Shared Services Canada's 2023-24 Departmental results report

Departmental Result: Government of Canada benefits from reliable and responsive networks and SSC-managed security services that protect the information of departments, agencies and Canadians.

Digital government is about connecting Canadians, businesses, and other organizations with the public services they need to get things done, and doing so in an easily accessible, secure, and high-speed manner.

SSC provides the required IT infrastructure that is the backbone needed to allow GC employees and others to connect to the GC network. These services provide government departments and agencies with access to networks that allow the reliable and secure delivery of services to Canadians.

In 2023-24, SSC continued to improve network services to meet the rapid pace of change required to meet government needs. After having made significant investments to ensure networks could support remote work, SSC has turned its focus back to traditional onsite work locations in 2023-24. It has worked to ensure that GC workplaces were equipped to support the ability to work with new tools.

Priorities during this time of change were to increase network speed and reliability while providing greater availability at GC sites and in remote locations. This included expediting Wi-Fi for partners to recognize it is now a basic expectation at workplaces and service delivery points, and upgrading bandwidth to provide network speed in buildings. SSC also continued to strengthen its cyber security capabilities to improve the resiliency of IT infrastructure and protect the GC from evolving cyberthreats while these improvements were rolled out.

Results achieved:

Network Modernization

SSC is continuously working to improve overall network performance by strengthening connections between government buildings and GC Networks hubs. The hubs are equipped with SSC’s enterprise perimeter security services to improve network security, including enhanced monitoring by the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security. SSC continues to implement modern network technology and to ensure that necessary network components, such as fibre optic cable, are ready and available when required.

In 2023-24, SSC successfully onboarded 27 new partners to the GC Networks Hubs. This improves access to critical services such as enterprise Internet and cloud connectivity for partner departments.

SSC has also:

• implemented security perimeter services at 5 hubs across the country to enhance the overall security posture of the GC network.
• upgraded the hubs in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver to increase the flexibility and reliability of connectivity services.
• upgraded the 2 hubs in the National Capital Region (NCR) to add monitoring capabilities by the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security (CCCS).

Hybrid Workplace Enablement

In order to support the GC’s workplace, SSC continues to update GC buildings to improve worksites for public servants and improve overall GC IT infrastructure.

In 2023-24, SSC focused on 3 key network and security updates:

• Improved bandwidth: The communication and collaboration tools employees now use, such as MS Teams, place additional demands on bandwidth capacity and Internet usage in GC buildings, which impacts the overall network performance for some buildings. SSC has completed the necessary upgrades to improve bandwidth capacity in 99% of sites that required updates. These upgrades to the bandwidth improve the network speed for GC employees, and ensure the efficient use of MS Teams and other high-bandwidth needs of the modern workplace.
• Implementation of Wi-Fi service: Access to Wi-Fi offers flexibility for public servants to work at different workstations, in conference rooms and in other collaborative spaces. To improve the deployment of Wi-Fi to its partners, SSC has shifted it approach to providing Wi-Fi service in buildings to speed up the delivery of Wi-Fi services to partners while also reducing related costs. In 2023-24, SSC worked with Public Services and Procurement Canada (PSPC) and GC partner organizations and achieved the following:
  • 16 buildings have been fully set up with Wi-Fi, benefitting 22 partners
  • 4 buildings have been partially set up with Wi-Fi, benefitting 9 partners
  • 107 buildings are in progress using the Whole Building Approach
• Enhanced Collaboration for Government Real Estate Optimization: SSC is committed to strengthening its collaborative relationship with Public Services and Procurement Canada (PSPC) across it’s entire Real Property management portfolio. This partnership has yielded advancements in consultation services, encompassing general advisory services, preliminary cost estimation assessments, and decommissioning strategies. These enhancements will result in a 50% reduction in the government's office space allocation over the next 5 years as mandated in Budget 2024. This initiative will reduce taxpayers spending on office space, freeing up significant funds that can be redirected to support other critical areas of need.

