For those of you who have suffered the endless frustrations of my constant rotation of governmental e-mail addresses, hope is near!

The province has finally realized that secondments and staff rotation make it completely impractical for Bob Smith to start work at Environment and be bob.smith@ene.gov.on.ca and then transfer to Finance where he becomes bob.smith@fin.gov.on.ca and then end up working in Tourism where he becomes bob.smith@mtr.gov.on.ca. In my case, with a current average of about three job/ministry changes a year, I have two aliases floating around on the Global Address Book, one of which leads to an e-mail account I have been unable to check for six months.

Obviously this method sucks, and some bright spark has decided it’s time to modernize by giving each OPS staff member an “@Ontario.ca” address, replacing the 41 existing e-mail naming conventions used by our more than 86,000 accounts. Brilliant! Now I can swing from portfolio to portfolio without losing ministry contacts and making my stakeholders frustrated by shedding my e-mail like so much dead skin every time I move offices and jobs.

So, not yet, but at some point before the end of October 2006, my e-mail will change one last time to firstname.lastname@Ontario.ca

I can’t wait!