SSC 3.0: Equipping a digital government

Whether they are filing their taxes or applying for a passport, Canadians expect to use the latest digital technology to receive the services they need, when and where they need them.

To meet these expectations, federal employees need modern digital tools that are accessible by design, enhance their productivity and allow them to collaborate across departments to deliver the essential services Canadians rely on. And that’s what I’m hoping to achieve.

SSC was given a mandate to modernize and consolidate the Government of Canada’s (GC) information technology infrastructure. While the department has made remarkable progress over the past 8 years, the current digital landscape in the GC is highly complex with numerous networks, applications, programs, collaboration tools and data centres – many unique to individual departments.

This leads to the natural evolution of the department to a new phase that will focus on an enterprise approach for all of government: SSC 3.0.

That means we will work with our federal partners and clients to improve the user experience by consolidating, modernizing and standardizing. Together, we will build a modern, reliable, and secure digital platform to meet the needs of today and tomorrow.

I believe these top three priorities are the right ones to enable the GC to become a truly digital government:

• Network and security: solidify the IT foundation by increasing network reliability and strengthening security. These networks will be accessible anytime, anywhere, and by anyone. They will be built with accessibility in mind, while accommodating and supporting continuous improvement and an increasing diversity of government programs and services.
• Collaboration tools: equipping employees with modern collaboration tools to enable, engage and empower them. By providing a modern and tailored set of workplace collaboration tools with accessibility features built-in from the outset, SSC will help public servants deliver on their departments’ priorities and better serve Canadians.
• Application health: adopt cloud and enterprise data centre services to improve reliability and reduce risk. We will work with clients to identify applications most at risk with the biggest potential impact on services to Canadians. Together, we will determine solutions to update or create new applications that are reliable and can run on modern hosting solutions – whether cloud or enterprise data centres. The objective is to ensure hardware and software systems are robust, secure, and keep pace with changing technology.

How does this fit into Beyond2020? SSC 3.0 is aligned and supports the Beyond2020 framework. The two initiatives aim to achieve the same goals: change the way we work by focusing on collaboration and shifting our mindsets in order to equip government.

Our future is without question a digital one. By working together and collaborating with our partners, SSC 3.0 will prepare us to leverage new digital technologies to the fullest across the GC and to deliver the best possible services to Canadians.