1. The Canadian Higher Education IT Landscape
Presentation for PD Program
June 2018

2. Government/Funder Context
Federal
Responsible for ‘Research’
Provincial
Responsible for ‘Education’

3. Federal Gov’t Context Federal
Industry, Science and Economic Development (ISED) – funding agency for university related research infrastructure and activities; directly funds CANARIE and provides Compute Canada’s funding via the Canadian Foundation for Innovation (CFI).
Granting Councils (aka the Tri-agencies) provide funding for research activities through three main councils; Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) and Canadian Institute for Health Research (CIHR)
There are also a variety of other discipline specific research institutes or players. (e.g. Genome Canada)
Able to fund institutions via ‘Indirect Costs’ envelopes

4. National Players CANARIE
Funded by ISED, CANARIE and its twelve provincial and territorial partners form Canada’s National Research and Education Network (NREN). This ultra-high-speed network connects Canada’s researchers, educators and innovators to each other and to global data, technology, and colleagues; CANARIE also funds and promotes reusable research software tools and national research data management initiatives to accelerate discovery, provides identity management services to the academic community, and offers advanced networking and cloud resources to boost commercialization in Canada’s technology sector.

5. CANARIE

6. Provincial Gov’t Context
Departments or ministries responsible for post secondary education
Departments or ministries responsible for economic development
Generally, no restrictions on funding methods (i.e. capital, operating, loan guarantees, etc.)

7. National Players cont’d
Compute Canada
Compute Canada – funded through CFI and in partnership with regional organizations ACENET, Calcul Québec, Compute Ontario and WestGrid, CC deploys state-of-the-art advanced research computing (ARC) systems, storage and software solutions; more than 200 experts employed by 37 partner universities and research institutions across the country provide direct support to research teams; Most recent deployments of national sites include SFU, UVic, Waterloo and Toronto.

8. Compute Canada

9. Provincial Players Service Providers
Provincial networks – business models differ from province to province; membership based; provincial funding; services range from being the in-province connectivity organization to providing a wide variety of shared services (BCNet, Cybera, MRNet, SRNet, Orion, Risq, NBRan, Acorn – NS, Acorn – NL)
CC’s regional computing facilities – normally housed in universities, provides compute resources and technical support to researchers.

10. Provincial Players Advocacy groups
Similar role to Universities Canada but at provincial level
Includes Council of Ontario Universities (COU), the Association of Atlantic Universities (AAU), the Council of Western Universities and the Bureau de cooperation interuniversitaire (BCI)
Provincial buying organizations
Business models differ from province to province or region to region; types of services and products also varies from province to provinces
Examples include Merlin in Manitoba, OECM in Ontario, AAHEIT in Alberta; Interuniversity Services Incorporated in the Atlantic.

11. Higher ED Associations
Universities Canada –Universities Canada is the voice of Canadian universities; a membership organization providing university presidents with a unified voice for higher education, research and innovation; policy and advocacy
U15 – Top 15 research universities representing exec heads and VPs Research; policy, advocacy, data collection; fosters the development and delivery of long-term, sustainable higher education and research policy, in Canada and around the world.
CASRAI: Canadian chapter of international organization; focus in on information that is collected and communicated for management purposes by research funders, institutions, publishers and others; includes CVs, funding applications, progress reports, articles, data management plans, financial, compliance, evaluation and impact information

12. Associations cont’d
Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) – research intensive institutions, member based, data management services, professional development; promotes effective and sustainable knowledge creation, dissemination, and preservation, and public policy that enables broad access to scholarly information
Canadian Association of Business Officers (CAUBO) - non-profit professional organization representing the chief administrative and financial officers of Canadian universities; national perspective on matters related to higher education administration
Canadian Research Knowledge Network (CRKN) – partnership of Canadian universities, dedicated to expanding digital content for the academic research enterprise in Canada – group access to content

13. Thank You Questions or Comments