Delivering Digital Solutions Together for Canada
Powering world-class technology for the Government of Canada
Canadians rely on government services to manage their day-to-day needs. Whether it's filing their taxes, applying for employment insurance or crossing the border, individuals depend on the Government of Canada to access important programs and benefits every day.
At Shared Services Canada (SSC), we work on the IT (information technology) needs of government departments so they can deliver better digital programs and services to Canadians. SSC does the behind-the-scenes work to manage and secure those IT needs. Whether it's enabling Wi-Fi in remote areas of the country, providing data storage solutions or blocking cyber threats, we are the IT backbone of the Government of Canada.
We work to offer the best business solutions to provide high-quality and secure digital services to government departments. SSC is proud to share our approach to doing business.
Delivering Digital Solutions Together for Canada (Digital Together) is an enterprise approach to ensure that government departments are equipped with the modern, standardized tools they need to effectively collaborate across departments and continue to better serve Canadians from coast to coast to coast.
The 4 key areas of the approach are connectivity, hosting, digital services and cyber security.
Roadmaps:
Connectivity services
… that bring us together.
To serve Canadians, government employees need connections that are fast and reliable. Our connectivity services model leverages both commercial and public networks, as well as wireless technologies. This connectivity is the foundation to transport data, voice, and video from end-user devices in national and international locations to support Government of Canada programs and services.
Roadmap: Connectivity Services
Objectives
1. What we are doing
- Maintaining separated network services
- Modernizing legacy networks, expiring contracts and inefficient support for single tenant fit-ups
- Expanded the GC Networks Hubs (GCNH) to Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, and NCR (×2)
- Defining and providing services for specialized use cases (e.g., Remote locations, International, Science, cloud connectivty, low latency applications)
- Introducing low earth orbit satellite connectivity for under-served locations
2. What we are planning
- Improving - Migration to Software-Defined Network will bring added flexibility, efficiency and reduced operating costs
- Fitting-up Multi-tenant buildings and making greater use of managed services and commercial networks procurement vehicles
- Expanding GCNH Hubs for East/West National, International and Science
- Centralizing orchestration and control plane for whole of network
- Improving secure cloud connectivity and solutions for low latency/high bandwidth applications
3. Where we are going
- Consistent user experience and network capabilities across locations and devices
- Service automation (e.g., self-healing) and optimization of traffic
- Support for Internet of Things (IoT) and new connectivity technologies (e.g., 5G, Wi-Fi 7)
- Adoption of security by design, zero trust and Secure Access Service Edge (SASE)
Hosting services
… that support our work.
Our digital networks rely on computers and applications to work. SSC has put this computer infrastructure in place, using both government-managed data centers and privately-managed data centers, commonly referred to as the cloud. Together, this infrastructure stores digital data and processes it into forms that government employees and Canadians can use.
Roadmap: Hosting Services
Objectives
1. What we are doing
- Transforming from a data centre organization to a hybrid hosting services organization
- Expanding the cloud stewardship function to ensure value for money across the GC
- Implementing a new Public Cloud Operating Model (Enterprise Cloud Hosting Services to the GC), GC Cloud Strategy 2024
- Implementing process improvements through automation
- Expanding enterprise service offerings (GCaPaaS)
- Reducing the GC legacy footprint through migration and modernization
2. What we are planning
- Evolving and scaling hybrid hosting services and enhanced advisory services
- Developing and implementing strategies that improve delivery through self-service
- Maturing the GC EDGE strategy with access to EDGE computing services
- Ensuring that procurement and sourcing strategies support the hosting vision
- Expanding FinOps capabilities
3. Where we are going
- Establishing software-defined data centres
- Orchestrating and automating self-service workloads
- Transforming IT operations with AI
- Expanding hosting capabilities with elasticity, resiliency, autonomy and low latency on EDGE
- Aligning Zero-Trust Architecture to the enterprise vision
- Enabling higher value enterprise services through "as a service" capabilities
Digital services
… that help us help Canadians.
To ensure the Government of Canada can deliver digital services to Canadians, we improve and enable access to the digital tools government employees use to do their work. These tools include laptops, tablets and smartphones, along with the communications applications like messaging and email that they need to work. This also means improving access to tools for other government departments as a whole. We ensure government departments have the equipment they need like the phone lines and technology required to support the call centers Canadians rely on for direct help and support.
Roadmap: Digital Services
Objectives
1. What we are doing
- Integrating services to overcome departmental barriers
- Improving user experiences and creating more consistency
- Moving away from fixed location technology
- Addressing rising costs by optimizing the use of in-service assets
- Expanding in-building mobile coverage
- Transitioning away from end-of-life at-risk systems and solutions
- Expanding security and authentication patterns
- Connecting citizens to critical GC services
2. What we are planning
- Integrating enterprise services and One GC approach
- Providing seamless, common user experiences across work environments and devices
- Expanding Enterprise Service Management to improve asset utilization and forecasting
- Evolving fit-for-purpose service alignment (e.g., mobile v. softphone)
- Modernizing solutions aligned to IT and Service Standards
- Modernize conferencing capabilities to enable collaboration and data sharing
- Enable key AI capabilities and features within enterprises
3. Where we are going
- Providing self-service options
- Enabling AI-driven services, monitoring and enhancements
- Designing user-centric services, such as one email and phone number throughout GC career and IT Toolkits that are profile-based and support mobility and accessibility needs
- Enhancing analytics for consumption and forecast modeling
- Fully integrated security
Cyber security services
… that keep our data safe.
In order for these services to work in an efficient way, they need to be secure. SSC ensures that the government's digital data is protected from cyber threats. With our networks, we connect employees together and we make sure they are able to connect with Canadians securely. We install the cables to connect the computers together but we also buy secure virtual storage spaces like the cloud. SSC makes sure that only the right people can access Canadians' information and that they are working on a secure computer.
Roadmap: Cyber Security Services
Objectives
1. What we are doing
- Transitioning current SSC cyber security measures towards modern cyber security concepts and GC direction (e.g., Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA) and frameworks, and GC Enterprise Cyber Security Strategy and Plan)
- Adopting new security technologies (e,g., Mobile Threat Defence, Multifactor Authentication (MFA), Active Directory Hardening, and Cloud Denial of Service Defence (DDoS))
2. What we are planning
- Strengthening cyber security resilience across SSC and the GC to prepare for, respond to and recover from cyber attacks
- Enhancing our technology to identify and assess vulnerabilities and deliver new enterprise cyber security capabilities (e.g., Attack Surface Management (ASM), Vulnerability Management Evolution (VME), Continuous Security Control Assessment (CSCA))
3. Where we are going
- Continuous evolution and strengthening of cyber security capabilities within SSC infrastructure and services
- Prioritize initiatives and funding for future cyber security capabilities
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