  During the 2023-2024 fiscal year, SSC and PSPC have established a joint governance structure to clearly outline roles and responsibilities of each organization with a mechanism for regular review of real property management priorities and portfolio. Furthermore, SSC has leveraged tools and technologies to support in the identification of site complexity and whole building Wi-Fi implementations to highlight trends, optimize operations and make informed decisions on behalf of our Partners and Clients.

  By enhancing these joint capabilities to create a comprehensive disposal strategy, SSC and PSPC are poised to play a pivotal role in executing this initiative, ensuring a smooth transition while maximizing value for the Canadians.

Low Earth Orbit Satellites

Not all of SSC’s partners and clients are located near urban areas to access the various forms of connectivity. Consequently, the department is using satellite services to support connectivity in remote areas, both nationally and internationally. SSC has introduced low earth orbit satellites (LEO) to complement the current satellite services and improve connections particularly in remote areas. The LEO satellite service offers choice and flexibility to partners in remote areas and provides a faster and more reliable option.

In 2023-24, SSC completed the testing of LEO services with the RCMP and DND to ensure this service meets the needs of its partners and clients. LEO services are now available to partners for their connectivity needs.

Cyber Security of Networks and Systems

In 2023-24, SSC continued to focus on an approach to security that is evolving towards zero trust security capabilities within SSC-managed IT infrastructure. SSC created a cyber security roadmap that provides an overview of the initiatives and improvements that will be made over time and serves to inform related plans by key security partners, including the Communications Security Establishment (CSE) and others. This roadmap supports the GC Enterprise Cyber Security Strategy and focuses on an approach to security that is based on constant verification, where users can seamlessly and securely access the tools they need through a single secure digital identity that is checked strategically – rather than the traditional security gating approach that checks only at key access points (e.g. Zero Trust).

In response to the ever-increasing frequency and complexity of cyber events, SSC consolidated its security operations and provided partner departments with new IT security services. This allowed the department to provide a more unified approach to cyber threats and incident management. This approach supports constant monitoring, tracking and reporting of cyber security events across SSC’s entire infrastructure. SSC’s improved IT security services include:

• Cyber incident coordination and response: Effective and timely responses to, and recovery from, cyber security events. This works to maintain a secure and stable GC IT infrastructure in collaboration with the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security, the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat and other stakeholders.
• Internal integrity and detection services: Proactively monitors, detects and responds to email, application and mobile threats. This supports organizations by performing forensic investigations, assisting with administrative investigations and monitoring for insider threats.
• Enterprise vulnerability management services: Improves attack surface management to better prepare for, respond to and recover from cyber events. SSC’s vulnerability assessment and testing services proactively improve organizations’ security postures to help lower risks and protect critical IT assets.
• Vulnerability intelligence: Delivers aggregated, timely information to proactively evaluate security configurations and provide strategic information, analyses and recommendations concerning the IT infrastructure we manage.

In addition, SSC made significant progress in deploying the Privileged Access Management (PAM) service as part of the Administrative Access Controls Service project. This service allows SSC to safeguard sensitive resources by managing administrative privileges and credentials and by restricting and monitoring access to those resources in an enterprise-wide and standardized way. This ensures business continuity and prevents down time in the event of a critical incident. In 2023-24, SSC launched the PAM service, enabling SSC to begin user onboarding. SSC also implemented an incremental delivery approach that will speed up delivery of this service to partners and clients. SSC has completed the first of 5 planned releases, which involved onboarding the first group of capabilities. The remaining releases will include additional capabilities and are planned for completion in the next fiscal year.

Furthermore, SSC piloted a new Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) approach, deploying it to hundreds of cloud administrators to enhance the security of administrative access in the cloud. Additionally, SSC developed technical specifications and a procurement vehicle for acquiring security keys (also knowns as "hard tokens"). Multiple departments procured over 200,000 hard tokens to be deployed to end users as an alternative MFA method, securing access to MS Teams and other systems moving forward.

