Harry Turnbull Receives Peter Bennett Award

Harry Turnbull, executive director of information technology for the City of Windsor, has received Canada’s highest municipal IT award from MISA/ASIM Canada.

Turnbull, who is credited as the driving force in raising MISA/ASIM Canada’s international visibility among municipal IT organizations, was presented with the 2010 Peter Bennett Award on June 14.

Making the presentation at Niagara-on-the-Lake, to an audience of senior government officials attending the 2010 Lac Carling Congress, Maurice Gallant, president of MISA/ASIM Canada, said Turnbull exemplifies leadership in municipal information technology and inter-municipal collaboration.

He has represented MISA/ASIM Canada at several international meetings and was instrumental in arranging for an international delegation from municipal IT organizations to attend the MISA Ontario conference at Niagara Falls.

This was the first time that the Linked Organisations of Local Authority ICT Societies (LOLA), the only international association promoting collaboration among municipal IT directors, has met in conjunction with an annual conference in North America.

Gallant noted that Turnbull is also a representative of MISA/ASIM Canada on the Public Sector CIO Council and “has reinforced the important role that municipal CIOs can play on the PSCIOC and, more broadly, in the work of the Joint Councils.”  Turnbull was host for a meeting of the Joint Councils in Windsor in February 2010.

The Peter Bennett Award is presented to an individual making an outstanding contribution to the Canadian municipal IT community and to the MISA/ASIM Canada mission and objectives, while exemplifying Peter Bennett’s spirit of demonstrated leadership combined with humour and humanity.  Bennett, a municipal IT pioneer from Winnipeg, died in 2005.

“Harry represents a new breed of municipal CIO, who has become a part of the senior management of the organization, rather than just a technologist,” Gallant told the Lac Carling audience.

Turnbull served as president of MISA Ontario in 2005- 2006 and as chair of the Ontario annual conference in 2005.

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