, posthumously.
The 2006 recipient was Debbie Barrett, now CIO of McMaster University, formerly director of information technology for the City of Mississauga and past president of MISA Ontario, who led the way for municipalities to join other levels of government in advancing citizen-centred service delivery.
Barrett was the first municipal representative on the Public Sector CIO Council and Kristensen succeeded her in 2000. A co-founder of MISA/ASIM Canada as a member with Bennett of the organizing “group of eight,” he also participated for two years on the Public Sector Service Delivery Council Research Committee and remains active as a representative for MISA/ASIM Canada on various committees of the Joint Councils.MISA Canada
Municipal Milestone
Kristensen was responsible for achieving a milestone for MISA/ASIM Canada in 2006 when he organized the first-ever meeting of the Joint Councils with a municipal host. The meeting in the City of Nanaimo on Vancouver Island established a new standard for such meetings, including an additional educational program.
Kristensen was one of the founding members of the Municipal Information Systems Association of British Columbia (MISA BC) in 1994. He has served on the Board of Directors since that time and is a past president.
He has been instrumental in forging a close relationship between MISA BC and the provincial government and was a founding member and second vice president of the Integrated Cadastral Information Society of BC.
Kristensen is also a former chapter president of the Canadian Information Processing Society and serves on the Lac Carling Conference Steering Committee
As chief technology officer for Nanaimo for 20 years, Kristensen has ensured that the City, though a smaller municipality, has won several awards and is considered a Canadian leader in the effective delivery of municipal services through technology.
He has lead responsibility for the development of the new City of Nanaimo convention centre, to be opened in 2008 – with the MISA BC Fall Conference as its opening event.
Debbie Barrett Receives Peter Bennett Award 2006
McMaster University CIO Debbie Barrett, a pioneer of national municipal cooperation and influence on IT strategies across Canada, speaks to delegates at the MISA IT Security Conference in November 2006 after receiving the Peter Bennett Award .
Debbie Barrett, a past president of MISA Ontario who first made it possible for municipalities to join other levels of government in advancing citizen-centred service delivery, has received the 2006 Peter Bennett Award.
The award is presented annually by MISA/ASIM Canada to a volunteer who has made an outstanding contribution to the municipal IT environment in Canada.
Barrett is only the second person to receive the award. The first was Peter Bennett himself, posthumously. He was manager of systems for the City of Winnipeg, a pioneer in the use of eGovernment technologies and a founder of MISA/ASIM Canada. He was co-chair of the Lac Carling Congress in 2004 and 2005, but died suddenly just days before the 2005 Congress was to begin.
The award created in his honour was presented to Barrett in Hamilton on November 21, 2006, during the MISA IT Security Conference.
Presenter Roy Wiseman, CIO and director of information and technology services for the Region of Peel, said Barrett “created for us a respectability on the national stage.”
Barrett, while director of information technology for the City of Mississauga, was one of the first municipal delegates to attend the Lac Carling Congress from its founding in 1996. There she became acquainted with CIOs from other levels of government and urged them to include municipalities as partners in their initiatives.
A year after the Public Sector CIO Council was formed in 1998, Barrett was invited to join as the representative from MISA. She was later instrumental in bringing municipalities together in a national organization, organizing meetings in 2001 that led to formation of the Municipal CIO Council, the predecessor organization to MISA/ASIM Canada.
“In my view,” Wiseman said, “Debbie opened the door to our participation on the national CIO and service-delivery stage, and without somebody like Debbie, I’m not sure we would have got through that door – certainly not as quickly.”
Barrett, who received a standing ovation by delegates to the IT Security Conference, now is CIO of McMaster University. She retains ties to MISA, however, and issued a “call to action” for municipal IT leaders to get involved in the chapters and national association.
“Please don’t wait to be asked to volunteer -- just step up and make your vision and your dream real,” she said.
Peter Bennett Honoured Posthumously With Award Bearing His Name
The inaugural Peter Bennett Award has been presented, posthumously, to the inspirational leader for whom it is named.
The award was presented to Peter Bennett by Kevin Peacock, president of MISA/ASIM Canada, and Chris Fisher, vice-president of MISA Prairies, who travelled to Winnipeg May 24, 2006, to deliver the award to Renate Bennett, wife of the late IT visionary.
The award was in recognition of Peter’s tireless work on behalf of municipal information technology, as well as his invaluable contribution to moving the municipal agenda forward in Canada.
The presentation took place at a Winnipeg City Council meeting, where Peter had appeared many times as director of the City’s IT department. There was a full gallery and many of Peter’s friends and colleagues were present.
Mayor Sam Katz welcomed Chris and Kevin to the City, gave a short history on MISA/ASIM Canada and recognized Peter Bennett and the work he did on behalf of the City of Winnipeg. Mayor Katz then introduced Kevin, who provided the background on the Peter Bennett Award and the role of MISA/ASIM Canada.
Kevin then made the presentation to Renate Bennett, Peter’s wife. Renate responded with a very heart-warming response and thanked Mayor Katz for his kind words and MISA/ASIM Canada for creating an award in Peter’s memory and making him the first recipient.
She said Peter would have been very proud to have received the award and to be recognized by his peers for his invaluable contributions to the municipal IT environment in Canada.
Renate Bennett receives the Peter Bennett Award on behalf of her late husband from Kevin Peacock of the City of Saskatoon, founding president of MISA/ASIM Canada.
Relatives, friends and colleagues of the late Peter Bennett pose at Winnipeg City Hall on May 24, 2006, after the award bearing his name was presented to his wife Renate, second from right in the front row.
|
