Evaluation of GC Wi-Fi

Table of contents

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Evaluation of GC Wi-Fi
Cat. No: P118-39/2026E-PDF
ISBN 978-0-660-99817-6

Publié aussi en français sous le titre :

Évaluation des services Wi-Fi du gouvernement du Canada
No de Cat: P118-39/2026F-PDF
ISBN 978-0-660-99818-3

Executive summary

This evaluation by the Office of Audit and Evaluation assessed the responsiveness, effectiveness and efficiency of Shared Services Canada's (SSC) Government of Canada (GC) Wi-Fi. Its aim was to inform decision making and identify considerations for future operations. The evaluation represents a snapshot in time based on data collected from November 2024 to June 2025. The evaluation period covers from April 2021 to March 2025

The evaluation found GC Wi‑Fi was a key enabler for modern GC workplaces. It supported increased productivity, collaboration, and innovation. It also supported partners and clients for the implementation of the Direction on Prescribed Presence in the Workplace (PPW). In response to evolving requirements across the GC, Connectivity and Security Services Branch (CSSB) implemented the Whole Building Approach (WBA)^{Footnote 1} to standardize access, accelerate deployment, and avoid future costs. WBA was launched in April 2023 and the branch actively and continuously made improvements to address emerging issues. SSC partners and clients recognized the dedication and hard work of the GC Wi‑Fi team as well as the Client Executive (CE) and Service Delivery Manager (SDM) teams.

During the summer of 2024, the team worked with branches across SSC to successfully deploy GC Wi-Fi to an estimated 111,000 employees in 96 priority buildings. After completion of these priority buildings, focus for the remainder of fiscal year 2024 to 2025 shifted to Employment and Social Development Canada sites. In fiscal year 2025 to 2026, priority shifted again to National Defence sites. This caused some sites to move down in priority and their deployments to be postponed.

Despite the service’s value to the GC, several issues affected GC Wi-Fi deployments:

Planning and prioritization

Shifting priorities outside of CSSB’s control and planning challenges made it difficult to deploy GC Wi-Fi predictably and efficiently.

Capacity and coordination

Capacity constraints and coordination issues limited the Wi-Fi team’s ability to meet demand and deliver on planned timelines.

SSC’s organizational structure

SSC’s organizational structure, including its siloed operations hindered communication and collaboration among SSC teams. This led to inefficiencies that affected service delivery.

External communication

Communication gaps made partners feel unprepared, unsupported, and uninvolved in GC Wi-Fi deployments. This negatively impacted partner satisfaction, reduced partner engagement and contributed to deployment challenges.

Reliability and support

While GC Wi-Fi was generally reliable, some partners reported frequent and sometimes lengthy service disruptions to several sites, challenges using the ticketing system, and a lack of clarity regarding service standards. CSSB was unable to record data that could confirm the extent of the problem for low- and medium-priority incidents due to platform limitations.

Costing and invoicing

Inconsistent cost estimates, invoices late in the fiscal year, and a lack of costing transparency frustrated partners. Some partners lapsed funds when SSC could not deliver planned deployments. Others faced unexpected or higher‑than‑ anticipated invoices that they did not pay.

Performance measurement gaps and data limitations

Internal data limitations prevented the assessment of performance for several WBA objectives. Based on available data, the evaluation team could not determine whether WBA had accelerated GC Wi‑Fi deployments, enabled cost avoidance, or met service standards.

Recommendations

The findings of the evaluation led to the following recommendations:

• Recommendation #1 (CSSB): Address barriers to predictability to improve the coordination of GC Wi-Fi deployments.

• Recommendation #2 (CSSB): Consolidate and improve documents and tools for employees, partners, and clients to improve transparency of prioritization and planning.

• Recommendation #3 (CSSB): Address communication gaps:

  • (a) Document GC Wi-Fi service delivery dependencies to build a holistic view of all SSC teams that need to be kept up-to-date on GC Wi-Fi deployments.
  • (b) Complete a gap analysis to identify the source of communication challenges among different CSSB teams. Implement a communications plan to address identified gaps.

• Recommendation #4 (OCSB): Complete a gap analysis to identify the source of communication challenges between CSSB and CEs/SDMs. Develop and implement a plan to address the gaps.

• Recommendation #5 (CSSB): Implement and monitor improvements to service expectations, incident handling, and transparency to strengthen GC Wi-Fi reliability and partner confidence.

• Recommendation #6 (CSSB): Improve cost transparency and increase invoicing accuracy and timeliness.

• Recommendation #7 (CSSB): Strengthen performance measurement to demonstrate the value of GC Wi-Fi and other connectivity services to partners and the GC.

1. Introduction

This evaluation by the Office of Audit and Evaluation assessed the responsiveness, effectiveness and efficiency of Shared Services Canada's (SSC) GC Wi-Fi solutions. Its aim was to inform decision making and identify potential implications for future operations. It represents a snapshot in time based on data collected from November 2024 to June 2025 and covers the period from April 2021 to March 2025.

2. Context and profile

Partners and clients deployed their own Wi-Fi solutions to meet business requirements prior to the creation of SSC in 2011. The first SSC pilots of GC Wi-Fi began in 2012,with GC Wi-Fi being added to the Service Catalogue as an optional solution in 2016. Since then, the branch has been providing a standardized, secure, scalable, and reliable wireless Local Area Network (LAN) service to GC employees, sponsored guests, and the public.

There have been a number of key developments since 2016:

• The Treasury Board introduced the Standard on Information Technology Provisions in 2020. The Standard required Wi-Fi connectivity to be available at all work-points in every government site^{Footnote 2}
• In 2021, SSC developed an Enterprise Network and Security Strategy. This strategy adopted a wireless-first approach, prioritizing Wi-Fi and integrating technologies like 5G and the Internet of Things^{Footnote 3}
• The Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat (TBS) Direction on the Prescribed Presence in the Workplace (PPW) resulted in even greater demand for GC Wi-Fi. In January 2023 public servants were required to work onsite 2 days per week, followed by 3 days per week as of September 2024. For partners, this increased pressure to ensure Wi-Fi was available at GC offices in support of public servants returning to the office. In support of PPW, SSC prioritized installation of Wi-Fi in GC sites during the summer of 2024

2.1 The Whole Building Approach

Until 2023, Wi-Fi was installed through individual business requests (BRs), often resulting in partial building coverage. With multiple partners in the same building submitting requests, SSC made multiple visits to complete installations. This generated inefficiencies with the deployment process. To consolidate, standardize and improve efficiency, SSC launched the Whole Building Approach (WBA) in April 2023. This approach leveraged the Enterprise Wi-Fi Solution (EWS), the Commercial Wi-Fi Solution (CWS) or both to provide Wi-Fi for entire buildings all at once. WBA aimed to achieve the following GC Wi-Fi goals:

1. Provide Guest Access to all partners in a multi-tenant building
2. Enable holistic planning and prioritization
3. Enable CSSB to meet increased demand for Wi-Fi
4. Enable CSSB to deploy Wi-Fi faster
5. Avoid costs via streamlined processes and shared infrastructure

2.2 Service offerings

GC Wi-Fi offered several solutions to partners and clients. While EWS was operated and managed by SSC, CWS contracted commercial vendors to provide public internet to employees. EWS was certified up to Protected B, while CWS was restricted to unclassified workloads and required employees to connect to their organization’s networks via a Virtual Private Network (VPN).

