Theme 1:   Building Partnerships

I think there's a fundamental culture change happening in government. Partnerships are the new way of doing the business of government.

Canadians don't necessarily feel that government should do everything.

We tend to use the word partnerships perhaps too loosely. We need to have a better understanding of the expectations of others when we enter into a partnership.

But it is the kind of thing that does takes a lot of time and a lot of effort. Coordination with other people is not easy and it's not cheap. You just have to spend time at it.

.We are understanding that the government's role is to help facilitate, to help steer the boat rather than row and that there's many other participants in the economy that can take different roles on.

The Knowledge Economy Partnership

The Knowledge Economy Partnership is really a totally unique opportunity to focus our attention on the creation of knowledge and the movement into a knowledge economy for a province like Prince Edward Island. Right now there's a total of something like 36 different provincial government departments, federal departments and agencies, university, college, and even private sector businesses. So when the four partners got around the table if they decided that they wanted to provide a service to a certain client group or they wanted to try a different way of delivering a service, the only thing they had to think about was how they would make it work from the public's perspective.

We're a place where innovation can be tried in a small way, there can be pilot projects here.

Instead of being a hierarchy it becomes a network, and a network is a world in which people are interconnected.

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