1er last January, the Act to enact the Law on the Ministry of Cybersecurity and Digitalthus creating the very first ministry responsible for coordinating the actions of the entire Government of Quebec in terms of cybersecurity and digital technology.
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In particular, the Law provides that the new Minister, Éric Caire, proposes the main orientations in which the Government of Quebec will have to invest, establish priority sectors of activity and, thus, act as an advisor on cybersecurity and digital transformation to other government departments and agencies.
Certainly, with the thousands of cyberattacks we witness daily, it will also be the mission of the new minister to propose appropriate measures to protect public data to ensure the cyber-resilience of the entire government of Quebec.
Born from the convergence of the teams of Infrastructures Technologiques Québec and the Under-Secretariat of the Chief Information and Digital Transformation Officer of the Secretariat of the Treasury Board, the Ministry of Cybersecurity and Digital will be the central brain of the management information resources and information security in Quebec.
Moreover, the Minister of Cybersecurity and Digital will be responsible for decompartmentalising government databases, which will facilitate the sharing of public data, in addition to developing a digital identity for Quebecers.
Digital identity is also at the heart of this transformation.
Criticized by some for having developed, until now, the digital identity project with too little public consultation, the Government of Quebec must implement a robust strategy and surround itself with the best expertise in the field in order to carry out this colossal commitment.
Moreover, the project is progressing at full speed. It is announced for the summer of 2022: the Minister plans to launch software tools to allow Quebecers to use this proof of digital identity with the government apparatus (replacing ClicSÉQUR), and in their daily business to facilitate online and in-store purchases. “People’s identity should not belong to the private sector”, he asserts in a recent article in a Montreal daily, “this data will be held by the government”. During his interview, the Minister goes so far as to say: “Bill 6 allows us to act with organizations and businesses to ensure the cohesion of our cybersecurity activities. We will not tell companies what to do, but we can impose fairly strict protocols on them. »
Indeed, Quebec is a member of the Canadian Council for Digital Identification and Authentication (DIACC), a non-profit alliance founded in 2020 and bringing together public and private sector leaders from across Canada. DIACC is actively developing a pan-Canadian Trust Framework (CCP) for digital identification and authentication, focused on protecting the privacy of Canadians, transparency, security and interoperability of the identity ecosystem Canadian digital. The “rather strict protocols” mentioned by the Minister possibly refer to the Voilà Verified program launched by DIACC, a secure digital identity certification allowing companies to display their compliance with the CCP. The DIACC is also working on the recognition and interoperability of Voilà Verified internationally, in particular with the international standard NIST 800-63, a standard that governs the security of information relating to digital identity, and the Regulation European eIDAS, which establishes the European framework for electronic identification and trust services and governs the security of electronic interactions between citizens, businesses and public authorities.
Fortunately, Quebec businesses that want to comply with the Voilà Verified trustmark will be able to seek reimbursement for the costs of compliance through the Quebec Cybersecurity Innovation Program (QIQP), administered by Prompt, an organization in non-profit organization that establishes and funds research and innovation partnerships in the information and communication technology (ICT), digital, artificial intelligence and micro-electronics sectors.
On the other hand, the adoption of the Quebec digital identity leads us to worry about issues of ethics, security, confidentiality and mass state surveillance.
Digital strategy spokesperson and Liberal MP Marwah Rizqy has in the past exposed certain shortcomings of the project, particularly in the management of access to information, which is also the responsibility of Minister Cairo, and the need a public debate on the use of citizen biometrics.
Let’s remember some recent events, including the flaws in the application Vaxi-Code Check to create false proof of vaccination, the moratorium on the use of facial recognition in Quebec, tabled by Liberal MP Marwah Rizqy in response to the possible acquisition of facial recognition and fingerprint technology by the Sécurité du Québec and the surveillance by the Sûreté du Québec of calls from journalists Marie-Maude Denis, Isabelle Richer and Alain Gravel in 20131.
A robust application of the law noh 252modernizing the protection of personal information, and Bill no.oh 953introducing a new government digital data management framework to strengthen the public information security infrastructure, recently adopted, will be essential for the convergence of the transformation of the digital economy in a strict framework for the protection of the right to privacy and personal information that all Quebecers will be able to enjoy.