CANARIE seeks clarification as it prepares to deal with less money, shorter mandate

CANARIE is seeking clarification on the federal Budget's renewal which provided the organization with $40 million over two years — a 17% reduction in funding and far shorter than the five-year commitments CANARIE has received since its inception. President and CEO Jim Roche will be meeting with Industry Canada officials this week to gain more insight into the government's intentions for Canada's advanced research and education network and then re-visit its plans to map out a feasible operating strategy.

CANARIE is focusing on the key areas in its new mandate: building out its network to meet growing demand, developing network tools to enhance the ability of an increasingly diverse research community to utilize the network, and leveraging the network to assist companies seeking to test and deploy new digital technologies and services.

CANARIE's refunding proposal to government was based on a five-year mandate and while it was expecting some reduction in funding, the size of the cut took Roche by surprise. What it will be able to achieve in its focus areas won't be known until the government explains how it expects CANARIE to evolve over the next two years.

"It's a little bit more than I was anticipating given that departments and agencies were asked to come forward with plans for reductions for either 5% or 10%. We don't know why government has seen fit to reduce our budget by that amount," says Roche. "We also still don't understand why CANARIE should work towards a two-year mandate ... How do we manage longer timeframe programs with a shorter mandate?"

Discussions with Industry Canada will determine how CANARIE proceeds with its Digital Accelerator for Innovation and Research (DAIR) program, an innovation test bed aimed at giving small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) access to cloud computing resources for building their businesses (R$, March 17/11). DAIR has been running as a $3-million pilot since its launch last year but CANARIE hopes to make it permanent and expand it to attract multinational corporations and other large industrial users.

"DAIR is very popular with the SME community but they're not looking for a long-term commitment, usually six to 12 months," says Roche. "If we do go forward with a two-year horizon, it will be difficult to make it attractive to multinationals and university researchers. They have to make significant resource commitments to that infrastructure."

R$