Inside Canada.ca: Giving Citizens the Digital Experience They Expect
The Government of Canada is consolidating hundreds of websites from across government onto one digital platform to provide a single point of access for citizens.
By Alexandra Noseworthy, Project Executive, Adobe Public Sector Canada
With the opportunity unleashed by the digital revolution, it has never been easier to deliver effective government services, and at the same time it has never been more difficult. Expectations have risen to unprecedented levels, as citizens have come to expect the same level of customer experience they encounter when they bank, shop, or communicate. The explosion of touch-points has changed how citizens wish to engage, and the flood of information is impacting the ability to engage them in meaningful ways.
To live up to expectations, government is recognizing that customer service must be a top priority. To cut through the noise, they are beginning to lead with the digital experience as a driver for government services – both internally and citizen facing. This requires a fundamental change to methodology, technology foundation, data insights and how this all connects together.
Canada Takes the Lead
Delivering services to citizens is at the heart of many government organizations. Through the Web Renewal Initiative (WRI), the Government of Canada (GC) wants to make its online information and services easier for citizens, employees and businesses to find and use. The effort involves the consolidation of websites across government into a single, user-centric website—Canada.ca. The WRI embraces cloud-delivered innovation while respecting secure information handling.
A contract for a Managed Web Service in support of the government’s WRI was awarded to Adobe Systems Canada Inc. Through this contract, Adobe Experience Manager and Adobe Analytics were secured to provide the digital foundation for Canada.ca. With this, the GC gains central oversight of all web properties combined with distributed content management to empower content owners to maintain their own content. It also gains access to exceptional reporting and analytics crucial to ensuring that all digital experiences—whether informational or transactional—are what citizens, employees and businesses expect. The common platform enables departments and agencies to provide consistent quality, delivery, reliability and reporting.
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The goal is simple: create a site that can better engage and inform Canadians anywhere, anytime and on any device.
To fulfill this goal, the GC is in the process of migrating more than 11 million government pages to a new web service platform built on Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) and connecting with Adobe Analytics.
The project itself runs deep. The Canadian government features 1,500 websites from 91 institutions. Each has multiple departmental platforms, restricted scalability and a range of server configurations and versions.
By moving their sites all under a single user-centric platform, Adobe makes it easier for the government to provide and update public-facing information on one easy-to-use system. This allows Canadian citizens to quickly access pertinent information and services from one secure and organized site: Canada.ca – instead of scouring the internet across hundreds of different sites.
Visit Canada.ca to see the experience on a desktop or mobile phone.
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Inside the Technology
- Adobe Experience Manager Sites is a content management system that provides one place to create, manage and deliver an improved digital experience. It not only increases efficiency, but also allows government agencies to deliver services with agility and consistency across platforms.
- Adobe Experience Manager: Digital Asset Management lets agencies manage digital assets such as images, video and other content quickly. Assets can be managed end-to-end, as the system integrates with Creative Cloud and Adobe Marketing Cloud to help strengthen communications.
- Adobe Analytics provides real-time information on performance across all communication channels, powering an optimal citizen engagement experience. Agencies can analyze the effectiveness of every touch point to find ways to consistently improve performance.
- Adobe Managed Web Services provides best-in-class implementation that can help agencies lower costs while lightening the IT load.
Adobe proudly champions delivering digital experiences that matter to Canadians. We will be showcasing this at the GTEC Summit on June 7 at the Shaw Centre in Ottawa. Of particular interest will be the Adobe Workshop session in the afternoon at 1:30 pm: “Canada.ca and Beyond: A Path Forward for the Government of Canada”. Register for GTEC Summit to attend!