Technology Trends


In an effort to better support its mandate of providing innovative Information Technology (IT) services to Government of Canada (GC) departments and agencies, Shared Services Canada (SSC) is actively researching and evaluating emerging technology trends. This research aims to Inform and prepare SSC, and the broader GC community, to handle new disruptive technologies that are just over the horizon by outlining potential benefits, impacts and use cases.

Technology trend briefing papers are the vehicle used to convey the research conducted on a given subject. These briefing papers are short, to the point, and are targeted towards both a business and technical oriented readership.

SSC is looking to the broader GC community to contribute and collaborate on existing and future topics. By fostering a more collaborative and inclusive development approach, we hope to reduce GC research duplication and accelerate the development of technology roadmaps across government by referencing common GC documentation.

Format

Each technology trend briefing paper follows a common template:

  • Business brief describes the business aspect of the technology by offering a high level understanding, the origin and the uses.
  • Technical brief gives an in-depth description of the technology. It focuses on the most important technical aspects of the technology without going into too much detail.
  • Industry usage offers an understanding of how the technology is currently used or thought to be used in the industry when commercially available. This section clarifies the benefits of the technology through examples.
  • Canadian Government use details how the technology is currently used or thought to be used in the context of the Federal Canadian Government when commercially available. This intent is to provide an understanding of how the technology could ultimately benefit the federal government in regards to the delivery of services to Canadians through short examples.
  • Implications for Shared Services Canada (SSC) demonstrates the clear and measurable benefits that pertains to Shared Service Canada when adopting the use of the technology. This section is comprised of these following subsections :
    • Value proposition illustrates the potential strengths and opportunities that SSC can encounter by leveraging the technology.
    • Challenges outlines the risks and difficulties associated with the technology that includes both risks of implementation such as the development of the product or the risks of solution by adopting the technology.
    • Considerations presents any recommendations SSC may have for another department of the Government of Canada that wishes to adopt and leverage the technology.

Development Process

External market trends, private-public sector reports, online trends and Government of Canada strategic plans are all factors considered when selecting a topic for development. Once a topic is selected for development, it undergoes a five phase development process prior to publishing.

Technology Trends - Development Process.png

How to Contribute

We want your help! Our goal is to ensure that the content generated is developed in the open, routinely kept up to date, representative of the wide ranging GC departmental mandates and widely distributed to the broader Canadian Government community. To that end, we strongly encourage you to share, edit and provide feedback on the published content.

You can edit by making use of the “Discussion” tab located at the top-left of the page.

Should you wish to sponsor and or author a topic not listed below, please reach out to Jean-François Michaud

Technology Trend Briefing Papers

Name Status Latest Release Official Publication
Blockchain (Français) Published 2019-05-23 EN - FR
Drones (Français) Published 2019-07-04 EN - FR
Internet of Things (Français) Published 2019-07-04 EN - FR
Low Code Application Development (Français) Published 2019-05-23 EN - FR
Open by Default (Français) Published 2019-05-23 EN - FR
Zero Trust Network (Français) Published 2019-05-23 EN - FR