Extending core IT and security services to Small Departments and Agencies (SDA)

Until recently, many Small Departments and Agencies (SDA) provisioned IT services that they managed themselves or that were managed by a third party to meet their organizational requirements. In Budget 2022, the GC made a commitment to increase cyber security across federal organizations, and extend cyber defence services to SDAs. Bringing SDAs within the enterprise IT infrastructure will improve their overall IT security along with the security of the GC as a whole.

SSC continues to work with SDAs to provide them with a mandatory sub-set of services and provide more autonomous arm’s-length organizations with the option of implementing a group of SSC-managed network and security services that are currently being used by the core partner and client departments. Services available include Enterprise Internet Service, secure remote access (allowing employees to work from a location outside of government buildings while ensuring data security is protected), and Digital Communications and Collaboration Enterprise Email enabled by Microsoft 365 (M365).

At the end of 2023-24, of the 43 SDAs targeted for enhancement, 13 had been fully onboarded to Internet and remote access connectivity service solutions. As a result of the ongoing network modernization, SSC is now including additional capabilities for SDAs, such as providing identity, credential and access management to SSC applications that support modern authentication, which is further strengthening their cyber security posture. Additionally, SSC has migrated a total of 10 SDAs to date to the M365 email solution, 7 of which were completed in 2023-24.

SSC is also making changes to the infrastructure that will provide SDAs with additional services such as SSC’s IT Service Management Tool (Onyx) and Enterprise Mobile Device Management (EMDM) to support mobile devices and their secure access to GC assets.

Departmental Result: Public servants have access to the collaboration tools and workplace technology needed to work effectively to deliver services to Canadians

SSC continues to provide modern, secure and robust enterprise tools, and supporting infrastructure capabilities for the GC. SSC is working to ensure all stakeholders are informed of plans to continue the consolidation of these services and more efficiently deliver a common digital experience with full access to a standardized core bundle of tools, anywhere at any time, from any GC-approved device.

These products enable digital workspaces for public servants, including the basic services that underpin work across the GC, such as email, phones, videoconferencing, and contact centres. Standard digital tools across the enterprise, such as M365 and its suite of applications, provide a common experience for every GC employee. They also enable digital communications and collaboration between public servants across various departments to support service delivery to Canadians. Finally, these services are critical to program implementation and delivery across the GC, including the establishment of call centres to support new initiatives like the Canadian Dental Care Plan.

In 2023-24, SSC has continued to improve digital services for partner and client departments by modernizing and expanding existing services to enhance communication and facilitate service delivery to Canadians. Additional contact centres were migrated to modern solutions with improved services, secure and reliable email service was expanded to more Small Departments and Agencies, video conferencing capabilities have been improved to enhance collaboration, and significant cost savings have been generated by continuing to modernize our telecommunications.

Results achieved:

Contact Centre Modernization

Contact centres provide the communication systems that enable Canadians to interact with GC departments. SSC supports both internal and external contact centres across the GC that range in size and complexity. Some of these contact centres are large, such as the Employment and Social Development Canada contact centres for Employment Insurance, the Canada Pension Plan and Old Age Security, while others are small, such as the Canada Revenue Agency contact centre for the Community Volunteer Income Tax Program.

SSC continued its modernization efforts to provide Canadians with more convenient and reliable options. Partners leverage modern contact centre technologies to support their operations and deliver services, including:

• ability to communicate through chat, email or videoconference
• automatically receiving sources of information
• options for automatic call-back and self-service

In 2023-24, SSC migrated 3 more contact centres from legacy systems to modern solutions. In addition, SSC established a new contact centre for the Canadian Dental Care Plan, which launched in December 2023. This new contact centre was a key part of the implementation of the new program, and it provides the information needed for eligible Canadians to access financial support for dental services easily and efficiently.

