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Erica Vezeau (Master of Ceremonies)
Director General, Digital Academy, Canada School of Public Service
Erica Vezeau is the acting Director General of the Canada School of Public Service’s Digital Academy. She joined this team in March 2021 to support its mandate to help public servants gain the knowledge, skills, and mindsets they need to succeed in the digital age. She has over 15 years of previous private- and public-sector experience in program administration, service delivery, and strategic planning with a special interest in digitally focused projects to modernize business processes and improve government services.
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Tom Roberts
Vice-President of Business Enablement and Assurance Services Branch (BEASB) and Chief Financial Officer
Tom Roberts is Vice-President of Business Enablement and Assurance Services Branch (BEASB) and Chief Financial Officer. The Business Enablement and Assurance Services Branch delivers a full suite of seamless and integrated solutions to internal clients in the areas of finance, security, accommodations, information management and technology, and registrar services. Of note, BEASB was the lead in implementing the School’s new Cloud-based, Software as a Service (Saas), learning platform, launched in February. Tom previously held the position of Special Advisor to the President. Tom joined the School from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada, where he held the position of Director General, Budget Planning and Financial Management. Throughout his years of service, Tom has held different executive positions at Infrastructure Canada and at the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat (TBS). In these positions, his focused was on internal services, public reporting, effective program design, and proper stewardship of government resources.
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Sami Khoury
Head, Canadian Centre for Cyber Security
Sami Khoury is the Head of the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security (the Cyber Centre). The Cyber Centre is the single unified source of expert advice, guidance, services and support on cyber security for government, critical infrastructure owners and operations, the private sector and the Canadian public. Sami began his career at the Communications Security Establishment (CSE) in 1992 as a research engineer exploring the impact of emerging multimedia communications technologies. He held various management positions and leadership roles at CSE, including Director General Capabilities Development and more recently as Deputy Chief (ADM) for Enterprise Technologies and Solutions. In this role, he was CSE’s Chief Information Officer (CIO) and responsible for IT and Information Security, as well as leading CSE’s overall Research program and 24/7 Operations Centre.
Sami holds a Bachelor of Computer Engineering (1988) and a Masters of Applied Science (1991) from Concordia University in Montreal. He completed a certificate program in Public Sector Leadership at the University of Ottawa in 2016. Sami received the Queen Elizabeth Diamond Jubilee Medal in 2012 and the APEX Award of Excellence for Innovation in 2020.
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Stephen Burt
Chief Data Officer, Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat
In March 2022, Stephen Burt was appointed Chief Data Officer for the Government of Canada, at the Treasury Board Secretariat. His mandate is to provide leadership across government on information and data governance and integration, privacy modernization, and data-enabled digital services and programs.
Prior to this appointment, Mr. Burt was the functional authority for data governance and analytics capability for the Department of National Defence and Canadian Armed Forces (DND/CAF). He drove the analytics adoption and maturity throughout DND/CAF, and led the department-wide initiative to establish analytics and data governance.
Mr. Burt began his career in the Government of Canada in 1997 with Revenue Canada. In 1999, he joined DND, where he worked in a variety of policy, operational and defence intelligence roles, including two years as Executive Assistant to the Deputy Minister.
Mr. Burt moved to the Privy Council Office (PCO) in 2007 to work in the Security and Intelligence Secretariat as Senior Advisor on National Security. In that role, he was secretary for the committees of the National Security Advisor to the Prime Minister. In 2009, he joined the Intelligence Assessment Secretariat (IAS) at PCO, and held positions as Director for Afghanistan and, later, for Asia. Mr. Burt was appointed Director of Operations for the IAS in January 2012, and took on the position of Assistant Secretary on an acting basis in March 2014.
In April 2015, Mr. Burt assumed the role of Assistant Chief of Defence Intelligence at Canadian Forces Intelligence Command, where he led the federated production of intelligence within DND/CAF, and oversaw defence intelligence policy.
