Studies & Publications

• The Big Data report examines the economic and labour market impact of big data adoption in Canada, linking it to the broader Internet of Things (IOT) economy, which is expected to add trillions to global GDP. The report provides a detailed breakdown of Canada’s big data market, business models, job trends and emerging occupations.

• Building Canadian Consensus: Our Maturing Blockchain Ecosystem is the first comprehensive report of its kind on the blockchain ecosystem in Canada. Cutting through the hype that has accompanied blockchain, ICTC provides a balanced perspective that is built on over 30 consultations with industry experts, custom ICTC datasets on blockchain companies that hire Canadian employees, and a number of group Advisory Committee meetings that monitored and validated these findings.

• Cybersecurity as a competitive advantage for your Organization: Secure information means fewer work interruptions, minimize or eliminate lost revenues, and strong customer relationships in the face of cyber attacks. To help you secure this advantage, the Information and Communications Technology Council (ICTC), with funding from Public Safety Canada, will deliver cyber security workshops to small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in five cities across Canada.
• Safeguarding Critical Infrastructures in a Hyper Connected Global Economy. Hyper connectivity is driving the transformation of our digital economy into an intelligence economy, an environment where 50 billion devices will be connected to the internet by 2020. This phenomenon, referred to as Internet of Things (IoT), is spreading beyond our private and business lives to include critical infrastructures (CIs) such as telecommunications networks, power grids, transportation systems, healthcare, financial services and others.
• Forecasting Demand for Cybersecurity Workers in Canada (2017-2023)

• ADDITIVE MANUFACTURING THE NEW FRONTIER OF MANUFACTURING: ICTC is proud to announce the release of its latest report, Additive Manufacturing: The Impending Talent Paradigm. Additive Manufacturing (AM) (often referred to as 3D Printing) is a transformative technology that is dramatically reshaping the manufacturing industry—much in the way Uber redefined the taxi industry and Netflix disrupted the media industry. To view the report, please click here.

• Artificial Intelligence in Canada: Where Do We Stand? (2015). Despite these huge strides in Artificial Intelligence, a key question remains with respect to Canada’s readiness to embrace the transformative nature of AI in an increasingly global and competitive environment. ICTC has conducted a research to understand the current ecosystem of AI in Canada and to raise awareness about the potential actions that can support its development and adoption.
• Forecasting Labour Demand for Artificial Intelligence (AI) Talent in Canada (2018-2025)

• Intelligent Industrialization: The Next Wave (2015) explores the opportunities created by industrial automation and robotics in the manufacturing industry. The study explores how industrial automation has helped manufacturing companies in Canada achieve cost-savings while improving quality, flexibility, and speed. It also explores how automation is reshaping the labour needs to higher skilled talent in manufacturing and related processes.
• Building An Autonomous Vehicle Workforce For The Future (2018) according to the report, AVs will create over 34, 000 high-quality jobs in Canada over the next five years. ICTC and Carleton University Co-op are ensuring that Ottawa cultivates the workforce necessary for the future and becomes Canada’s AV capital.

• The Appification of Everything: Canada’s Apps Economy Value Chain (2014) explores significant opportunities created by mobile applications, or apps. This study is a notable step in understanding Canada’s apps economy value chain and exploring the labour market and economic impact of apps.
• Generating Economic Gains for Creative Media Industries in Ontario (2014) measures the mutual labour market and economic impacts of creative media industries and mobile apps industry in Ontario. It demonstrates how the emergence and adoption of mobile applications (apps) have created incremental economic opportunities for Ontario’s mobile apps industry and Ontario’s creative media industries.
• Canada’s Mobile Imperative: Leveraging Mobile Technologies To Drive Growth (2013) demonstrates the emergence and adoption of mobile technologies, and the opportunities those have created for incremental efficiency and productivity gains, cost reduction, and revenue generation in all sectors of the Canadian economy.

• Canada’s Cloud Imperative (2013) explores the global cloud ecosystem; the economics of cloud computing (employment and GDP contribution); projected employment and GDP growth over a five-year period; skills outlook for ‘cloud’ professionals and the Canadian enterprise adoption of cloud computing services

• Canada’s Digital Imperative: Measuring Digital Platforms’ Labour Market and Economic Impact (2013) demonstrates how the emergence and adoption of digital platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Netflix, Instagram, and YouTube have created incremental economic opportunities for Canadian enterprises in all sectors of the economy.

