Outsourcing — the way forward for Health Canada

By: Brian Eaton - IT World Canada (10 Aug 2005)

Outsourcing critical infrastructure management is the name of the game today for many Canadian enterprises in the private and public sectors.

And it's also the route Health Canada has chosen to ensure the security and effectiveness of its server systems – 83 of them to be precise.

These 83 Health Canada servers will be monitored 24x7 by Nuvo Network Management Inc., an Ottawa-based provider of IT infrastructure management and protection services.

The initiative is in line with "The Way Forward" – a program spearheaded by Public Works and Government Services Canada (PWGSC) to improve how the Government of Canada does business. The program seeks innovative ways of delivering services smarter, faster and at a reduced cost.

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In fact it was PWGSC that, on Tuesday, selected Ottawa-based Nuvo Network Management Inc.'s managed services to move Health Canada on The Way Forward.

This initiative mandates greater outsourcing of services to make better use of taxpayer dollars, according to Don Daniels, product manager at PWGSC. Daniels, who manages network contracting services for many government departments, believes with the financial burden eased from Joe Public, the government – as a whole – can focus on sharing services and consolidating data centres.

"The (Nuvo) solution was a strategic alignment more than a problem fix," Daniels said.

Health Canada obtained Nuvo services using a PWGSC service delivery contract – available to any government department. PWGSC is the contracting authority that oversees the Internet Technology Services Branch (ITSB) to resell competed services.

"Essentially, Health Canada is using a service offering from PWGSC that is [delivered] by Nuvo," was how Daniels explained it.

Nuvo's responsibility includes alerting Health Canada about "potential problems before they impact service operations," according to Phil Weaver, president and CEO at Nuvo Network Management Inc.

If server memory approaches capacity, Nuvo can advise network managers to take corrective action before the server crashes or data gets corrupted, Weaver said. "In a nutshell, we tell them where there's going to be a problem before there actually is one, so they can maximize uptime." Maximize yes, but guaranteed uptime is something PWGSC does not specifically receive.

"The Nuvo solution doesn't guarantee uptime," Daniels said. "The service that (Health Canada) is getting from Nuvo is monitoring, not full management service.