e-Infrastructure

Building an empowering infrastructure

Governments are embracing a vision of electronic service delivery that will not only offer services at the right time and place, but will also enable individuals and businesses to interact with government in ways that are private and secure, swift and convenient-regular ?office hours? notwithstanding.

Regardless of the service delivery channel, these ?value propositions? must remain the same:

• Effectiveness in the provision of information and data access
• Security, privacy and efficiency in the provision of data management
• Integrity and reliability in the provision of business management

CGI has designed proven, scalable solutions providing both the functional and technical architectures that address these value propositions while enabling single-window, multi-channelled access. These solutions are sufficiently adaptable to enable a consolidated service agency model, a distributed service model or a single-window, multi-channelled access-or combinations of any of these.

CGI's experience in the area of government service delivery has not only been in integrating new electronic service delivery channels with traditional, over-the-counter service delivery, but also with the very real business operations needed for ensuring ?front-office? and ?back-office? functionality across multiple departments.

We also acknowledge the validity of deep-rooted concerns about privacy and security, and address these issues head-on with an approach that minimizes the exposure to new security risks. Privacy and security concerns have been influential in shaping the architecture of CGI's e-infrastructure.

Just as a highway system needs on ramps, off ramps, speed limits and repair crews for the safe flow of goods, services and people, so computing environments need an infrastructure of components connectors, security protocols, rules and regulations to ensure the secure, efficient flow of appropriate data and information.

CGI has special expertise in helping e-governments build an e-infrastructure that provides the necessary connectivity to securely move information and data from application to application as well as through departments, geographic regions and even levels of government. Like traffic laws that are enforced by police for the safe flow of traffic, interfacing software (or middleware) is also necessary to ensure that security and privacy rules for the infrastructure are obeyed.

CGI's e-infrastructure addresses the challenge of delivering a single window approach to the user community while supporting autonomy for departments and a range of shared functionality. The use of a central interface engine connects with the business objects in the department servers to present to the user an apparently homogenous system. This can be dynamic in nature so that some departments can employ a strong central interface while others can adopt a pseudo-hosting model.

The key to CGI's approach is keeping the middle coordinating broker layer ?generic,? i.e., free from any specific knowledge or implementation of explicit departmental functionality. Where possible, departments retain complete control over the management of their own applications. At the same time, this generic broker layer provides sufficient functionality and flexibility to support the various needs of the numerous departments.

CGI's e-infrastructure:

• Facilitates a common look and feel for business functionality
• Allows layered presentation dictionaries
• Supports multi-departmental transactions
• Supports access-independent implementation of business functionality
• Supports channel-switching of business transactions
• Utilizes policy-driven, policy-adaptive architecture

CGI's approach also recognizes and values the significant investment in corporate/departmental applications and the management expertise represented by the teams supporting those applications. It builds upon these strategic resources, rather than attempting to replace them with completely new solutions and teams. Responsibility for business functionality and control over legacy technology appropriate for an application remains where it is today. Issues of access and presentation through a variety of devices are handled consistently in a secure manner using a central service available to all departments. Flexibility to adapt to changing business environments is retained within existing autonomous or semi-autonomous structures. The repackaging of government services, where appropriate, is fully supported, although not a precondition for making the existing government services available online.

CGI couples extensive industry sector expertise from management consulting services in areas such as transformation planning, security and privacy, and governance, to IT services including, technology planning, application implementation and integration, and custom solutions design and delivery.

Your partner of choice

CGI provides e-government solutions in the areas of network, security, directory, internal business systems, hardware servers, search engines, user interface, workflow, data storage and portals. We offer a comprehensive range of services combining experience with industry knowledge and best practices.