Thank you, Madam Chair.
I am pleased to be here today.
My name is John Weigelt. I'm the national technology officer for Microsoft in Canada.
I've had the privilege of working with the federal government for my over 30-year career in trustworthy computing, starting in uniform in the Royal Canadian Air Force, in the Treasury Board Secretariat as a public servant, and now as CTO at Microsoft Canada.
I'm grateful for the opportunity to appear before this esteemed committee and its members today as you discuss how technology can support the continuation of the Parliament of Canada during this unprecedented time. My remarks will focus on a thoughtful and deliberate approach to using technology to support virtual parliamentary activities, with privacy and security as the foundation.
You may ask yourself why we're focusing on security, as parliamentary proceedings are public and do not contain sensitive information. Microsoft believes that security must be the foundation of everything you do with technology, regardless of whether it's publicly available or involves sensitive material. Security protects against unwanted intrusions causing disruptions or introducing cyber-threats.
First, I'll give you some background.
Microsoft has a long history here in Canada. Since the establishment of Microsoft Canada in 1985, Microsoft's presence has grown to include 10 regional offices around the country, which employ more than 2,300 people. At our Microsoft Vancouver development centre, over 700 employees are developing products that are used around the world. Cutting-edge research on artificial intelligence is also being conducted by Ph.D.s and engineers at Microsoft Research Montreal.
These unprecedented times have forced every person in the world to adapt and dramatically change all aspects of their lives: how they work, how they learn and how they interact. We are proud to have enabled remote learning for students and educators. Virtual health visits are allowing for the delivery of health care while protecting patients and health care workers, and Microsoft technologies are empowering millions of Canadian workers in all sectors of the economy to work remotely during this COVID crisis. In fact, today over 100,000 federal public servants are now working remotely using Microsoft Teams, and this number is growing every day.
Today's technology and video conferencing capabilities are built on what we call cloud services. A cloud is information technology infrastructure upon which these virtual activities rely, and the safety and reliability of this cloud are key. Microsoft has been a long-standing partner of the Government of Canada, supporting the development of a thoughtful and deliberate approach through policy, guidance and standards for the government's adoption of cloud services. This strong partnership has enabled the rapid deployment of technology tools in response to the COVID crisis.
Our Canadian data centres in Toronto and Quebec City were the first to undergo independent audits and reviews against the government's security standard. As a result, the government certified Microsoft's services to safeguard the Government of Canada's information at the Protected B level. This is the government security classification for sensitive and personal information.
In addition, Microsoft has also worked with leading Canadian privacy experts to conduct a review of these services. We've published and shared this analysis in what is called foundational privacy impact assessments, setting a precedent across the industry. These assessments help public sector organizations of all types across the country understand how Microsoft cloud services, including video conferencing, address their privacy obligations. In addition, we're the only cloud provider that publishes all of our compliance and audit information, as well as the results of our security tests, publicly on our website.
I'm here to tell you that technology exists today to support virtual parliaments in a secure manner. Using our Microsoft Teams platform, we've been supporting parliaments in various jurisdictions. For example, the U.K. House of Lords is currently sitting remotely via Microsoft Teams, as are committees of the Quebec National Assembly. Virtual activities in these jurisdictions have been the result of close collaboration between the various Microsoft teams and the procedural and technical teams of these legislatures. This is new for everybody, and putting in place virtual parliamentary activity has required flexibility and adaptation on everyone's part. It's a mix of technology, process and people.
With over 75 million daily users worldwide, and now having exceeded 2.7 billion meeting minutes in a day, Microsoft Teams provides a robust environment for people to do their best collaborative work. It includes video conferencing and has many of the same features you've come to know with Skype and Skype for Business.
But video conferencing is only the beginning of what Microsoft Teams can do.
While the emphasis in this conversation has been on video conferencing capabilities, this flexible platform offers a broad set of collaboration services that we believe are useful in digitally transforming government and committee meetings. For example, it could facilitate the transfer of meeting minutes, pre-readings and written submissions. While we recognize that this is not a priority in the short term, this should be something that Parliament looks at in the future term. Microsoft Teams has the ability to support this activity in a secure way.
Further embedded in Microsoft Teams are a variety of assistive technologies to support individuals with unique accessibility requirements due to mobility, seeing or hearing challenges. We are pleased that Microsoft Teams is currently in the process of being deployed to each member of Parliament and employees of the House of Commons.
To be clear, security is at the heart of everything we do at Microsoft. We employ over 3,500 security engineers and run the Microsoft security response centre, which operates 24 hours per day, seven days per week, every day of the year. We analyze trillions of events encountered from our global footprint to keep ahead of threats. Since security is a shared responsibility that no single organization can address on its own, we have exceptionally strong connections to the government's cybersecurity team, and we work together to protect both the federal government's cyberspace and Canada's cyberspace.
While the technology does exist to support virtual Parliament, there are still privacy and security considerations despite the public nature of these meetings. For example, in the virtual space, how would you prevent unwanted disruptions by unauthorized individuals? Just imagine for a moment, if you will, that the public galleries are filled with hundreds of unruly spectators. In the physical space, the Sergeant-at-Arms and the Parliamentary Protective Service would ensure that they don't cause unwanted disruptions. How would you put in place similar safeguards in a virtual space to protect the integrity of proceedings? Solving for these security and privacy issues is a matter of correctly configuring privacy and security controls, and also making sure that you have the right security development cycle.
Similarly, individuals should have confidence that the software they deploy on devices, whether it's Windows, their Mac, their iPhone or Android, only does what they expect it to do. Recognizing this as a top priority for customers almost 20 years ago, Microsoft implemented the trustworthy computing initiative. This means that privacy and security are part of every step of the development of our products and services, and follow the privacy-by-design principles, which were invented here in Canada. This is a fundamental commitment that Microsoft makes to its customers.
Microsoft's privacy commitments, which exceed those found in Canada's privacy legislation, provide the confidence that Microsoft will never use customer data for any other purpose than providing the service.
In closing, I fully recognize the complexity of the procedural and technical work associated with examining remote options, and I applaud this committee's very important work and the work of the House of Commons. I have deep respect for the institutions of Parliament, and I am confident that the possibilities technology can offer to support your work in a virtual fashion can enable parliamentary activities to take place in a new and different way, all while maintaining the integrity of the democratic system.
It will be my pleasure to receive your questions. Thank you.