EWS included 4 solutions as listed below.

1. Resident employee access: Enabled a GC employee to automatically connect to their secure departmental network using their GC-issued laptop or tablet
2. Guest employee access: Enabled a GC employee to remotely connect to their departmental network through a VPN using their GC-issued laptop or tablet
3. Sponsored guest access: Enabled a visitor to connect to Filtered Internet^{Footnote 4} using their personal device with an account issued by a GC sponsor
4. GC employee – other device access: Enabled a GC employee to connect to Filtered Internet with another device (such as a smartphone, tablet, or laptop) using their email address and Windows password

In contrast, CWS included 1 solution, public guest access. This solution enabled GC employees and the general public to access the Internet through a commercial vendor’s infrastructure, similar to a home connection.

GC Wi-Fi used a cost recovery funding model. This meant that SSC must recover the costs for GC Wi-Fi from partners once the service was implemented. Partners incurred one-time costs for equipment and labour, dependent on site complexity, and ongoing costs associated with infrastructure maintenance.

3. Evaluation findings related to value of service

Overall, the evaluation found that GC Wi-Fi added value by enabling increased productivity, collaboration, and innovation for GC departments and agencies and supported the TBS direction on PPW.

3.1 Wi-Fi technology was an integral part of the GC Workplace

Most partners surveyed reported that GC Wi-Fi supported their Chief Information Officer (CIO) function in delivering their mandates. Many benefits were mentioned in interviews and surveys that showcased Wi-Fi’s value to the Government of Canada, including:

1. Workplace flexibility and mobility: Wi-Fi enabled employees to stay connected to online resources while moving freely between workspaces without requiring hardwired connections.
2. Supporting the Direction on PPW: Wi-Fi ensured seamless connectivity across shared spaces and unassigned desks.
3. Employee productivity and efficiency: Wi-Fi enabled instant access to resources and reduced setup time.
4. Enabling employee collaboration in open workspaces: Wi-Fi enabled employees to collaborate in open spaces without cabled connections.
5. Enabling access to GC networks and services requiring an internet connection: Employees could access applications like Microsoft 365 and secure document repositories in open spaces without cabled connections.
6. Supporting workplace modernization and innovation: Wi-Fi enabled modern workspaces with seamless connectivity to essential services like Guest Access.

According to partners, GC Wi-Fi’s value was undermined by deployment and maintenance issues. For example, potential benefits of Wi-Fi went unrealized when it wasn’t installed in sites where it was most needed or when partners experienced low reliability. When employees were unable to use certain information systems and equipment, their ability to serve Canadians was impaired. Partners also reported that their reputation was harmed when guests couldn’t access Wi-Fi.

Wi-Fi also relied on other SSC services (referred to as dependent services) to provide end-users with a seamless experience. Wi-Fi connected devices to LAN, but access to external resources like the Internet depended on the Wide Area Network (WAN). If there were issues with dependent services (such as insufficient WAN bandwidth) users may have experienced poor performance and mistakenly blamed Wi-Fi even though the issue lay with a dependent service.

In addition, most partners interviewed questioned the high price tag associated with installations, particularly if Wi-Fi was deployed in offices where, in their view, the associated cost didn’t make sense. For example, some partners reported that as a result of WBA, they had to pay for Wi-Fi in offices with only a small number of employees. In other cases, partners who had already paid for an existing Wi-Fi solution (such as a legacy Wi-Fi solution or Local Internet Access Service [LIAS]) had to pay again to upgrade to the WBA solution. In each of these cases, the high cost of GC Wi-Fi concerned partners and impacted their perception about its value.

Of course, some departments tried to implement their own Wi-Fi, which could have increased their costs.

4. Evaluation findings related to GC Wi-Fi deployment

The process for implementing GC Wi-Fi under WBA followed 4 broad steps.

The evaluation found that several challenges hindered deployment efforts, including those associated with planning and prioritization, communication and collaboration, reliability, and cost transparency. These issues affected SSC’s ability to achieve its operational goals and deliver modern connectivity solutions.

4.1 Demand for GC Wi-Fi increased, but shifting priorities and planning challenges undermined efficient deployment

The TBS Direction on PPW increased demand for GC Wi-Fi, such that it became one of SSC’s top priorities. Between April 2020 and March 2025, the GC Wi-Fi team received an average of 500 BRs for Wi-Fi solutions every year. Spikes in requests were observed in the period following PPW announcements in December 2022 and May 2024. As a result, Wi-Fi deployments increased substantially. SSC’s EWS Access Point^{Footnote 5} (AP) footprint grew from 13K in March 2021 to 21K in March 2025^{Footnote 6}. At the time of data collection, GC Wi-Fi served 49 partners and clients nationwide, more than 400,000 users across the GC, and more than 90 Canada Service Centres for Canadian citizens.

In 2023, SSC launched WBA, which enabled Wi-Fi deployment to entire buildings at one time, reducing the need for repeat visits. Most partners agreed that WBA standardized Wi-Fi deployment and was more efficient compared to SSC’s traditional service delivery model. However, competing priorities created deployment challenges under WBA.

While WBA moved away from SSC’s standard BR process, it still relied upon partners to complete BRs to ensure their offices were included on the priority list. The Wi-Fi team used the BR model’s prioritization framework^{Footnote 7} in addition to other criteria^{Footnote 8} to help them prioritize which buildings to deploy to first.

However, GC priorities impacted SSC’s internal priority list, which was based on several criteria to identify those buildings with the greatest business need. The TBS Direction on PPW shifted the focus during the summer of 2024 to providing Wi-Fi to sites with the greatest concentration of GC employees. As a result, some sites that had been high on the SSC priority list were now postponed.

During this period, the Wi-Fi team worked with branches across SSC to meet demand. Thanks to preparatory work that had already been underway, SSC successfully deployed GC Wi-Fi to an estimated 111,000 employees in 96 priority buildings, meeting the September 2024 PPW deadline. After these priority buildings were completed, the focus for the WBA priority list shifted to Employment and Social Development Canada sites for the remainder of fiscal year 2024 to 2025. The priority shifted again in fiscal year 2025 to 2026 to accommodate partners who indicated they could not pay for Wi-Fi installations and to focus on National Defence sites. Consequently, more sites were moved down in priority and their deployments were postponed.

