Inside Sasktel's vision for a Smart Province
Realizing the vision of a connected province would be profoundly transformative for diverse industries and organizations
There’s no shortage of data to inform our decisions. The question is, “How can we best use it in Saskatchewan, to do the most good for the most people? How can you collect, analyze and present the data in a useful way?”
The answer comes from Sasktel — which has invested billions to deliver unparalleled connectivity and world-class data centres — and will make Saskatchewan unique in Canada, if not all of North America. It’s called a Smart Province.
So what is a Smart Province? Saskatchewan is already the home of worldclass thinkers and globally recognized achievements. However, the concept of a Smart Province is not about what is done, but how it is done. It’s about connecting innovators and forward-thinking organizations to generate solutions and growth. Supported by the strength of Sasktel and its investment in infrastructure, Saskatchewan is uniquely positioned, because of its social policies and its collaborative mindset as a province, to accomplish this extraordinary vision. The brilliance of the Smart Province strategy is to build from what is already there.
Mike Stefaniuk, director of business development (Internet of Things and digital transformation) at Sasktel Business Solutions, uses highways as an example of how Saskatchewan has developed. Saskatchewan’s sparse population includes numerous rural communities. They had to build highways to achieve economic growth, access to essential services such as schools and hospitals, and social connectivity. Obviously, one town or one industry could never pay for a highway on its own. The only way to achieve a highway infrastructure was a model focused on the public good, underpinned by a spirit of cooperation.
As a Crown corporation, Sasktel has followed that same public policy to achieve a new kind of connective highway — broadband communications — even in areas considered commercially unprofitable. It has been a remarkable undertaking, but for the forward-thinkers at Sasktel like Mike Stefaniuk and Nathan Wilson, director of sales (innovation and collaboration), the next question was, “Now that we’ve built it, what can we do with it?”
That’s how the Smart Province concept was born — a way to maximize the potential of the province’s broadband capability to work together. Think of it as connecting the dots of creativity and innovation on the map of Saskatchewan, to benefit more people and organizations in more ways than ever before.
Stefaniuk is now focused on helping individuals and entities of all sizes to affordably access, manage, and share reliable data for maximum benefit. “We understand the infrastructure that’s required,” he explains. “We deal with data all day, every day. We have a relationship with pretty much every business and every industry in this province, and we dialogue with a broad spectrum of our economy.”
Wilson adds, “We are also a utility with a public policy hat. We’re here to support growth in the province. We want to be an enabler, and we want to support the private sector. “
The underlying principle of the Smart Province is the belief that data processed and managed to benefit one organization is highly likely to benefit many, as long as they’re connected and can share the costs. “Saskatchewan is made up of primarily smaller organizations,” says Wilson. “Sasktel wants to support the growth of these small organizations by making available more data they can innovate with and solve more problems with.”
The applications will transform Saskatchewan in countless ways, in every sector. In Smart Agriculture, it’s not just one farmer — but all farmers — that Sasktel can help to manage their operations, gain insights and make profitable decisions. Using that same model, Smart Communities can work together to best manage resources, improve public safety, and provide maximum benefit at the lowest cost to their taxpayers.
Wilson and Stefaniuk have met with hundreds of Saskatchewan businesses and other organizations, large and small. “What’s amazing is how common the challenges are, as to why companies aren’t better at leveraging data,” says Wilson. “There’s a general lack of analytical skill sets. The other one is, people are doing analytics, but it’s often reactive and it has gaps in it. They have lots of data, but it’s in different places that are hard to get to and hard to bring together. Our role at Sasktel is to say, ‘Here’s the data. Here are the insights. Here’s how we can put it to use for you.’ ”
“We have the potential to work together in different ways,” says Wilson. “Technology exists to perform almost any function we can imagine. Our challenge is to help foster an approach that supports discovery, innovation, and application of these capabilities in a manner that meets the needs of our key sectors and is available to organizations both large and small. By working together to support a Smart Province, we can make Saskatchewan the best place in the world to innovate.”
For more information, visit sasktel.com/smartprovince.