Government of Canada Network Services – Stream 5 – Leased Dark Fibre

Shared Services Canada (SSC) is responsible for providing network services to more than 400,000 users across Government of Canada (GC) Departments and Agencies. Network security is more important than ever as Canadians access more and more programs and services online. Protecting the Government’s IT infrastructure from vulnerabilities and ensuring the safety and security of Canadians’ data is the top priority for the Government.

To effectively deliver services to Canadians, GC users depend on fast, secure and reliable networks and expect to access services from anywhere, at any time, regardless of the demand and Page 6 of 66 circumstances. With the significant growth of cloud-based services across the GC, ubiquitous access to secure and quality network services has become even more important.

The current digital landscape resides on a highly complex system of network infrastructure across the country. This infrastructure is aging, costly to maintain/upgrade and unable to support modern services such as cloud, video and voice services. SSC is working to continue to converge, consolidate and standardize wide area networks to common, shared, enterprise networks and improve connectivity between departmental and enterprise networks to enterprise data centres, the cloud and the Internet.

Furthermore, the recent COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a dramatic shift in the GC`s network landscape with the vast majority of GC employees being forced to work from home. Because this shift was successfully implemented, it is expected that most employees will continue to work from home or adopt a hybrid office/home work environment in the future. These factors along with the recent advances in network capabilities related to software-defined networking and wireless technologies have caused SSC to rethink how it delivers and secures its network services.