Digital Communications and Collaboration – Email Transformation

SSC has continued migrating from both the vendor-managed email services and in-house email services of our partner departments to SSC’s Digital Communications and Collaboration Email Service. This migration to one common cloud-based system generates efficiencies of scale and leverages M365 to provide public servants with a modern email solution that allows them to work from anywhere.

To date, 36 of 45 partners have been migrated. As some of the remaining partners will require more complex migrations, SSC continues to work with partners to prepare for their migration.

In addition to partner departments, SSC has also been migrating SDAs to the M365 email solution, to ensure that these additional GC institutions benefit from the enhanced functionality and security of SSC’s enterprise solution. In 2023-24, SSC completed the migration of 7 SDAs and continues to plan for the migration of those remaining. To date, 10 SDAs have been migrated to the M365 email solution.

Telecommunication Modernization

As part of its modernization efforts, SSC also supports partner departments and agencies with the continued elimination of non-required fixed lines, modernizing where possible and moving users to the most effective and cost-efficient telecom solution based on GC work profiles.

• Fixed Line Reduction: Given technological advances, traditional and wired office desk phones are no longer useful for many employees and are costly to maintain. Consequently, SSC has worked with its partner departments to aggressively retire all non-essential landline services and modernize legacy phone lines (e.g. copper, legacy Voice over Internet Protocol [VoIP], etc.). In 2023-24, SSC disconnected 50,500 fixed lines, exceeding its target by 5,000. This is significant progress against the long-term goal of eliminating 90% of the 350,000 landlines in use across the GC. This resulted in nearly $8 million of cumulative cost savings in 2023-24.
• Mobile Refresh: Mobile refresh/evergreening helps ensure that the GC stock of mobile devices is the most modern and is compliant with security requirements. SSC Telecom implemented a strategy to procure devices in bulk, rather than individually, which provided significant cost reductions. In 2023-24, bulk procurement generated $25 million in cost savings.
• Softphone: SSC continued to work with partners to modernize and reduce their reliance on legacy telecommunications technologies. Following a successful pilot, SSC launched the softphone service in 2023-24 and deployed 25,000 softphones. This allows users to place and receive phone calls over the Internet using M365. With softphone, users no longer require a dedicated phone, which results in cost savings for the GC. Softphones are fully integrated into their endpoint which further enables access to voice services anytime, anywhere, from any GC-approved device.
• Enterprise Mobile Device Management (EMDM) Evolution : Through this service, SSC ensures that GC employees can securely access GC networks and data using mobile devices and tablets, providing them with modern work capabilities anytime, anywhere. In 2023-24, EMDM completed its Delivery Strategy, and most of the Detailed Planning requirements, completing a high-level design, security assessment plan and the concept of operations supported by project management deliverables. The EMDM service is moving to a dedicated cloud-hosted environment to improve service availability and service reliance and to respond quicker to partner requirements.

Conferencing Services Modernization

Videoconferencing has become an essential part of the hybrid work model and allows for meetings where some participants are together in a GC building while others join remotely. SSC has enhanced its enterprise videoconferencing capabilities to deliver a fully integrated service that connects all employees equitably, regardless of their location in Canada or in the technology they use (MS Teams or traditional videoconferencing).

SSC successfully completed a project to transition the GC’s enterprise videoconferencing service to the cloud on time and $8 million under budget. As part of this project, 2 pathfinder departments were fully migrated, with SSC planning to complete migration of all partner departments and agencies. This work ensures that the GC’s hybrid workforce benefits from reliable and accessible videoconferencing services in meeting rooms with the ability to connect to MS Teams meetings.

In 2023-24, SSC modernized 299 meeting spaces and is accelerating the implementation of cloud video interoperability for traditional conference rooms enabling seamless connections with MS Teams.