SSC’s enterprise-wide perspective meant that SSC focused on GC-level priorities and savings. Accordingly, WBA was communicated to partners at the Deputy Minister level. However, buy-in at this level didn’t always translate into support at the partner CIO level. In some cases, partner CIOs didn’t want, need, or expect Wi-Fi. In other cases, partner CIOs didn’t have the budget to pay. Similarly, some partner CIOs had been waiting for a long time and still needed GC Wi-Fi at certain sites, but these deployments were no longer high on the revised priority list. In the survey of partners, 27% of respondents agreed that SSC prioritized deployments effectively.

Both SSC employees and partners frequently reported gaps in planning. While both groups believed that the Wi-Fi team had made improvements in this area, a lack of effective planning was reported by surveyed SSC employees as the top barrier to completing work. Better planning ranked second as a way to improve efficiency.

A lack of predictability in Wi-Fi deployments made it difficult for the Wi-Fi team to supply realistic timelines and information to CEs, SDMs and partners. When probed on the issue, CSSB employees reported that a lack of knowledge about site construction timelines, renewal status, partner office relocations, and health and safety concerns were contributing factors. CSSB employees reported that there was no central repository that contained this information, which hindered the Wi-Fi team’s ability to plan accordingly. Branch officials also noted that CSSB required input from other groups to identify which buildings to visit and in what sequence. Challenges with managing inputs from over 43 departments and agencies contributed to repeated changes to the implementation schedule.

4.2 Capacity and coordination challenges impacted deployment efficiency

SSC’s efforts to deploy GC Wi-Fi as quickly as possible was widely acknowledged both internally as well as by partners. The GC Wi-Fi team deployed Wi-Fi to 1,500 sites since April 2016, and capacity increased with the launch of WBA. In interviews, partners praised SSC for its accomplishments. In the survey, 57% of SSC employees agreed that SSC’s capacity to deploy Wi-Fi had improved in fiscal year 2024 to 2025.

To help increase the speed of deployment, the Wi-Fi team increasingly leveraged CWS solutions. As a result, the number of CWS deployments tripled from 43 in fiscal year 2023 to 2024 to 116 in fiscal year 2024 to 2025.

Despite perceptions of improved capacity to deploy Wi-Fi, there was no substantiating evidence to suggest that the switch to WBA enabled CSSB to increase deployment speed. The GC Wi-Fi team reported challenges with managing limited capacity and resources and partners suggested that the Wi-Fi team lacked sufficient capacity to meet demand. Some partners thought their buildings would never see a Wi-Fi solution due to the size of the queue.

The EWS AP footprint data did not indicate that WBA resulted in faster EWS deployment. Net new APs added in the two years before WBA was introduced was 4,580. Net new APs added during the first two years of WBA was 3,094^{Footnote 9}.

It’s important to note that the AP footprint data did not accurately capture all work completed by the Wi-Fi team. It only recorded total active APs. This meant that replacement APs deployed by the Wi-Fi team would not increase the total number of APs in the dataset.

In addition, there was no clear substantiating evidence to suggest that WBA increased deployment speed. SSC employees reported that WBA project management faced coordination challenges outside of their control that slowed deployments. For example, employees mentioned challenges with scheduling site visits (especially in regions with difficult geographical settings), acquiring site access, and preparing tenants for installation in multi-tenant buildings. When surveyed, only 44% of SSC employees and 29% of partners agreed that WBA had increased deployment speed.

In addition, the Serving Government site specified in fiscal year 2024 to 2025 that the completion time standard for GC Wi-Fi was 18 weeks, 80% of the time^{Footnote 10}. An analysis of a subset of WBA BRs^{Footnote 11} found that this threshold was only met 11.6% of the time. The average time to complete an EWS installation averaged 1.5 years. Timelines were impacted by several factors (e.g., roadblocks in the BR process, quality (or lack thereof) of floor plan designs, design scope changes, etc.).

Of course, timing may be an issue. With WBA changing the design requirements of Wi-Fi deployments from a single floor to an entire building, the longer-term gains may have yet to be realized.

4.3 SSC’s structure hindered internal communication and collaboration, which impeded service delivery

Internal interviewees raised concerns that SSC lacked a unified, horizontal approach to service delivery. Forty-five percent of surveyed SSC employees reported that SSC’s organizational structure effectively supported Wi-Fi deployments.

According to interviewees, several structural issues contributed to this perception. Ambiguity regarding roles and responsibilities created confusion and reflected a broader issue of a lack of unity. Additionally, the many teams needed to support GC W-Fi were not always aligned to WBA. Examples given by interviewees, survey respondents, and branch officials included:

• Accountabilities for costing decisions and equipment ownership were unclear
• It was not always clear which CE was responsible for overseeing each partner
• WBA priorities were not always well-communicated internally
• Communication between the Wi-Fi team and other SSC teams required for Wi-Fi deployment was ineffective
• Not all teams that supported GC Wi-Fi were on call 24/7
• SSC service dependencies were not well documented

Partners and vendors noted issues caused by SSC’s siloed teams. For example:

• Due to SSC’s complex structure, some partners struggled to identify the correct service line for support tickets. If a partner submitted a ticket to the wrong service line, the ticket could sometimes be closed without a resolution of the issue
• SSC teams could sometimes impact one service while making changes to a different service
• Different teams handled GC Wi-Fi invoice production and GC Wi-Fi invoice details. This created challenges when partners had inquiries about their invoices
• A few partners and a vendor reported that they occasionally had to act as project managers to coordinate different SSC teams
• SSC’s complex structure was difficult to navigate for vendors

CSSB’s directorate structure reduced the efficiency of GC Wi-Fi implementation outside the National Capital Region (NCR), as Intra-Site Connectivity (ICS) retained most authority. This limited RSD’s ability to support regional partners effectively. SSC employees reported that specific teams were appointed to specific partners. In particular, science and social partners were not supported by Regional Service Delivery (RSD) teams, even if those partners had offices in a region. Sometimes, a team would be flown from the NCR to a region, even though RSD employees had the skills to complete the work. RSD interviewees reported this decreased efficiency given high travel costs. At other times, RSD teams were asked to support these partners, despite not having the budgeted resources. More inefficiencies were created by time zone differences, an issue reported by RSD teams that occurred when they were dependent upon NCR teams to continue work on a project.

RSD interviewees suggested that efficiency gains could be realized if RSD teams had the responsibility and budgeted resources to support all partners in their region. They also reported that additional efficiency gains could be possible if regional expertise was leveraged for decision making, particularly in relation to site readiness.