• Wireless Technology Roadmap: 2006-2016 – Mapping the Crucial Skills Required to Make Canada a Global Wireless Leader. (2007) defines the current state of wireless technology,  provides a vision of future technology developments and forecasts the resulting skills requirements.
• 5G: Jumpstarting our digital future (2018) a detailed analysis of 5G and its economic and labour market impact on Canada. With the potential to jumpstart economic and job growth, 5G is poised to be one of Canada’s key driving factors, adding lane after lane on the information highway of our digital future.

• ICT in the Financial Services Sector (2012) is the first step in understanding the linkages between technology and finance.
• The follow-up report, Talent-Innovation-Investment: ICT in Toronto’s Financial Services Sector (2012), explores the FinTech ecosystem of Canada’s largest financial hub.

• A Human Resource Situational Analysis for Digital Media in Canada (2011) identifies and assesses critical human resource issues in Digital Media and aims to stimulate the development of strategic plans through critical recommendations.

• eHealth in Canada: Current Trends and Future Challenges (2009) provides a situational analysis of the important aspects eHealth sector in Canada, such as eHealth technology use, major occupations (Health Informatics and Health Information Management) and critical human resources issues.
• A Health Informatics (HI) and Health Information Management (HIM) Human Resources Report (2009) estimates the current supply of and five-year requirements for Health Informatics (HI) and Health Information Management (HIM) professionals in Canada.

• Nanotechnology Subsector Study: Canada’s Evolving Nanotechnology Industry and Future Implications for the ICT Labour Force (2011) examines the potential impacts of recent and expected developments in nanotechnology on Canada’s ICT labour market.

• Smart City Priority Areas and Labour Market Readiness for Canadians (August, 2019) crafts the framework by which to assess future labour market impacts and shifting skill needs that will occur as our cities increasingly leverage technology to grow and change.

• ICTC Releases Report on Indigenous Participation in Canada’s Digital Economy:  ICTC is pleased to announce the release of our latest report highlighting Indigenous participation in the Canadian digital economy. With the advent of increased digitization and integration of transformative technologies into various sectors of the Canadian economy, ICTC forecasts an accelerated demand of around 216,000 ICT roles to be filled in Canada by 2021. This heightened demand for ICT talent makes the ability to build and support a robust supply pipeline essential for ensuring continuous economic growth.For a detailed understanding of Indigenous participation in the Canadian digital economy, please access the full report here.

• Digital Economy Supply: The Immigration Stream: This report examines the labour market impact of immigrants in Canada’s digital economy and the importance of immigration as a competitive advantage for Canada in the global digital economy. It provides a detailed breakdown of immigrants employed in Information and Communications Technology (ICT) roles and provides specific recommendations on what Canadian policy makers, employers, and educators need to do to secure top international digital talent in the competitive global labour market.

• Business Analysts and the Digital Economy (2012) provides insight into the role of Business Analysts and proposes a portfolio of best practices that could be implemented by industry and government stakeholders to address the current and projected imbalance between the demand and supply of Business Analysts over the next five years.

• Skills in the Digital Economy (2016) In an increasingly connected global environment, digital technologies have become significant drivers of productivity, innovation and competitiveness in every sector of the Canadian economy. In the next 3-5 years, the adoption of smart and connected technologies, such as the Internet of Things (IoT), will continuously reshape all aspects of the economy, including manufacturing, financial services, health, transportation, essential services and cities, as well as media and creative industries.
• Mapping Calgary’s Digital Future: Tech Employment Opportunities for Displaced Workers (2019) The purpose of this study by the Information and Communications Technology Council (ICTC) in partnership with Calgary Economic Development is to map the occupational crossover between displaced occupations and in-demand occupations by better understanding the most in-demand digital occupations and their associated skill sets along with the skills profile of highly displaced occupations, particularly from the oil & gas sector.
• A Digital Future For Alberta: The Growing Digital Presence Across The Economy (2019) ICTC, in partnership with Calgary Economic Development and the Alberta Ministry of Labour and Immigration,  is pleased to announce the completion of its study, Enabling a Digital Future for Alberta.