Mr. Burt has an undergraduate degree in history from the University of Ottawa, as well as a Master’s in Public Administration from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario.
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Scott Levac
Director of Core Technologies and Cloud Oversight, Office of the Chief Information Officer, Treasury Board Secretariat
For the past seven years Scott has assumed a role developing Information Technology (IT) policy and strategy. During that time he has been an advocate of adopting technologies and methods to increase the speed, security, and quality of IT delivery. Scott enjoys learning from his colleagues in the GC IT community as they continue to deliver on new digital services and modernization initiatives.
Prior to joining TBS, Scott was responsible for maintaining and delivering Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems in various federal departments and agencies.
During the summer, Scott enjoys throwing his kids into the pool. In the winter he enjoys trying to stay upright on a snowboard.
Scott holds a Bachelors in Engineering from Carleton University.
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Jason Reid
Chief Information and Security Officer, Director General, Natural Resources Canada
Jason Reid joined Natural Resources Canada on July 27, 2020. He has more than 25 years professional experience working within the Government of Canada (GC), the majority of which has been in fields of Information Management, Information Technology and Security. He has held positions of increasing responsibility including being the Executive lead of two GC transformation projects. Jason was named to the EX cadre in 2007, he was awarded the Queens Golden Jubilee medal in 2002 and is a graduate of the Executive Leadership Development Program and the Career Assignment Program. He holds bachelor degree in Social Science with a concentration in Economics from University of Ottawa.
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Bruce McHaffie
A/Director, Cloud Competency Centre, Canada Border Services Agency
As a highly motivated and innovative leader within the CBSA, I have been able to develop and direct strategies to better support the Government of Canada strategic plan for IM/IT, particularly in a "Cloud first" approach. Under my leadership, the Cloud Competency Centre Division has delivered a Protected B Cloud environment on Amazon Web Services (AWS), migrated over 20 applications into Cloud, and built and maintained the ArriveCAN Backend services that are critical to the functioning of the CBSA ArriveCAN mobile app.
I have been in the private sector for over 20 years as a Developer and Manager, working specifically in the area of security software. I began working in the public sector in October of 2019.
During my time at Trend Micro Canada Inc as a Software Development Manager, I led two software development teams, championed the adoption and development of CI/CD pipeline tooling and coordinated with Product Managers to develop product strategy. In this role I was able to further enhance my leadership skills, through mentoring and motivating employees, and providing career guidance.
My personal mandate is to continue supporting the Government of Canada Infrastructure Modernization directives, by devising strategies to support Workload Migration (WLM) plans for CBSA applications.
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Philippe Couroux
Manager, Science Solutions, Information Systems Branch Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada
- Philippe Couroux started working for Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) in 1999 as a bioinformatics programmer for supporting genomics research group.
- During those years, he developed multiple databases and applications used mainly by the AAFC Ottawa Research and Development Centre and also by other AAFC research centres across Canada.
- From 2017-2020 he lead the bioinformatics support for AAFC local and regional research and development centres and participated to the replacement of a Laboratory Information Management Systrem.
- In 2020, Philippe became the manager for the Science Solutions group under the SPAD (Science Projects and Applications Division) at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada
- This group is working hard with other branches on projects for the AAFC sciences clients. These projects include on premise projects but also projects that involve cloud to support current and new initiatives such as the Living Laboratories Initiative.
- Philippe is in constant collaboration with other members at AAFC in order to keep on pushing for new initiatives including cloud that will enable our science clients in the extraordinary work they accomplish on a daily basis.
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Tarek Houssari
a/Senior Director, Digital Business Solutions, Chief Information Office, Shared Services Canada
Tarek Houssari is current the Senior Director of Digital Enablement Services @ SSC; Tarek has over 20 years of experience in various aspects of technology mainly on enabling digital business in different federal organizations. Tarek specializes in transformational projects and digital enablement. He holds a Computer Science Degree and an MBA from Ottawa.
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