Communication and collaboration challenges persisted among teams working on GC Wi-Fi. In fact, these issues were the 2nd most frequent barriers at work reported by SSC employees. When asked how to improve efficiency, employees were most likely to mention improving coordination with other SSC teams. In the survey, many employees reported that they were provided with clear direction (73%), sufficient support (67%) and had a balanced workload (66%). However, fewer employees said they had access to detailed plans (37%) or were well-informed about updates or changes to Wi-Fi (45%). Interviewees mentioned they were confused about:

• GC Wi-Fi processes and any expected changes (for example, with WBA)
• Monitoring and support following GC Wi-Fi implementation
• GC Wi-Fi service level standards, including incident management, whether or not the service was supported 24/7, and redundancy considerations

Some regional employees reported a lack of direction on enterprise priorities while others reported inadequate top-down communication. These internal communication gaps were symptoms of siloed operations between NCR and RSD teams and contributed to differing viewpoints among employees about how to deploy GC Wi-Fi.

In general, RSD teams felt underutilized and reported that they lacked critical information to perform their work. While 59% of surveyed SSC employees reported collaboration within CSSB was effective, interviewed RSD employees reported that NCR teams did not sufficiently engage with them. They also reported that they lacked information about Wi-Fi deployments. When surveyed, fewer regional employees (47%) felt well-informed about updates or changes to Wi-Fi compared to NCR employees (66%). This was consistent with findings on regional collaboration from the One SSC Engagement Report (2025) (available only on the GC network).

Following the identification of collaboration issues from this evaluation, the GC Wi-Fi team took actions to improve engagement with RSD teams such as holding more meetings.

Internal collaboration challenges made it difficult for CEs to complete their work. Fifty-six percent felt collaboration with CSSB was effective. CEs also reported less clarity (50%) and support (43%) on Wi-Fi-related work compared to CSSB employees (65% and 52%, respectively). These gaps pointed to challenges with internal collaboration. In interviews, CEs reported that they lacked information to answer questions from partners. The GC Wi-Fi team noted that due to SSC’s structure, CSSB employees had limited direct contact with partners. This made it hard for CSSB to anticipate partner needs and potentially led to information gaps.

Additionally, 46% of CEs and SDMs felt well-informed about updates or changes to GC Wi-Fi. They also reported substantial barriers and stress that contributed to their frustration. Specifically, CEs were 10 times more likely to report barriers and 14 times more likely to report high stress compared to CSSB employees. Although a Power BI dashboard had been created by the GC Wi-Fi team to share updates, at the time of data collection, awareness of the dashboard among CEs was mixed.

It is possible that the establishment of Client Executive Portfolio Operations (CEPO) in the Operations and Client Services Branch (OCSB) may help improve information sharing between CEs and CSSB in the future.

4.4 Despite SSC's hard work, gaps in external communication fueled negative perceptions about SSC

Interviewees praised the GC Wi-Fi team for its commitment to deploy Wi-Fi to partners as efficiently as possible. Partner and SSC interviewees perceived the efforts of the Wi-Fi team as noteworthy, with a special acknowledgement to the hard-working technicians on-site completing installations. Additionally, they acknowledged the constraints and capacity challenges experienced by the team. Partners emphasized their positive relationship with CEs and SDMs. They recognized that CEs and SDMs were doing their best to bridge communication gaps.

At the same time, partners still felt unprepared, unsupported, and uninvolved in GC Wi-Fi deployments. Partners cited a lack of visibility into SSC’s implementation plans, including prioritization criteria and site queue status. This impacted their ability to plan and budget. Interviewees were frustrated when their office buildings were shifted down in priority. Some were frustrated that they were not consulted or engaged about WBA and deployment plans and felt their needs were not considered. Due to their critical need for Wi-Fi, interviewees were further frustrated when installation was delayed (often due to roadblocks in the BR process, low quality floor plan designs, design scope changes, etc.). This was echoed by surveyed partners, of which 39% agreed that SSC committed to its delivery schedules.

CEs and SDMs were responsible for keeping partners and clients informed. However, they reported that internal communication and collaboration challenges negatively impacted their ability to keep partners up-to-date on GC Wi-Fi deployments. Less than half of surveyed SSC employees (44%) and partners (40%) agreed that SSC effectively managed partner expectations. The GC Wi-Fi average Customer Satisfaction Feedback Initiative (CSFI) scores decreased from 3.3 to 2.9 between 2023 and 2025. According to the CSFI, partner dissatisfaction in March 2025 stemmed partly from a lack of planning transparency and long wait times for GC Wi-Fi deployments.

About a third of partners agreed that SSC communicated detailed plans effectively (29%) and that they were well-informed about upcoming work or changes (38%). In interviews, partners reported persistent challenges obtaining key information from SSC on WBA, including its vision, goals, plans, timelines, and financial information.

External communication gaps had negative impacts on partners. Deficient and inaccurate information about GC Wi-Fi deployments often placed partners in situations where they could not plan, strategize or anticipate outcomes effectively. Some partner CIO teams relayed incorrect facts to their senior management and clients, while others could not provide updates at all. Partners also lapsed funds.

Conversely, the GC Wi-Fi team reported ongoing challenges in gathering detailed floor plans and obtaining building access to support deployments from partners. This was particularly true for partners who had not requested Wi-Fi. According to branch officials, the lack of partner cooperation in providing site information and access in a timely manner was among the major obstacles in the deployment process. These challenges contributed to inefficient deployments of GC Wi-Fi.

5. Evaluation findings related to partner support

5.1 While GC Wi-Fi was typically reliable, partners reported challenges when resolving incidents

Connectivity standards for new PSPC office fit-ups made Wi-Fi reliability and support a critical issue. The standard^{Footnote 12} specified that 80% of workstations would rely solely on Wi-Fi while 20% would also have a wired LAN connection. However, SSC employees reported that this standard was introduced without consultation with the GC Wi-Fi team. It is not clear which governance body had made this decision or the justification used to establish the 80% standard.

Regardless of whether this standard was to be applied to a new or existing building, partners reported increased expectations for Wi-Fi network reliability and support.

The office fit-up standard contributed to expectations for greater Wi-Fi reliability. For partners, this reinforced the importance of Wi-Fi as a core service rather than an optional capability.

The new standard had serious implications which may not have been well understood. Specifically, GC Wi-Fi had been developed as an optional solution from the start. As an optional solution, GC Wi-Fi had not been designed to be fully redundant. GC Wi-Fi was highly dependent on other service lines (for example, cabling, security, or WAN). This meant that an incident involving a dependent service could lead to GC Wi-Fi service interruptions. For example, issues with computer certificates could cause Wi-Fi to be unavailable to a user. The user would know that they couldn’t connect to Wi-Fi but would not recognize the underlying 'back-end' service as the root cause.

