Canadian Government Executive - Volume 22

September 2016 //

Canadian Government Executive /

Strategy

vided by Microsoft’s Canadian cloud helps

remove much of the policy delays that had

slowed cloud adoption earlier. “The prov-

ince of New Brunswick is now in a position

to take advantage of the Microsoft Cloud

offering, given that our data residency re-

quirements are now addressed with the

establishment of Microsoft’s Canadian local

datacentres,” said Derek Jardine, COO, Ser-

vice New Brunswick.

Addressing the needs of the legal and

compliance community in a cloud service

model is a shared responsibility between

customers and the cloud service provider.

This is known at Microsoft as “assurance”—

to provide a robust and reliable foundation

of security and privacy safeguards built

throughout the cloud fabric. Customers like

the City of Brampton can rely on this solid

foundation and add complementary secu-

rity and privacy controls on top of it. Fea-

tures such as Customer Lockbox, Keylocker

and Multifactor authentication provide

additional controls to further enhance the

security and privacy of the cloud services

offering. ExpressRoute is another comple-

mentary service that customers can lever-

age for their cloud services. ExpressRoute

provides customers with a dedicated, high

quality of service connection between the

customer premise and Microsoft’s Cana-

dian datacentres, ensuring that customer

data does not pass over the Internet.

Moving beyond these challenges, there

are opportunities that exist for govern-

ment in moving to cloud computing. First,

it boosts government’s ability to move to

a consumption-oriented IT services model.

Secondly, it removes the overhead costs

traditionally associated with outsourced

services delivery models. It also allows

them to break free of the time-consuming

custom requirements of development, ex-

pensive tailored hardware/software and

the administrative burdens of contractual

change requests. The cloud allows govern-

ments to be far more agile and responsive

to evolving customer needs.

For example, in the last two years, the

City of Regina has become technologi-

cally progressive, continually evaluating

the latest IT innovations to transform

city operations and infrastructure in or-

der to serve citizens better. We worked

with Regina to move its identity manage-

ment services to the cloud. This transition

has allowed citizens to set up an online

account which supports single sign-on,

identity management and select various

online services. The most popular one

lets citizens access their utility account

and check their water bills and water con-

sumption. By moving from an on-premise

identity solution to one hosted on the

cloud, the city transformed its operations

as well as infrastructure, and ultimately

better serve citizens. “Our new Azure-

powered identity management solution

saved us $35,000 upfront and $7,500 an-

nually,” said Carole Tink, Manager of IT

Strategy and Business Support, City of

Regina “It’s like we’ve jumped from the

IT dark ages to the forefront in terms of

corporate technological software solu-

tions—the cloud brings enhanced govern-

ment service to the community, not just

savings.”

Governments around the world recog-

nize the current technological revolution

that is transforming their agencies. They

know that to spark digital innovation

across their jurisdictions they need to lead

by example, demonstrating leadership in

the adoption of digital technologies. Tran-

sition has been made easier in that, as an

increasing number of organizations move

to the cloud, there is a growing body of

knowledge, architectural patterns and re-

usable solutions that are readily available

for organizations new to cloud comput-

ing to leverage for their own journey. Not

only do these reusable solutions support

a more rapid deployment of online ser-

vices, they also contribute to significant

cost savings. But more than that, digital

government projects are bringing IT and

service delivery leaders closer together

than ever before–enabling governments

to leverage external resources to mitigate

capacity gaps or bandwidth.

Additionally, close interaction between

these communities as well as legal, secu-

rity and privacy groups has been a key

factor to the success of cloud deployments

across Canada. The multi-disciplinary ap-

proach to service development and de-

ployment allow for a comprehensive re-

view of the many elements that contribute

to a successful project. The consistent un-

derstanding of business, technology, secu-

rity and privacy risks allows public sector

organizations to focus on the specific data

and uses of cloud services, streamlining

the decision making processes.

“Cloud computing creates opportuni-

ties for our city to transform the way we

engage and interact with our citizens and

businesses,” said Linda Jeffrey, Mayor of

the City of Brampton. “Microsoft is sup-

porting us in our efforts to innovate and

be leaders in digital government, and they

are our trusted technology partner. By

offering a simplified, scalable and acces-

sible approach with Azure and Office 365

solutions, they allow us to build a mobile

workforce and, at the same time, modern-

ize our infrastructure for agility and secu-

rity.”

In catching the wave of new cloud tech-

nologies, governments are transforming

the way work gets done and how they

engage and deliver services to their con-

stituents, as well as their employees. By le-

veraging the right partnerships with cloud

service providers, governments can ease

their digital transformation knowing that

there are security and privacy safeguards

to protect their sensitive data.

ohn

eigelt

is a National Technology

Officer at Microsoft Canada

When organizations embark upon a cloud project, they typically

encounter three project frictions that can delay cloud adoption:

procurement, technology and trust.