How the Canadian public sector is using Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Azure

The US federal government is a big deal when it comes to IT spending, with massive multi-billion dollar deals out for bid, seemingly on a regular basis. But Canada's tech industry, centered in cities like Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, Waterloo, and Vancouver, also includes a thriving public sector.

MSCloudNews reached out to Microsoft channel professionals working with Canadian public sector organizations to learn about Azure, Dynamics, and Power Platform use cases, opportunities, and challenges. As they explain, Microsoft partners and ISVs are engaged with agencies on a broad range of work from migration to the cloud to leveraging AI and IoT for smart cities and supporting students.

Microsoft MVP Deepak Kaushik, based out of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan has worked with schools and government agencies on projects ranging from cloud migration to smart cities. Like many countries, Canada has shifted toward requiring that government data be retained within its borders. As recently as 2019, Canada was underserved by Microsoft datacenters, creating latency issues. Now, however, there are two Azure datacenters which are generally well resourced with services.

When I work with the Ministry of Education, or Crown Court organization, the biggest challenge we have is the requirement to retain data within Canadian geography, keeping redundancy and disaster recovery in Canada. Basically, the requirement is to keep data safe. We know that security is one of the five pillars of Azure architecture. [This often involves a lot of Network Security Group setup and thinking about the Azure backbone].

Especially among regional government agencies, awareness of cost is high and they often seek detailed statements of work from their partners, he explained.

We always suggest that if [a customer has] relatively good infrastructure why not use it to archive data. For development or testing, we could leverage that. We have some clients using [local] DevTest and then Azure for production. Some want to leverage on-prem, and others want hybrid infrastructure. Depends on the client.

Like public sector organizations the world over, public budgets are usually tight. That has been the case with school systems in Saskatchewan where Kaushik does much of his work.

I have migrated on-prem data warehouses to Azure. For the SSRS report system, I proposed to migrate to Power BI, but the challenge was 5,000 teachers [and 500 others needing access. But the department was unable to afford 5,500 licenses]. What I did is migrate my report server, using existing infrastructure, to Power BI Report Server and published reports over there, [saving on costs and using existing infrastructure]…We need to look at work arounds that don't cost much, and also adhere to policies to provide the latest and greatest services.

In another example, he built a streamlined self-service enrollment process that relied on AI and chatbots:

[We] use AI and chatbots if a kid is in Vancouver and is moving to town and needs certain info like which school is near to me, what forms to fill, how to enroll. Now we have a chatbot to redirect [the new student] to different forms.

Thomas Berndorfer is CEO of Connecting Software, a US, Slovakia, and Portugal-based provider of software integration, blockchain, and IoT technology. His company has worked with the Canadian House of Commons, as well as two federal agencies, and numerous smaller public sector organization. According to Berndorfer, there are growing opportunities in the Canadian public sector.

The Canadian sector [is] fast increasing usage of Azure and Office 365, strongly influenced by the pandemic situation in the last two years. For Dynamics 365 the public sector of Canada is one of the biggest customers of Microsoft, worldwide. Canada was very innovative to realize at an early stage that CRM equals the case management processes. There are not many countries in the world with this modern approach in the public sector.

As evidence of this "ahead of the curve" approach, Kaushik's latest work involves a variety of smart city projects for local governments. Small cities are seeking ways to connect traffic and sound monitoring, cameras, and planning capabilities.

It's an interesting project to work on as an architect. We have a lot of data generated. Every time a camera is taking a picture, where is that information going? If there is an update on any device—like a security camera--we should push updates to happen categorically in a timely manner. [Some cities rely on multi-tenant subscriptions]. Which data is in hot or cold storage? How many telemetry datapoints are we getting? We have to figure out the data retention strategies. It was interesting in that way, connecting all the pieces.

For government agencies planning these projects, there is a high premium on cost optimization and deciding which services to run. Smart city projects also involve connecting devices to IoT Hub, Service Hub, Lambda, Analytics, and often Edge and Monitor.

Berndorfer added:

In general, I see a much better and faster approach in all kinds of Canadian public sector projects than in other countries, e.g. Europe…Canada is very open also for non-Canadian organizations [and] people are constructive and good to communicate with.