CSSB employees reported that the service standards for GC Wi-Fi were unclear and should be better communicated to partners, possibly through the creation of formal service level agreements. One area of confusion was whether or not GC Wi-Fi was supported on a 24/7 basis. CSSB employees reported that while EWS solutions were designed with redundancy in mind, not all service dependencies associated with EWS were supported on a 24/7 basis. They further reported that SSC did not have the resources to support the dependent services for EWS on a 24/7 basis.

Most partners (71%) reported that GC Wi-Fi was reliable. Partners said that the implementation process was mostly seamless for end-users and that WBA had helped standardize the deployment of GC Wi-Fi. For example, WBA enabled all tenants in a building to use “Guest Access,” which previously only had been available to the first tenant with EWS. This ensured that all GC employees in the building had the same Wi-Fi experience. Most partners reported that, once in place, GC Wi-Fi was stable and WBA’s use of shared infrastructure was beneficial.

Partners (60%) emphasized SSC’s support and commitment to resolving issues quickly. While the number of EWS high and critical incidents jumped from 8 in fiscal year 2022 to 2023 to 27 in fiscal year 2024 to 2025, the average service restoration time for EWS high and critical incidents was 2 hours. This met the standard listed in the Serving Government Portal.

Some interviewees questioned if there was sufficient support for Wi-Fi when low- and medium-priority incidents occurred. Some partners reported frequent and sometimes lengthy Wi-Fi performance issues.^{Footnote 13} As a result, trust in GC Wi-Fi and perceptions about its value decreased for these partners. Some partners said when issues occurred, challenges arose. These included:

• System monitoring gaps: SSC had to be informed of Wi-Fi incidents, despite SSC’s use of a system monitoring tool.
• Ticket tracking errors: Tickets were closed when they were routed to an incorrect service line rather than remaining open until the correct one was identified.

If a degradation in service occurred without a full outage, SSC’s system monitoring tool may not have caught it. For end users, degradations in service could feel like a full outage. This could also explain why partners needed to inform SSC about incidents.

Partners also reported serious impacts related to prolonged GC Wi-Fi incidents, including day-long outages that impacted compliance with PPW, reliance on costly workarounds, and decreased productivity or operational efficiency.

5.2 SSC struggled to provide partners with transparent and predictable costing information

Partners, CEs, and SDMs experienced the most frustration with timely confirmation of actual costs for GC Wi-Fi and a lack of cost transparency. Interviewees reported that in fiscal year 2023 to 2024, the biggest issue around invoicing was that CSSB received late confirmation on how to recover GC Wi-Fi costs under WBA. This caused confusion for both the Wi-Fi team and CEs and SDMs, who were responsible for providing invoices to partners and clients. As a result, partners were provided with unexpected invoices in March 2024. Many partners were either unable or unwilling to pay these unanticipated invoices. Thus, SSC had to unexpectedly absorb the costs of these unpaid invoices, amounting to $1,109,634. While this situation improved, SSC still had to absorb costs in fiscal year 2024 to 2025, totaling $735,260.

For fiscal year 2024 to 2025, partners received cost estimates for their GC Wi-Fi deployments by October 2024. However, partners reported that confirmation of actual costs was still provided too late in the fiscal year to budget accurately. They also reported that final cost numbers varied significantly from earlier estimates. According to CSFI comments, reasons for partner dissatisfaction in March 2025 included costing and invoicing issues.

To mitigate issues around cost-recovery, CSSB worked with the Chief Financial Officer and Procurement Branch (CFOPB) to transition partners to CBAs in fiscal year 2024 to 2025. CBAs were designed to stabilize partner budgets for the fiscal year by setting a maximum expenditure for GC Wi-Fi deployments. SSC invoiced against the CBA as teams deployed GC Wi-Fi to partners.

Despite the transition to CBAs, costing information was inconsistent and contained inaccuracies that made planning and budgeting difficult for partners. In interviews and surveys, partners reported that cost transparency remained an issue for GC Wi-Fi. Twenty-nine percent of partners reported that one-time costs were transparent. For example, invoices provided a total for each building, without including a detailed breakdown on what the total covered. This caused confusion among partners who did not understand what they had been billed for. Some partners reported billing errors or suspected they may have been double-billed. As of May 2025, 25% of partners reported the billing process for GC Wi-Fi enabled them to budget accurately.

Invoicing inconsistencies arose in 2 types of situations:

1. Several partners reported that there were more planned implementations in their CBA than SSC was able to deliver. For some partners, this caused them to lapse funds and put their future Wi-Fi budgets at risk
2. Several partners reported that they received an unexpected bill or a bill higher than originally identified in their CBA without adequate notice. Some partners did not pay unexpected or last-minute invoices and SSC had to absorb the costs

SSC has been working hard to resolve issues related to costing. In 2024, the CEPO team, CFOPB, and the GC Wi-Fi team collaborated to improve the invoicing process. Improvements included:

• Partners were being transitioned to CBAs to facilitate cost-recovery
• The CEPO team was set up to generate a standardized approach to invoicing, increase transparency, and clarify roles and responsibilities for CEs and SDMs
• A CSSB GC Wi-Fi cost tracking tool was being developed to increase cost transparency of GC Wi-Fi for partners

As a result of these changes, the number of partners unable to pay invoices was reduced from 26 in fiscal year 2023 to 2024 to 3 in fiscal year 2024 to 2025.

Additionally, interviewees indicated the costing model for GC Wi-Fi did not align with WBA. GC Wi-Fi was listed as an optional, cost-recovered service in SSC’s Service Catalogue. This meant that partners needed to submit a BR if they wanted Wi-Fi. SSC completed the work in advance and then recovered one-time deployment costs from partners, followed by ongoing costs per AP. However, under WBA, if a building tenant submitted a request for GC Wi-Fi, all tenants in that building would receive Wi-Fi at the same time even if some tenants had not requested Wi-Fi. This prompted several challenging situations SSC had to navigate, including:

• Some building tenants had already paid one-time costs for a Wi-Fi solution and were frustrated because they had to pay a second time to upgrade to WBA
• Some building tenants either could not afford to pay for Wi-Fi or refused to pay for a service they had not requested
• Some partners whose offices were undergoing retrofits were invoiced for both their temporary offices and their primary offices
• Some floors in a multi-tenant building were vacant so either SSC or PSPC had to pay for the vacant floors

6. Evaluation findings related to performance measurement

The evaluation was unable to assess GC Wi-Fi outcomes and objectives related to efficiency due to weak performance measurement and data limitations. This highlighted a critical need to define expected outcomes, develop related performance indicators and improve tracking and reporting on service performance.