Additionally, SSC provides a Videoconferencing for Senior Officials (VfSO) services, a secure service that provides video conferencing and collaboration tools on a dedicated network. SSC has improved this service by enhancing its stability and addressing design issues, thereby better supporting partner departments.

Departmental Result: Government of Canada benefits from responsive and reliable hosting solutions that support its applications and data used to deliver services to Canadians

A digital government requires sufficient capacity to manage the large amount of networks and data. SSC’s Hosting Infrastructure uses either data centres or cloud computing to store applications and digital data and then processes it into forms that the GC and Canadians can use. SSC is responsible for providing modern, scalable and reliable hosting services to partner departments that supports their diverse and evolving digital needs. As part of Digital Together, a Hosting Services roadmap outlines how SSC will establish a reliable and sustainable hosting ecosystem for the GC. Initiatives identified are focused on further modernizing the GC’s hosting services to ensure they are not only robust and secure but also agile and responsive to the rapidly changing digital landscape. The goal is to provide partner departments with the best possible hosting platforms to deliver their services, ultimately benefitting the citizens that all government departments serve.

In addition, SSC continued the workload migration and closure of legacy data centres. The Workload Migration Program allows partner departments to assess their applications and data to identify the ideal hosting environment to migrate (cloud or enterprise data centre). Closure of legacy data centres also ensures reliability and reduces the risk of outages.

Results achieved:

Cloud Services Evolution

As the centralized provider of IT infrastructure and the provider of cloud services for the GC, SSC plays a key role in supporting departments and agencies as they modernize and update their IT platforms, including the use of various cloud-based services. In December 2023, TBS announced plans to update the GC Cloud Adoption Strategy with a new approach to addressing the evolving hosting needs across government. As part of this new approach, all GC application hosting, whether in a data centre or in the cloud, will be streamlined, with SSC becoming the service provider for all shared service delivery needs. Partners and clients now need to work closely with SSC and TBS to determine the hosting model that provides the greatest business value for each application.

The new strategy will help shift the GC from a ‘Cloud First’ approach to a ‘Cloud Smart’ approach that rationalizes application workloads and aligns them with a hosting model that provides the greatest business value, rather than defaulting to cloud for new applications, while also reducing time to deliver and increasing agility. It will also include improved oversight of GC cloud usage and enable implementation of cost and consumption controls.

In 2023-24, SSC began the transition to this new role and approach for hosting services and has adopted an incremental approach that focuses on reducing risks for the GC. SSC is engaging and collaborating with partner and client departments to ensure transparency and inclusivity and has continued to expand its cloud services to meet the evolving needs of the GC and provide value to partner and client departments. SSC has implemented the following capabilities and functions to support cloud services:

• SSC established 2 new enterprise cloud services that are now available to partner and client departments. These solutions can host applications up to a Protected B, Medium Integrity, Medium Availability (PBMM) security profile which provides necessary security to allow departments to use this service for public applications to Canadians. The 2 new solutions are:
  • Internet-facing cloud service: allows GC users to access this solution through the Internet. This would be a good option for a new digital services that are available to the public.
  • GC-facing, with secure ground connectivity: provides a hybrid or GC-connected solution that is accessed using the GC network and is connected to the GC on-site system.
• SSC expanded its services to include additional experimentation capabilities. These experimental environments are ideal to allow SSC and partners to innovate and temporarily try out different platforms before moving to a permanent hosting solution.

