3. Performance Measurement Platform
This section describes the data sharing platform that will be used for the pilot and its administration. It also details all of the processes for gathering the consent to share information and protect the confidentiality of data (by firms, BAIs, researchers and Statistics Canada).
Following a review of available options, the BAI Steering Committee and its partners in government selected Hockeystick as the data platform for the Performance Measurement Framework feasibility study and pilot. With the support of the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario (FedDev Ontario) and the Lazaridis Institute, the Hockeystick platform is being made freely available to BAIs and their clients for the purposes of the pilot project. Indeed, Hockeystick has made a long-term commitment to provide free services to BAIs that is defined in the legal agreements that BAIs sign to register an account with Hockeystick.
In its review of available platform options, the Steering Committee's decision was guided a number of key principles and requirements (the detailed platform requirements that informed the Committee decision are outlined in Appendix C). These included:
- Security. The platform's capacity to protect client confidentiality and securely host client data on servers located in Canada must be trusted by participating firms, BAIs and funding organizations.
- Convenience. The process for loading BAI and firm level data onto the platform should be easy and complement the existing CRM and data management systems used by mature BAIs.
- Engagement. The platform must be capable of influencing high-level of response and data entry rate with effective and easy-to-use survey tools.
- Reporting. The platform must possess reporting and data visualization capabilities that create value for the PMF audience, including individual BAIs, client firms and government partners.
- Availability. The platform must be available for adoption within a short time period.
- Cost. The platform must be low cost for firms and BAIs to use.
While other platforms met many of these requirements, Hockeystick was the only platform that could satisfy all of them, and particularly the requirement to securely host client data on servers located in Canada. It is worth noting that Hockeystick is also being evaluated as part of the pilot. Pilot participants will be asked to provide feedback on Hockeystick's suitability for long-term use as a data platform for Canada's national performance measurement framework.
3.1 Platform Description
Hockeystick is used by venture capital funds, accelerators, angel groups, banks and government funders, to automatically collect financial data and produce insight via dashboards and portfolio reports. Hockeystick automates the reporting process, making it easy for innovation organizations, portfolio managers, companies and other users to comply with their reporting obligations. For the purpose of the PMF Pilot, Hockeystick provides a secure, user-friendly and customized cloud-based data sharing platform that will facilitate and streamlines data collection efforts and information sharing across the BAI community and with government partners.
Figure 4 : Benefits of the Hockeystick platform for the PMF pilot
As noted above in the process map, financial data will be gathered from companies through surveys, documents and application integrations like Quickbooks Online, either by companies directly or by BAIs on behalf of their clients. BAIs will be notified when a report is filed or becomes late, and built-in reminders ensure that client companies file their data in a timely manner.
Once data is in Hockeystick, it is easy to produce portfolio reports and company snapshots using customizable dashboards and chart widgets. For the purposes of monitoring and evaluation, the Hockeystick platform can produce reports on individual companies, cohorts or BAIs, as well as by sector, geographic regions, and a wide range of other variables. Data can also be exported in raw or Excel format for further analysis.
Figure 5: Data visualization capabilities with Hockeystick
Hockeystick is able to switch between the two Canadian official languages in the UI and pull the content in that language for labels, buttons and messages. By default, Hockeystick will appear in English the first-time users login. However, one click of a link at the top right corner of the screen will automatically translate the interface into French.
3.2 Data Security
A key concern for BAIs and their client firms is the confidentiality and security of their data. Clients uploading their confidential financial information will rightly want assurances that their data will be protected from unauthorized access and malicious attacks. What follows is a brief description of Hockeystick's approach to data security.
Hockeystick's suite of applications is running on Amazon Web Services (AWS) platform and the data is hosted in AWS's Canada Central region data centre. The data centers are located in Montreal and support a subset of the full AWS list of products.
Hockeystick has implemented numerous security controls to mitigate malicious attacks on its data. More specifically, Hockeystick has employed four levels of security to secure its data. The first level is the security controls that Hockeystick has leveraged from AWS. The second level is the hardening of all its servers from the OS level to the web and database server applications. The third level is using the OWASP Top Ten to drive code reviews with static code analysis (white-box testing) in conjunction with periodic black-box testing. The fourth level is the use of monitoring and alerting software. For more information on platform security, please contact Hockeystick management.
3.3 Consent to Share Information
BAIs participating in the pilot will need to gather consent from their client firms to share information for the purposes of the pilot. This must happen before any client data is uploaded to Hockeystick, either by client firms directly, or by BAIs on behalf of their clients.
To facilitate the process of gathering consent for the pilot, ISED is currently drafting a consent form that participating BAIs can use with their client companies. The consent form will describe the types of data that will be collected (e.g. founders demographics, company development stage, number of employees, revenues, capital and financing raised, etc.) and specify with whom the data will be shared and how it will be used (e.g., with Statistics Canada where it will be viewed for research purposes to study how programs influence company growth, and, in anonymized format, with the department of Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada, where it will be used to develop aggregate level reports on Canada's BAI ecosystem).