Well, folks, it looks like the federal politicians are getting back to the grind. With Canada’s Parliament returning next week, it should make for some interesting times, as presumably they’ll reignite their legislative reform and data strategy plans.
This also means the selection process for the next federal commissioner is back on track and we can all start placing our bets on who’s ultimately going to get it. (I’m just kidding. That’s not very professional and none of us would ever do that — at least not for real money anyways.) Remember that Commissioner Therrien was reappointed for another year around half a year ago. When the election was called, the government pulled the posters for all the Governor-in-Council processes that were underway.
In the last few days, however, the poster for the top OPC job was reposted here. If you already put your name forward, don’t worry, no need to go to the trouble of reapplying. If you didn’t get around to it before the poster suddenly disappeared, there’s now a little more time. Despite the fact that it says reviews started Aug. 31, there’s no “official” closing. They say they’re still open to receiving and considering all applications, but obviously the sooner, the better. It’ll be very interesting to see what past experience and competencies are prioritized by the selection committee for what I think is a new era the OPC is moving toward.
In the meantime, it looks like there are some other high-level federal government privacy jobs open. If you thought you needed to work for a privacy regulator to have the fancy assistant commissioner title, think again. The Canada Revenue Agency was advertising for an assistant commissioner with the role of chief privacy officer and whose responsibilities also include public affairs. Past OPC annual reports suggest the CRA continues to get a relatively high number of complaints. Interestingly, a significant proportion of them, year over year, are “early resolved.”
Anyway, I think it’s a good sign that a federal department has deemed privacy important enough to be at this level in their organization, so kudos. Maybe someone in this network wants to add some additional privacy bench strength to the CRA, to the benefit of all Canadians and to the protection of our super sensitive tax information, so check it out. Of course, as always, you can find many other awesome privacy jobs in our growing and never-boring sector in the IAPP’s Career Central.