Byline: Craig McLellan, CEO & Founder at ThinkOn
Trust.
Hard-earned, easily lost…and once lost, nearly impossible to regain. We trust the people and organizations that we depend on—from doctors to banks, supermarkets to the government—to protect our interests.
What hides in the shadows
In an increasingly digital-first world, Canadians have come to trust the necessity of digital government—and to rely on its conveniences. Remote access to government and public sector services, more and better apps, and connected personal data make our lives easier and safer. Driving these advances? Data.
When it comes to citizen data, trust fails when there’s a lack of transparency. Transparency means telling users what’s going on with their personal data: how it’s secured, who can access it and how it’s being used, how to get it back, and what it’s costing them. Users can’t trust government data privacy and ethical handling practices if these practices are obfuscated by complicated access, regulations, and contracts.
As government and public sector agencies transform to a digital-first environment, creating and maintaining public trust will hinge on protecting citizen data—and the public purse—and that calls for Canadian sovereign cloud, no-fine-print costing, and transparent partnerships with trusted, industry-sound service providers.
Who’s watching your data?
In recent years, digitalization and emerging cloud technology have left governments around the world scrambling to backfill regulatory gaps around who can access cloud data and what they can do with it. But consider the global nature of data: collected in one jurisdiction, by a company that’s based in another, and then stored in a third. The only solution for sensitive citizen data (think: health, travel, identity) is sovereign cloud. And happily, organizations are overwhelmingly adopting sovereign strategies. In a recent survey, 98% of IT organizations polled have data sovereignty strategies in place and 49% are using hybrid or regional cloud[i].
We don’t let foreign interests control critical Canadian infrastructure like telecom, hydro, or air carriers—and data is part of that infrastructure. Every country should have a sovereign cloud that can guarantee the inviolability of the data supply chain for their sensitive citizen data. ThinkOn is proud to be the only Canadian CSP capable of offering data sovereignty to the Government of Canada.
Read the full story here: Trust and transparency: safeguarding citizen confidence in a digital-first public sector