Community and
Protective Services Committee
Comité des services communautaires et de protection
11 August 2011 /
le 11 aout 2011
Submitted by/Soumis par:
Steve Kanellakos, Deputy City Manager / Directeur
municipal adjoint
City Operations / Opérations municipales
Contact Person/Personne-ressource
Donna Gray,
Director/directrice
Organizational Development and Performance/Services du
développement et du rendement organisationnels, 613‑580‑2424, ext./poste 25684
SUBJECT:
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IMMIGRATION OTTAWA
WEB PORTAL UPDATE |
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OBJET
:
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REPORT
RECOMMENDATION
That
the Community and Protective Services Committee receive this report for
information.
RECOMMANDATION DU
RAPPORT
Que le Comité des services
communautaires et de protection prenne connaissance de ce rapport.
In March 2010, the City received $20,000 from the
Province’s Ministry of Citizenship and Immigration to review their new Provincial Extranet site. In addition, in
September, 2010, the City of Ottawa received $20,000 in funding from the
Province to market and promote the City’s Immigration
Web Portal.
Since August 2007, the City of Ottawa has operated a
web-based Immigration Portal to attract immigrants to the city. Since that time, the Portal has become an
important part of the work the City does to connect potential immigrants and
their families to service providers and important information about Ottawa,
thereby enhancing the attraction and inclusion of immigrants into the
community.
En mars 2010, la Ville a reçu
20 000 $ du ministère des Affaires civiques et de l’Immigration pour
l’examen de leur nouveau site extranet provincial. De plus, en septembre 2010,
la Ville d’Ottawa a reçu 20 000 $ de financement de la province pour
la mise en marché et la promotion du portail Web d’Immigration Ottawa.
Depuis août 2007, la Ville d’Ottawa
exploite un portail axé sur l’immigration pour attirer des immigrants vers la
Ville. Depuis, le Portail est devenu un élément important des efforts mis en
œuvre par la Ville pour mettre en contact des immigrants potentiels et leur
famille avec des fournisseurs de services et pour leur fournir de l’information
vitale sur Ottawa, améliorant l’attrait que la Ville représente pour les
immigrants et facilitant leur intégration dans la collectivité.
In 2007, the City of Ottawa, as part of its then Immigration Ottawa Initiative
(Ref N°:ACS2008-CPS-EFA-0001), developed an Immigration Web Portal. The Portal was launched in August 2007 with a
focus on attracting potential immigrants from abroad to Ottawa. The Portal can be accessed at the following
web address: www.ottawa.ca/immigration.
Funded through financial assistance from the
Provincial Ministry of Citizenship and Immigration, the Portal is one of 21
municipal immigration portals across the Province as part of a Provincial
program to support municipal immigration and settlement efforts.
The City of Ottawa Immigration
Portal is an important tool for the City of Ottawa in terms of our ability to
attract and retain skilled immigrants.
It provides immediate information about the city with important links to
settlement information and services. Immigration
is a significant vehicle for Ottawa’s growth and prosperity. Starting this year, immigration is
responsible for 100% of labour force growth and 79% of Ottawa’s population
growth. Ottawa receives the most highly
educated and skilled immigrants of any Canadian City.
Despite this reality, recent
statistics from the Federal government for the period 2001 to 2009 show only a
0.2% growth in immigrant landings to Ottawa, and a 2% decline in the number of
skilled workers (as part of overall landings).
Recent work published by the Social Planning Council (2009), based on
the 2006 Census, spoke to a net loss of 1, 650 immigrants from Ottawa
(established immigrants relocating to other cities). This reality underscores the importance of
tools and resources, such as our Immigration Web Portal.
After
establishing the Portal, the City of Ottawa received additional funding from
the Province to perform testing and enhancements on the site.
In
March 2009, the City received $143, 000 in new funding from the Provincial
Ministry of Citizenship and Immigration to improve the Portal’s functionality
and an additional $20,000 for Portal site promotion. As a result, the City of Ottawa added new
content to enhance the Portal by making it more attractive and useful to both
immigrants and service providers in our community. The
specific enhancements and promotion undertaken were intended to increase the
local, national, and international interest in the City’s Immigration Portal
(Ref. ACS2010-COS-ODP-0009).
DISCUSSION
Ministry of Citizenship and Immigration Extranet Funding
In 2010, the City of Ottawa was asked to participate in a review of the functionality of the Province’s new Municipal Immigration Information Online (MIIO) Program, immigration portal extranet site. The City was asked to participate because the City of Ottawa is an original participant of the program. The City received $20,000 from the Province in March 2010 to undertake this review and test the Province’s site.
As part of the MIIO Program, the Extranet was created as a space that enables participant cities to post content to an online application in order to promote best practices, and to facilitate collaboration and information sharing among participating municipalities across Ontario.
The City’s participation in developing this extranet site included several deliverables as follows:
Portal Site Promotion Funding
(September 2010- March 2011)
In 2010 the City of Ottawa requested and received $20, 000 in funding from the Province for Portal marketing and promotion. Our promotional campaign consisted of a number of strategies at a local, national and international level.
In 2010-2011, staff developed and implemented a marketing campaign using social media (Facebook) and local and province-wide targeted initiatives. These channels consisted of magazine marketing, local print media, advertising in the Ottawa International Airport and advertising targeting foreign students studying at Ottawa’s universities.
One of the newest advertising frontiers that the City of Ottawa is embracing is social media networks. Websites and social media advertising are innovative tools to reach a broader audience, nationally and internationally. This is a leading edge way of promoting the city to potential skilled immigrants living abroad. In 2010-2011, the marketing strategy was able to target up to 19 different countries including, South Africa Belgium, Brazil, Russian Federation, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Romania, Mexico, Morocco, UK, Australia, India, Hungary, Colombia.
