Quebec has postponed for two years the operation of transferring Quebecers’ data to the clouds of Amazon and Microsoft, despite the expected annual savings of $ 100 million, due to resistance to change in government organizations.
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In 2019, the former President of the Treasury Board, Christian Dubé, and the Minister Delegate for Digital Transformation at the time, Éric Caire, affirmed that “within three years” they would save $100 million annually. by placing Quebecers’ information in the clouds of Amazon and Microsoft.
A decree had been published for the consolidation of data centers to be completed by March 31, 2023. This execution phase was to cost $155.9 million.
Three years later, only five organizations have made their digital transition, while there are over 120 agencies and departments.
The Minister of Cybersecurity and Digital (MCN), Éric Caire, has been repeating for years that the current data centers are obsolete and put the information of Quebecers at risk.
“The current situation in Quebec is at risk (…) There are security breaches,” he said in April 2019 to justify the consolidation project.
In total, Quebec wanted to quickly eliminate the 457 computer processing centers where our data is hosted.
New decree
But in June 2020, without fanfare and at the heart of the health restrictions linked to the pandemic, Quebec drafted a second decree to include the health and education networks in this transformation.
The budget envelope thus went from $155.9 million to $324.3 million.
This new amount includes the creation of a Quebec cloud in which 40% of the data, said to be the most sensitive, will be found.
Quebec took the opportunity to give more time to all the organizations, seeing that the initial deadline would not be respected. They now have until December 31, 2025 to complete this digital transformation.
Difficult
CMN felt that change management and the ability of organizations to do the work required more time. Ditto for learning related to the use of technology by employees.
The ministry adds that “the shortage of labor in the field of information technology has an impact on the delivery of the project”.
According to sources who confided in our Parliamentary Office, several organizations that are very reluctant to change may not comply with the new decree.
“The turnover and the lack of personnel are delaying the implementation”, regrets a source close to the file.
“These are major changes that must be made in order to get everyone on board,” said the spokesperson for Minister Cairo, Nathalie St-Pierre.
DATA CENTER CONSOLIDATION
57% work would have been carried out with the departments and bodies
42% in education
Only 11.4% in the health network
5 over 120 organizations have completed the transformation
- Ministry of Tourism
- Office of Public Hearings on the Environment
- National Institute of Mines
- Conservatory of Music and Dramatic Arts of Quebec
- Society of the Grand Theater of Quebec
Source: Ministry of Cybersecurity and Digital