6.1 Internal data limitations made it difficult to assess the performance of GC Wi-Fi

A major challenge throughout the evaluation was a lack of high quality internal data. There were limitations to financial information, partner satisfaction, efficiency metrics, and service standards. This prevented the evaluation team from fully assessing several key GC Wi-Fi outcomes. Additionally, a lack of internal data prevented the Connectivity Program from including appropriate performance measurement indicators in its Performance Information Profile (PIP).

Financial data

Analysing financial data at the service level presented challenges. According to branch documentation, cost avoidance was a key intended benefit of WBA. However, this was not measured by the branch in a systematic way so only proxies were available to assess cost avoidance (for example, cost estimations and participant perceptions). While the branch and Finance teams were responsive, the evaluation team was unable to identify expenditures at the service level. Finance codes changed over time or were entered incorrectly without notes to explain changes. Due to data filtering limitations, the Finance team recommended focusing on the Actuals and Commitments report and excluding the Budget report from analysis. This reduced the pool of data available for analysis.

Given the nature of GC Wi-Fi deployment pre-WBA, it was not feasible to do a direct comparison of actual costs to deploy GC Wi-Fi to an entire building pre- and post-WBA. Pre- and post-WBA cost comparisons were not feasible due to the decentralized and inconsistent nature of GC Wi-Fi deployment tracking pre versus post WBA. The evaluation team attempted to assess GC Wi-Fi cost effectiveness by calculating a total GC Wi-Fi cost-per-AP ratio pre- and post-WBA. However, due to challenges with financial data and AP data (discussed below), this was not possible. As a result, the evaluation team was unable to assess whether WBA had achieved cost avoidance for GC Wi-Fi deployments.

Partner satisfaction

SSC’s measurement of partner satisfaction contained gaps. The CSFI Service Questionnaire was conducted by OCSB twice per year to gauge partner satisfaction with SSC services. While partner satisfaction was not a perfect measure of outcomes, all SSC services relied on it as an indicator of performance. The CSFI was put on hold for the calendar year 2024^{Footnote 14}, creating a temporary gap in performance measurement for GC Wi-Fi. This gap reduced the branch’s ability to assess recent changes and acquire partner feedback, particularly with the switch to WBA.

Efficiency

Internal metrics on efficiency were limited and this hindered the evaluation team’s ability to assess performance for WBA’s objective of improving efficiency. Several methods to assess efficiency for GC Wi-Fi deployment were attempted but a reliable measure could not be determined. Therefore, it was not possible to reach a conclusion on whether WBA had resulted in efficiency gains.

In particular, the Wi-Fi team used a separate tracking tool for WBA than the Business Intake Tracking System. This tracking tool assigned ID numbers that were different from the BR ID numbers. While this helped the branch track GC Wi-Fi deployments, it made pre- and post-WBA comparisons difficult. As a result, it was not possible to determine whether WBA had enabled faster deployment compared to the previous approach. In addition, the evaluation team was unable to determine the exact number of remaining GC sites that still required Wi-Fi due to complexities with site definition and the changing GC office footprint.

Other metrics of efficiency that related to AP deployment were also difficult to assess. While the count of net new APs was available, the dataset didn’t accurately account for all APs deployed. At the time of data collection, CSSB’s Integrated Purchasing Solutions team was undertaking the authorization process for tools that would enable tracking of all APs deployed. These tools could enable CSSB to accurately identify not only the AP footprint, but also APs that were replaced or decommissioned for future analyses.

Service standards

It was unclear whether GC Wi-Fi service standards were met during the evaluation period. Service standards for GC Wi-Fi were listed in the Service Catalogue (prior to August 2025). However, only 17% of entries in the WBA dashboard had the complete set of data needed to calculate request fulfillment duration. Quality issues included blank cells and negative values.^{Footnote 15}

Furthermore, the evaluation team was unable to quantify and verify partner reports of frequent and lengthy Wi-Fi incidents due to platform and data limitations. There was a separate, robust process and tracking system for high- and critical-priority incidents. However, low- and medium-priority incidents followed a different process. The platform for tracking incidents did not have a field to capture whether the reported incident was due to Wi-Fi or if it was due to a dependent service (for example, issues with end-user devices, WAN, or other services). There was also no field to distinguish whether the incident was for EWS or vendor-supplied CWS and no field to capture the “time to restore service” metric. While a similar metric (completion time) was provided, it was unclear how long it took an incident to be marked as completed after service was restored.

While CSSB used a tool called Spectrum to measure the availability of GC Wi-Fi and alert the team to an outage, it could not produce a report on overall availability beyond the last 45 days. This meant that it was not possible to assess whether GC Wi-Fi had been available 24 x 7 x 365, 99% of the time, which was the SSC standard published on the Serving Government website prior to August 2025.

After sharing the preliminary findings for this report, the branch took action and updated the Serving Government website for the intra-building network and Wi-Fi services in August 2025. The website no longer listed service standards for GC Wi-Fi. Other updates to the website included:

• A list of criteria that SSC used to prioritize sites for WBA
• A brief explanation of the process for GC Wi-Fi requests under WBA
• A list of factors that could impact the timelines for GC Wi-Fi deployments

In theory, users could access IT systems health reports that contain quarterly reports of Wi-Fi via the following website: IT Systems Health (available only on the GC network). In practice, all available reports from 2022 to 2026 had Wi-Fi availability listed as “no data available^{Footnote 16}.”

Performance measurement indicators

The Treasury Board Policy on Results required GC departments and agencies to maintain a PIP for all programs contained in their Program Inventory. The SSC PIPs contained program logic models, including outcomes and indicators, and were intended to inform program evaluations and the Departmental Results Framework. Significant work had been completed by CSSB to update and improve the Connectivity PIP for fiscal year 2025 to 2026. However, a lack of available data was a barrier to developing indicators that were outcome-focused.

The PIP for the Connectivity Program was very high level, comprising not only LAN/Wi-Fi but also WAN, external network connectivity, and security services. With so many services included in the logic model, it was an insufficient tool to help identify GC Wi-Fi-specific outcomes. To mitigate this challenge, the evaluation team used core program documents (including the Networks strategy and decks presented to governance committees) to determine GC Wi-Fi outcomes for assessment. These outcomes were included in the evaluation strategy that was endorsed by the branch and the SSC President.

A literature review identified 2 common industry standards for measuring technical network performance: Quality of Service (including measures of latency^{Footnote 17}, jitter^{Footnote 18}, packet loss,^{Footnote 19} and bandwidth^{Footnote 20}) and Quality of Experience (degree of delight or annoyance of end-users). Both standards were seen as critical presenting for a complete picture of network performance. While the draft Connectivity Program logic model for fiscal year 2026 to 2027 included “GC backbone Mbps subscribed bandwidth” as an indicator, it was not clear whether this would translate to GC Wi-Fi bandwidth. No other Quality of Service or Quality of Experience metrics were included in the Connectivity Program logic model.