The strengths of advertising on Facebook are:
· Inexpensive advertising with a broad reach;
· Ads allow us to reach a large overseas audience in an active and innovative manner;
· Facebook allows us to tailor our ads to potential skilled immigrants who may be curious about emigrating to Ottawa by using keyword matches for criteria such as foreign country, sex, age, job title, workplace or college;
· There is flexibility in keywords, text and image mid-campaign to suit the target audience; and
· Ability to track the number of click-throughs and impressions to monitor exposure
The Pay per Click (CPC) method of Facebook billing is attached to the advertising insertion on an individual’s Facebook pages. An example of the City of Ottawa Immigration Portal ad can be found in the right hand navigation area. Clicking on the ad takes the audience directly to the City of Ottawa Immigration Portal.
In addition to the Facebook advertising, the City advertised the
Portal in the Newcomer Magazine and the Canadian Immigrant Website. These
established magazines are widely distributed across Canada and the website channel hosts many municipalities’
advertisements across the country. Studies
have shown that families and/or friends are the predominant reason (85 per
cent) for attracting new immigrants to an area, this type of advertising
targets this market.
In addition to the magazine and website, exposure through local media channels enables advertising to family and friends of potential immigrants or newcomers. Targeting the timing of local ads during cultural events further increases the opportunity to reach the family and friends of potential immigrants who are focused on Ottawa as a destination. With this in mind, in early 2011 the City focused such advertising in Metro and 24 Hours and in Le Droit during Winterlude, which attracts a large volume of people to Ottawa for the month of February.
This year, the City also
advertised in student newspapers to international students studying at Carleton
University and the University of Ottawa. Both universities have a large number
of International students who may choose to remain in Ottawa after
graduation.
The
City was also pleased to use, for the first time, advertising television
screens which are located directly over the luggage carousels at the
International Ottawa Airport. According to the Lisbon Airport and Airports
Council International (ACI) monitoring, the average wait time for luggage
ranges from 20 to 30 minutes. One of the
benefits of having advertisement at the luggage carousels is that the City is
guaranteed to get 20 minutes of air time during each 60 minute loop. Furthermore, everyone who travels nationally
or internationally through the Ottawa International Airport will see the
advertisement.
In addition to the traditional advertising mediums, the City has used other successful marketing and promotional materials, including flash drives with built in Portal co-ordinates and web link, and logo on the casing. Over the past 2 years, these products have proven to be very useful for our community partners assisting newcomers and immigrants with employment searches. The flash drives are beneficial to store job search information or other data important to clients. Service providers such as the City’s Social Services Department, the Ottawa Community Immigrant Services Organization (OCISO), Settlement To Employment Program (STEP), Youth Futures, and LASI World Skills are able to use the flash drives as a means of engaging and supporting newcomers and immigrants in settlement and employment activities, while at the same time sharing information about the Portal and City of Ottawa. In 2010-2011 these flash drives were distributed from stock purchased under the previous funding contract with the Province.
With the assistance of Information Technology Services, web analytics are performed against the Immigration Portal on a monthly basis, providing a snapshot of the number of web hits on the portal, the pathway that lead to the portal, and the country of origin, where available.
The
success of the Immigration Web Portal initiative is evaluated through measures
such as an increase in web activity, posting on affiliated organizations’
websites and anecdotal feedback from target audiences.
From
September 1, 2010 to March 31, 2011, the following success factors were
identified:
·
There has been an overall 28.8% increase
in Portal views since 2008, from 191,171 views in 2008 to 246,288 in 2010.
· The Portal main page was viewed on average 82685 times a month between September 1, 2010 and March 14, 2011.
· There was an increase in Portal views through Facebook from 9700 in November-December 2010 to 16438 from January-March 11, 2011.
The
Ottawa Immigration Portal will continue to be maintained by staff in
Organizational Development and Performance (ODP) throughout 2011 as a key
contribution to the City’s overall commitment to promoting the inclusion of
immigrants and newcomers in Ottawa. ODP
Staff will also continue working with Information Technology Services and
Corporate Communications to undertake updating and enhancements to the Immigration
Portal information in collaboration with the immigrant serving community and
OLIP.
As
the marketing strategies for the City of Ottawa Immigration Portal are refined,
and the technologies around marketing continue to evolve, the City will seek
new avenues for Portal exposure, not only locally, but across the globe. To continue
marketing the Portal, the City of Ottawa has recently applied for $20,000 in
funding from the Province for 2011-2012.
The Province has recently notified staff that this funding application
is forthcoming.
The lessons learned and successes of the 2010-2011 Marketing will be used as we move forward. These focused efforts will help ensure the long-term success and sustainability of the Immigration Ottawa Web Portal.
RURAL IMPLICATIONS
There
are no specific rural implications associated with this report.
Staff in Corporate
Communications and Information Technology Services was consulted on the
advertising and promotion described in this report.
COMMENTS BY THE WARD COUNCILLOR(S)
Not
applicable as this is a city wide report.
LEGAL IMPLICATIONS
There are no legal implications related
to this report.
RISK MANAGEMENT IMPLICATIONS
There
are no risk management implications associated with
this report.
CITY STRATEGIC PLAN
This
report is aligned with the City Strategic Plan priorities; specifically the Sustainable,
Healthy and Active City Priority.
TECHNICAL IMPLICATIONS
N/A
There are no financial implications associated with this report.
N/A
DISPOSITION
Community and
Protective Services Committee to receive this report for information.