Canadian Government Executive - Volume 26 - Issue 04

12 / Canadian Government Executive // September/October 2020 TECHNOLOGY By Rejean Bourgault Cloud emerges as must-have tool to deal with Years ago, the cloud was declared the “new normal”, and today as we deal with the new realities caused by the COVID-19 pandemic we are seeing just how technology is enabling businesses, governments, and organizations to operate in a seamless way. I T departments suddenly enabled hundreds of people to work from home in a matter of days, and re- searchers spun up international collaboration efforts to share diag- nostics and potential cures for the deadly virus. There is also the burgeoning de- mand put on applications and websites to share information about the pandemic, to bring doctors and nurses online for medi- cal care, and of course—the demand for entertainment as people shelter in place. Keeping Citizens Connected The cloud is also helping public and pri- vate sector organizations alike add capac- ity to websites that are being accessed at much higher volumes–like Canada.ca, Ontario.ca, and Quebec.ca. A feature like AWS Auto Scaling leave a piece of mind to IT leaders and let them focus on the core mission of their organization instead of worrying about server capacity. The cloud is helping the Canadian Digi- tal Service (CDS), which is an in-house digital delivery unit in the Government of Canada that works to improve the deliv- ery of government services to Canadians. CDS operates the Notify system, a service that allows government departments to send emails and text messages to people, at a low cost, and in just a few simple steps. Recognizing the power of this tool in communicating quickly with Canadi- Removing barriers to access work and school remotely Across Canada, governments have acted swiftly to continue to deliver services to Canadians–and in some cases, like educa- tion, completely pivot delivery models in just a few weeks. Classes, in many places, are online for the rest of the school year. Humber College Institute of Technology COVID-19 impact ans during COVID-19, CDS needed to quickly scale its Notify system during the COVID-19 pandemic. Because it was built in the public cloud, CDS was able to very quickly scale the system from a level that was optimized to reach hundreds of thou- sands of Canadians to one that can send 10 million messages per day, with the po- tential for more.