EnAbling Change: Removing Barriers and Supporting Meaningful Employment of Ontarians with Disabilities in Information and Communications Technology: With support from the Government of Ontario, the EnAbling Change report, completed in partnership with ICTC, March of Dimes Canada (MODC) and AccessAbility Advantage is the first step in this process. Through first-hand insights and feedback gathered from ICT employers across Ontario, the study identifies barriers and challenges in the recruitment and retention of people with disabilities and paves the pathway for the development of programs and initiatives to fill these digital skills demand gaps.

• The Digital Literacy White Paper: Digital Literacy drives commerce in all successful countries in a borderless digital world. It underlies the 70+ per cent of the Canadian economy that is in the services sector. Digital Literacy is the fundamental requirement for effective participation in the world’s economy; it is the aquifer giving life to the knowledge-age workforce. It can be acquired, polished, and wielded as a competitive weapon.
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  Canada needs to ask itself whether it is prepared to answer this challenge with a call-to-action of appropriate measure: with an investment of the energy and resources adequate to create the world’s most Digitally Skillful nation. This White Paper has been created to engage organizations concerned with Canada’s prosperity, in the subject of Digital Literacy. This White Paper contains:
  1. Executive Summary
  2. Need for a Digitally Skillful Canada
  3. The vision for a Digitally Skillful Canada
  4. Call to Action
• Cyber Security – Critical ICT Human Resource in the Digital Economy (White Paper): The internet has made it easier than ever for people to bank, shop, connect with others and find the information they need at any time. As internet use among Canadians continues to grow, so does online criminal behaviour such as fraud and identity theft. It is estimated that identity theft alone costs the Canadian economy $2.5 billion annually.
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  The growth of cyber security represents a strategic, social and business risk for organizations and the nation at large. Due to these growing risks, Canadians must remain on high alert on the emerging cyber threat. The demand for cybersecurity professionals is at an all-time high, as industries seek out talent which can combine ICT, security and industry domain knowledge to safeguard the privacy of Canadians. As technology continues to expand in business, government and personal banking, Canada will need these emerging skills to safeguard the commercial integrity of the digital economy. ICTC’s latest whitepaper report, Cyber Security: Critical ICT Human Resource in the Digital Economy, provides awareness regarding the growing threat of cybersecurity on the nation and offers a global approach to tackling the problem. This report represents the first step of ICTC’s Cyber Security Roadmap, which aims at identifying the security-related vulnerabilities of the Canadian digital economy and providing practical, holistic solutions to counter the problem. ICTC’s whitepaper provides an overview of the enabling technologies proliferating cyber infractions and lets readers learn more about three emerging occupations that government and industry must pay attention to if they seek to mitigate these risks. Cybersecurity is one of the most important issues facing society and is worthy of further consideration by government, industry and ICTC.
• ICTC’s Perspective on a Data Economy Strategy: With the expanding presence of technology in all economic sectors, Digital+Data has been booming, almost into a new sector of its own. A few years ago, a major headline dubbed “data [as] the new oil”, identifying it as a virtual renewable resource. Yet, with key developments in the digital realm like cloud computing, AI, 5G, augmented reality, IOT, blockchain and others,
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  the very concept of data has been transformed. Data is now shaped into finished products (data brokers combining multiple data sources into powerful new products), into currency (cryptocurrencies) and into the fabric of civic governance (smart cities). This white paper highlights ICTC’sperspectives on a strategy in an era where a data-driven economy is a global stimulus for fledgling entrepreneurs, and emerging industries to create and commercialize new Intellectual Property (IP) to achieve national, economic, and social aspirations.

• The Social Media Skill Sets a CIO’s Staff Will Need:  The question is no longer ‘who is on social media?’; it is ‘who isn’t?’ Nearly 20 million Canadians communicate via social media. One in two online Canadians visit a social media site at least once a week, and 35% of us do so every day. Emerging technologies in the areas of mobile technology and app development are giving us new social platforms to express ourselves; they are shaping our consumption behaviours. Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are among the biggest corporate brands out there. Arriving amid great fanfare, Google+ will doubtlessly be amassing a large following as well. Social media is used for recruitment by 4 out of 5 companies, and LinkedIn is used almost exclusively for this purpose
• Cloud Computing Closeup:  The ability to move IT infrastructure, applications and storage onto the Internet has sparked curiosity, enthusiasm, scepticism and sometimes panic from Canadian chief information officers. We walk through the adoption process from beginning to end, looking at the skills and strategies you need to be successful.