Most measures of user experience are measured at the end-user device level. Since SSC did not manage all partner devices, significant coordination and collaboration with partners would be required to measure Wi-Fi performance at the end-user device level.

An environmental scan of government organizations in other jurisdictions found that the most common Wi-Fi performance indicators were user experience, security compliance and performance. While SSC conducted surveys to measure partner CIO satisfaction, it did not measure user experience.

7. Conclusions and recommendations

The TBS Direction on PPW led to increased demand and a higher priority on GC Wi-Fi. To meet demand, Wi-Fi deployment increased substantially with increases in AP footprint as well as the number of partners and clients served nationwide. The evaluation found that GC Wi-Fi was an important component of GC workplaces. It added value by enabling increased productivity, collaboration and innovation, and supported the TBS Direction on PPW. CSSB responded to the evolving Wi-Fi needs of partners by implementing WBA in an effort to standardize Wi-Fi access, increase deployment speed and avoid costs. Partners recognized the dedication and hard work of both the Wi-Fi team and CE and SDM teams.

At the same time, challenges with planning and prioritization hindered GC Wi-Fi deployment efforts and its value was undermined by service issues and high costs. This was exacerbated by communication challenges both within SSC, and between SSC and its partners. As a result, it was difficult for partners to appropriately plan and budget for Wi-Fi.

The standard for new PSPC office fit-ups specified that 80% of workstations would rely solely on wireless connectivity. Hence, GC Wi-Fi reliability became an important issue. While GC Wi-Fi was generally stable, some partners reported frequent and sometimes lengthy service disruptions. Based on data that CSSB collects and retains, the branch could not review historical service disruptions because of platform and data limitations. Some partners reported challenges with the ticketing system to report service issues. There was also a lack of clarity about service standards.

Cost estimates for GC Wi-Fi changed throughout the year, and confirmation of actual costs came too late for partners to budget accurately. Some partners lapsed funds when SSC was unable to deliver on planned Wi-Fi deployments. Others were unable to pay unexpected Wi-Fi invoices or invoices that were considerably higher than anticipated. Compounding the issue, GC Wi-Fi invoices were one-line items that did not sufficiently explain costs to partners and clients. The inconsistency of GC Wi-Fi costing information, coupled with a lack of costing transparency, caused considerable frustration for SSC partners and clients.

GC Wi-Fi-specific outcomes and performance indicators were not sufficiently identified in the program’s PIP. The evaluation team was unable to assess several objectives of WBA due to limitations with internal data. The evaluation team could not determine whether WBA had enabled the Wi-Fi team to deploy GC Wi-Fi faster or whether WBA had helped to avoid costs for future GC Wi-Fi deployments. The evaluation also could not fully assess whether the GC Wi-Fi service standards (as listed on the serving government website prior to August 2025) were being met. Previous evaluations also found challenges with performance measurement across the department.

The following recommendations will address the evaluation key findings:

Recommendation #1 (CSSB)

Address barriers to predictability to improve coordination of GC Wi-Fi deployments. This could include collaborating with OCSB to develop and implement a partner engagement mechanism to collect partner feedback to inform planning.

Recommendation #2 (CSSB)

Consolidate and improve documents and tools for employees, partners, and clients to improve transparency of prioritization and planning. This could include:

• Disseminating prioritization criteria and queue status with a documented update schedule and explanations for changes.
• Disseminating deployment plans for one fiscal year at a time that include all expected sites, estimated costs, and estimated deployment dates.

Recommendation #3 (CSSB)

Address communication gaps:

• (a) Document GC Wi-Fi service delivery dependencies to build a holistic view of all SSC teams that need to be kept up-to-date on GC Wi-Fi deployments
• (b) Complete a gap analysis to identify the source of communication challenges among different CSSB teams. Implement a communications plan to address identified gaps

Recommendation #4 (OCSB)

Complete a gap analysis to identify the source of communication challenges between CSSB and CEs/SDMs. Develop and implement a plan to address the gaps. This could include collaborating with CSSB to identify barriers to optimal communication between branches. Implement a common plan to address the gaps.

Recommendation #5 (CSSB)

Implement and monitor improvements to service expectations, incident handling, and transparency to strengthen GC Wi-Fi reliability and partner confidence. This could include:

• Defining and communicating clear service standards to partners and clients, formalized in published documents or service level agreements (SLAs)
• Collaborating with service management teams to clarify support pathways and address barriers partners experience during the support process
• Conducting a gap analysis to identify barriers to GC Wi-Fi redundancy (e.g., from service dependencies) and implementing a strategy to mitigate them

Recommendation #6 (CSSB)

Improve cost transparency and increase invoicing accuracy and timeliness. This could include:

• Collaborating with CFOB to provide clear, itemized descriptions of one-time costs
• Establishing and communicating a billing schedule early in the fiscal year to support partner planning
• Collaborating with OCBS’s CEPO team to maintain a log of billing discrepancies and sharing quarterly summaries to support resolution and process improvement
• Collaborating with OCSB’s CEPO team to publish guidance on cost-recovery calculations and processes, including how CBAs are calculated, to support cost transparency

Recommendation #7 (CSSB)

Strengthen performance measurement to demonstrate the value of GC Wi-Fi and other connectivity services to partners and the GC. This could include:

• Identifying data gaps, reviewing data quality and standardizing data entry practices to support reliable tracking
• Collaborating with appropriate teams to identify and address platform limitations that hinder performance measurement and reporting
• Tracking and reporting on performance against service standards and deployment targets to increase transparency and support accountability

Appendix A: Evaluation context and expenditures

Evaluation strategy

Approved by the President and the Executive Committee (SSC’s Performance Measurement and Evaluation Committee) in November 2024.

Evaluation scope

Assessed effective implementation of GC Wi-Fi, including SSC’s response to emerging priorities, progress to achieving outcomes, the impact of the Whole Building Approach as an implementation strategy, and opportunities to improve service delivery.

Value for decision making

• Assessed SSC’s ability to meet partner demand and deliver on PPW priorities through Wi-Fi deployment
• Demonstrated the value of GC Wi-Fi by identifying key benefits and critical gaps
• Delivered evidence-based findings to support strategic decision-making and drive service improvements

Evaluation questions

1. To what extent has GC Wi-Fi responded to emerging priorities?
2. To what extent has GC Wi-Fi achieved its intended outcomes to demonstrate maximum value for the Government of Canada?
3. Is SSC set up to deliver GC Wi-Fi effectively?
4. What are the opportunities to improve the efficiency of service delivery for GC Wi-Fi?