In addition, SSC provides the foundational infrastructure and critical services that support the delivery of hosting services and allow partner and client departments to deploy and manage their workloads efficiently in the cloud. In 2023-24, SSC continued to provide the following to support hosting services:

• Automating infrastructure provisioning: SSC develops and manages automated processes for provisioning required infrastructure and enabling self-service capabilities for partner and client departments. This also includes setting up necessary network and connectivity required for hosting services.
• Implementing baseline security: SSC implements a baseline security into each hosting platform that monitors and maintains core security measures. This includes network and traffic security, endpoint security, identity and access management, and guardrails. These baseline security controls are clearly identified so partner and client departments can either add layers or use baseline controls to make their applications safe.
• Ensuring resource separation: SSC has implemented an architecture design in cloud environments to ensure there is a strong separation between clients and data classification to maintain data integrity. This means workloads from one department storing unclassified data is kept separate from another department with protected data.
• Compliance and governance: SSC ensures each platform complies with applicable standards and policies. This helps to ensure they can be integrated into current and future stewardship measures, such as FinOps and automated compliance monitoring processes.
• Operations and monitoring: SSC provides partner and client departments with the tools and services they will need to log, monitor and alert of any issues to ensure smooth operations.
• Platform-level scaling and high availability: SSC ensures that each platform can scale up or down as needed and can remain highly available to meet workload demands.
• Maintenance and upgrades: SSC regularly updates cloud infrastructure and services to maintain security and performance while keeping partner and client departments informed of changes.
• Foundational and enablement services: SSC enabled an architecture design that allows for the introduction of enablement services that partner and client departments can leverage as needed. These are components that are added to platforms as needed to facilitate rapid deployment pipelines and container registries, integrating them with provisioning automation and other platform components.

Workload Modernization and Enterprise Data Centres

The capacity of the GC IT infrastructure to run a multitude of applications and data, together referred to as workloads is a critical piece to support a digital government. In order for program and service delivery systems to function effectively, the GC's applications and data must be healthy, up to date, reliable and secure. The GC uses data centres to store and run the thousands of applications required for day-to-day government activities, including fundamental operations like delivering services to Canadians and supporting mission critical operations.

SSC launched the workload modernization program to migrate workloads from legacy data centres to modern solutions (cloud or enterprise data centres) operated and managed by SSC. Workload modernization and migration supports the government's efforts to reduce the risk of system outages and IT infrastructure failures by adopting new technology and closing legacy data centres. In 2023-24, SSC successfully closed 50 legacy data centres bringing the total count to 490.

SSC also developed a new diagnostic analysis service to support planning for workload migration projects founded on lessons learned from past migrations. This supports work to better understand the business requirements before a project is started. To date, SSC has delivered a diagnostic analysis final report to 10 partner organizations for potential future workload migration projects and has facilitated the planning for 2 upcoming workload migration projects. 

Departmental Result: Government of Canada benefits from enterprise IT and client-specific solutions that support the delivery of programs and services to Canadians

An enterprise approach is key to the success of digital government keeping up with new technologies and managing emerging risks as it simplifies IT maintenance and operations. It also allows for continuous improvement while reducing overall costs. In 2023-24, SSC continued to build on its enterprise approach, developing common solutions that can be reused be multiple organizations to address emerging needs. The launch of Delivering Digital Solutions Together for Canada (Digital Together) and the creation of roadmaps provides partner and client departments with greater transparency and predictability, which support more meaningful consultations regarding planned activities and timeframes, and will allow clients to anticipate the impacts of key initiatives, identify what work or assistance they will need in order to be ready, and align their activities to take advantage of upcoming technology.

In addition, SSC continued its efforts to enhance and modernize its service management practices to improve how SSC delivers its services to partner departments across the GC. SSC also continued to play a supporting role for partner departments to complete projects and maintain public-facing services.

Results achieved:

Enterprise IT Service Management (ITSM)

SSC is adapting and continuing to establish an enterprise-wide approach to ITSM, which includes the activities performed by SSC to implement and manage IT services for partner departments. The enterprise approach to ITSM is a strategic approach to IT management, with a focus on delivering value to customers by managing end-to-end delivery of IT services to clients. This includes all the processes and activities to design, create, deliver, and support IT.