Expenditures

With the introduction of WBA in April 2023, GC Wi-Fi expenditure reporting changed. While WBA expenditures captured Wi-Fi costs, they also included additional costs, such as cabling and local area networks (LAN). As shown in Table 1, expenditures increased over time. In FY 2024-25, GC Wi-Fi teams reported $41.7M in Wi-Fi-related expenditures, with $17.4M attributed to WBA.

Table 1

FY	GC Wi-Fi Expenditures	GC Wi-Fi WBA Expenditures	Total GC Wi-Fi Expenditures	Non-GC Wi-Fi WBA Expenditures
2021‑22	$29,692,249	-	$29,692,249	-
2022‑23	$21,921,273	-	$21,921,273	-
2023‑24*	$26,620,313	$7,195,125	$33,815,438	$8,225,286
2024‑25	$24,305,932	$17,387,619	$41,693,551	$7,069,473
*WBA launch

Appendix B: Acronyms

Acronym	Definition
AP	Access Point
BR	Business Request
CBA	Consumption-Based Agreement
CE	Client Executive
CEPO	Client Executive Portfolio Operations team
CFOPB	Chief Financial Officer and Procurement Branch
CIO	Chief Information Officer
CSFI	Customer Satisfaction Feedback Initiative
CSSB	Connectivity and Security Services Branch
CWS	Commercial Wi-Fi Solution
ESDC	Employment and Social Development Canada
ESM	Enterprise Service Model
EWS	Enterprise Wi-Fi Solution
EXCOM	Executive Committee
FINTRAC	Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada
FY	Fiscal Year
GAC	Global Affairs Canada
GC	Government of Canada
IoT	Internet of Things
ITRR	IT Refresh and Replacement
LAN	Local Area Network
LIAS	Local Internet Access Service
LOE	Level of Effort
NCR	National Capital Region
OCSB	Operations and Client Services Branch
PPW	(Direction on) Prescribed Presence in the Workplace
PIP	Performance Information Profile
PSPC	Public Services and Procurement Canada
RCMP	Royal Canadian Mounted Police
RSD	Regional Services Delivery
SSC	Shared Services Canada
SDM	Service Delivery Manager
SLA	Service Level Agreement
TBS	Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat
WBA	Whole Building Approach
WAN	Wide Area Network

Appendix C: Methodology

1. Objective and scope

The Office of Audit and Evaluation based the evaluation, which covered 2021 to 2025, on data collected from November 2024 to June 2025. The purpose was to inform decision making through a neutral assessment of the responsiveness, effectiveness, and efficiency of SSC’s GC Wi-Fi, focusing on four questions identified through scoping interviews and discussions with branch management (Table 1).

Table 1

Responsiveness	To what extent has GC Wi-Fi responded to emerging priorities?
Effectiveness	To what extent has GC Wi-Fi achieved its intended outcome to demonstrate maximum value for the Government of Canada? Is SSC set up to deliver GC Wi-Fi effectively?Footnote 22
Efficiency	What are the opportunities to improve the efficiency of service delivery for GC Wi-Fi?

2. Data collection methods

To address the evaluation questions, the evaluation team employed a mixed-methods approach. Utilizing data triangulation, the following lines of evidence were cross-referenced to identify, analyze, and validate findings.

Literature review

An in-house literature review was conducted on Wi-Fi technology and performance measurement related to the Networks program. The review covered emerging trends, benchmarks, risks, business impacts, and balancing short- and long-term needs. Additionally, a review was commissioned of best practices and perspectives on Wi-Fi service delivery from other jurisdictions, which informed a cross-jurisdictional comparison.

Document review

Information from 52 SSC documents, including governance board presentations and branch materials, was synthesized to understand GC Wi-Fi’s design, status, funding, and stakeholder roles. The synthesized information traced the service’s evolution and future directions, and was continuously updated until May 2025.

Administrative data analysis

Administrative data was collected and analyzed covering fiscal years 2021 to2025, and considered service delivery metrics, partner issues, and spending trends. Specific administrative data sources included:

• The CSFI – Service Delivery Satisfaction Survey
• BR data for GC Wi-Fi
• Critical incidents data for GC Wi-Fi
• WBA Dashboard
• Internal service data (e.g., metrics such as AP count, cost of implementation)
• Financial data

Key informant interviews

The evaluation team conducted 60-minute semi-structured interviews (November 2024 to April 2025) with diverse stakeholders to gather views, experiences, and factual information on SSC’s GC Wi-Fi. Table 2 provides the sample’s composition.

Table 2

Internal interviews

Interviewee categories	Number of interviews	Number of participants
SSC employees	27	34

External interviews

Interviewee categories	Number of interviews		Number of participants
	Individual interviews	Organizations represented
GC partner organizationsFootnote 23	19	22	36
GC client organizations	1	1	1
GC Wi-Fi providers	3	3	9
Total sampling frame	23	26	46

SSC employee survey

The evaluation team administered an online survey (March to May 2025) to capture SSC employees’ perspectives on GC Wi-Fi, targeting managers and employees below the DG level.^{Footnote 24} The branch provided an initial sample of 543 CSSB FTEs, and DGs were asked to share the Open Access link with staff. To maximize responses, four reminder emails were sent (April 1, 7, 22, and May 5). Samples were screened to ensure only employees with business-level knowledge participated. From 543 invites (12 bounced), 235 responses were received, yielding a 43% response rate. After applying the screening, 185 responses were retained for analysis.

Partner survey

The evaluation team conducted an online survey (April to May 2025) to gather SSC partner organizations’ perspectives on GC Wi-Fi. Invitations were sent using a distribution list from OCSB’s Client Executive team, with an open-access link allowing participants to share it widely. To boost responses, 2 reminder emails were sent. Of 57 total respondents, 52 were retained after screening, representing 38 of 42 partners (90% response rate). The remaining responses included 4 clients and 1 “other organization” (neither client nor partner). The survey provided additional insights into department and agency experiences to inform the evaluation.

Cross-jurisdictional comparison

A consulting firm was hired to conduct 60-minute interviews with peers from 8 international jurisdictions, i.e., Denmark, Estonia, Italy, Germany, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States (New York and Texas), plus Ontario. The analysis included these jurisdictions to identify challenges and opportunities in Wi-Fi implementation for their public sector organizations.

3. Limitations

There are limitations associated with this report. The program itself changed due to CSSB’s restructuring and the mid-evaluation introduction of WBA. Internal data analysis challenges included incomplete data, missing data dictionaries, and tracking tools lacking longitudinal analysis capability^{Footnote 25}. Survey limitations were potential volunteer bias^{Footnote 26}, participant bias^{Footnote 27}, and restrictions on statistical testing options due to the small sample size and the use of the snowball sampling technique to supplement the contact sheet provided by the branch^{Footnote 28}.

Appendix D: Crosswalk to the Evaluation Strategy