• Enterprise ITSM tool: SSC Onyx is the Enterprise ITSM tool, it provides GC partners with standard access to SSC services. Onyx allows SSC to manage IT services from start to finish using a single tool. It also supports the processes and activities required to deliver SSC’s IT services. SSC continued to evolve Onyx in order to improve how it provides and manages IT service delivery to partner and client departments by offering more services and increasing reliability of the platform. In 2023-24, SSC:
  • completed the onboarding of 10 partner organizations to SSC’s Change Management Module in Onyx, allowing users to submit change requests directly. The Change Management process supports the control and management of the lifecycle of changes within an IT service, or IT infrastructure, for partner and client departments.
  • added 7 new enterprise IT services to SSC Onyx, providing users with new options they can request through Onyx.
  • migrated the services for 3 partner organizations from their legacy ITSM tools to SSC’s Onyx tool.
  • migrated the ITSM Onyx platform to the cloud to provide a more reliable service.
  • implemented tools to automate quality assurance to improve the quality of documentation in Onyx. This ensures that requests from partner and client departments are as complete as possible in order to facilitate the next steps in service delivery.
• GC Enterprise Portfolio Management (GC EPM): The GC EPM Program is a multi-year program to allow the GC to effectively track IT investments and enhance IT planning across the GC. SSC and TBS have continued to mature an online Business Requirements Document (BRD) tool to allow departments and agencies to include their investments into the tool, along with a GC prioritization rating. By the end of 2023-24, SSC had completed onboarding 35 of the 36 partner departments to the BRD module in GC EPM. The remaining partner will be onboarded by September 2024. Use of the online BRD module became mandatory for partners effective April 2024. Updates were done to the “Business Request” page on SSC’s Serving Government site to support this new requirement.

SSC’s Architect Professional Certification Program receives Canadian accreditation

In December 2023, SSC’s Architect Professional Certification Program (APCP) received accreditation from the Canadian Information Processing Society (CIPS), Canada’s association of IT professionals. The APCP is a multi-level development program focused on equipping GC employees with the necessary skills and knowledge they need to be successful IT architects. It is the first GC career development program to receive this accreditation. These architects play a significant role by creating roadmaps and contributing to solutions that ensure technology investments align with GC standards and goals.

IT architects:

• develop roadmaps for digital priorities
• reduce organizational complexity and duplication
• ensure technology investments align with GC standards and goals

This industry recognition for the APCP underscores our commitment to competency‑based employee development and meeting the needs of the GC's Digital Ambition through an enabled and highly educated workforce.

SSC continues to look to the future of IT for the GC by investing in a wide range of career development programs, including the APCP. Our organization prioritizes the career growth and development of its employees. By doing so, we continue to work toward addressing the current and future technical needs of the GC.

Renewing SSC’s Serving Government Website

To support service delivery, SSC continues to improve the Serving Government website that serves as SSC's primary digital channel to connect, transact and engage with partner departments and agencies. The site is used by IT decision-makers and GC employees to get information about SSC’s plans and services.

Work is ongoing to further improve the efficiency and transparency of the services SSC offers through the website, including enabling partner and client departments to securely access key metrics and data tailored to the services they obtain from our department.

Customer-led projects

SSC continued to work closely with partner departments and agencies to support the implementation of several of their projects. SSC provided the necessary IT infrastructure and services required to advance customer-led projects. Some examples of progress made for these projects in 2023-24 include:

• Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) - Asylum Interoperability Project: This project aims to improve processes and increase the efficiency of asylum registration and intake processes at ports of entry and inland offices. SSC implemented the required infrastructure, connectivity and storage capacity for the Asylum Interoperability Project in December 2023. These updates to the infrastructure support increased transaction volumes and document storage needs resulting from asylum applications. Also, the Managed Secure File Transfer (MSFT) enhancements increased and improved interoperability across partner applications (including with the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, and CBSA) allowing asylum applications to be processed more efficiently.
• Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) Assessment and Revenue Management Project: The CBSA Assessment and Revenue Management (CARM) digital initiative is changing how CBSA assesses and collects duties and taxes on commercial goods imported into Canada. CARM will modernize and streamline CBSA trade processes and revenue management through an online portal that will give our trade community access to border services 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. By providing commercial clients with online program registration, account management, and payment abilities, Canada’s importers and customs brokers will be able to use online tools to classify goods, calculate duties and taxes and access other electronic declarations and filing tools. When fully implemented, CARM will make it easier for businesses to work with CBSA, as well as improve consistency in applying trade rules and decisions, and reduce repetitive information requirements.  In October 2023, the CARM Experience Simulator 2.0 was deployed, offering services to importers and brokers while allowing CBSA to collect application data which allowed for continuous improvement. By Fall 2024, CARM will become the official system of record that importers and other trade chain partners will use to pay duties and taxes.
• Public Services and Procurement Canada (PSPC) and Laboratories Canada – TerraCanada Innovation and Science: This project is to design and construct a facility that will support the National Research Council (NRC) and Natural Resources Canada’s (NRCAN) Science Hub for Advanced Materials Research. This new facility is in support of the Laboratories Canada strategy to create world-class, innovative and collaborative science research centres. In 2023-24, SSC delivered the necessary IT services to support PSPC in the construction of the new TerraCanada Innovation and Science laboratories facility in Mississauga. This new research facility will help advance Canada's scientific research related to clean energy resources and technology.

Next Generation Human Resources and Pay

The GC needs to transition to a more modern and sustainable Human Resource (HR) and pay capability to meet current and future HR and pay requirements in a rapidly changing work and technological environment and ensure accurate and timely compensation for its employees. The Next Generation Human Resources and Pay (NextGen HR and Pay) Initiative mandate assessed the viability of adopting a commercially available, integrated HR and Pay Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution given the GC's complex HR and pay requirements.

In 2023-24, SSC completed the Next Generation Human Resources and Pay Final Findings Report which outlines the results of its research and experimentation of the proposed solution. During the Research and Experimentation Phase of the initiative, SSC led a structured experimentation process with pilot departments, the GC HR and pay communities and bargaining agents, alongside the vendor to make an informed and appropriate recommendation on the best user-centric, sustainable and modernized digital HR and pay solution for the GC. With the successful completion of this phase of the initiative, the Next Generation Human Resources and Pay initiative has formally been transferred from SSC to PSPC.

Science Program

SSC continued to collaborate with partner departments to develop new enterprise solutions that respond to the specific needs of federal scientific researchers.

In January 2024, the Federal Open Science Repository of Canada (FOSRC) was officially launched. This repository is an SSC-developed solution for science‑based departments and agencies to publish federal scientific publications and articles and make them openly accessible to all. SSC collaborated with participating members of 8 science-based departments and agencies to create, develop and deliver this cloud-hosted web-based solution to be flexible, customizable, and in compliance with GC requirements, including look and feel, accessibility, security, privacy and official languages.

In 2023-24, SSC also ran a successful Proof of Concept (PoC) to develop and test the solution with researchers for the Federal Science DataHub (FSDH). The FSDH is an enterprise portal that provides data storage and data analytic tools for federal science. This will allow SSC to deliver foundational infrastructure for scientific data and facilitate scientific collaboration. The FSDH path to production is underway to deliver an unclassified operational environment by the end of calendar year 2024.

In addition, SSC is improving and enhancing some of its services to support the needs of science based departments and agencies. In particular, during 2023-24, SSC:

• developed the Science IT Baseline to inform and guide Laboratories Canada real property projects to enhance Information Management-IT infrastructure in science research facilities including the need for rooms designed to host localized computer and storage equipment to better meet science research needs
• enhanced the GC Science Network to expand connectivity options for science based departments and agencies
• successfully ran PoCs leveraging cloud-based technologies in order to support the digital modernization efforts by co-developing and testing solutions with researchers.