From arts, culture and recreation to economic development and utilities management, it’s no secret that municipal governments have an outsized impact on the day-to-day lives of Canadians. They provide the services Canadians rely on most and are key promoters of small and medium sized businesses. That’s why, in our mission to build a trusted internet for Canadians, municipalities and organizations working to support them are key partners for CIRA.
CIRA recently sponsored the Federation of Canadian Municipalities’ Annual Conference and Tradeshow: Local action, national results where thousands of elected officials, city managers and municipal service providers gathered to discuss the challenges facing municipalities. CIRA was there to talk about how we could help solve some of the most pressing digital issues facing municipalities today. We participated in:
- The co-sponsored panel by CIRA and SAP Canada Inc., Fighting the municipal brain drain: Attracting and retaining talent;
- A Lunch & Learn session, From benchmark to broadband: CIRA community broadband testing program;
- A tradeshow booth presenting how CIRA can help build capacity against the cyber threats facing municipalities.
ICYMI, here is how CIRA supports Canadian municipalities.
CIRA Community Broadband Testing program
Through our Internet Performance Test (IPT), CIRA partners with municipalities and other community-focused organizations to assess broadband service levels in their regions before, during and after internet infrastructure improvements. This looks like:
- We create a custom IPT portal for your community with a unique domain – performance.cira.ca/yourcommunity
- We work with you and other organizations to complete outreach and boost the number of tests taken over time to give you an accurate picture of your community’s connectivity performance – down to the household level.
- We provide you with your regions’ connectivity data, reports and dashboards so you can benchmark and compare broadband levels across the area and as investments are made.
The Community Broadband Testing program empowers communities to advocate for better connectivity and make smart investments to ensure that broadband levels are serving every member of their region. For more about the Community Broadband Testing program, contact [email protected].
CIRA Cybersecurity Services: Build Capacity in the Era of Hybrid Work
Canadian municipalities have unique cybersecurity concerns and needs. Post-pandemic, these are only growing as city managers and officials grapple with the era of hybrid work, a shift in the market for top talent and an ever-diversifying array of corporate and public networks supporting residential connectivity, small and medium-sized businesses and digitizing services.
CIRA helps municipalities manage their unique cybersecurity needs through a layered-defense strategy that is cost-effective, tailored to municipalities and made by Canadians, for Canadians. This includes the CIRA DNS Firewall, CIRA Anycast DNS and cybersecurity awareness training. Meet with CIRA’s cybersecurity team and review some of our success stories here.
Bonus: City gTLDs
CIRA knows a thing or two about operating a domain registry – we’ve been managing the .CA domain since 1999 and supports one third of all top-level domains (TLDs) through our other services. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Number’s (ICANN) next round of generic TLD applications will be coming any day now – and CIRA can help municipalities ensure that their city can be represented to the right of the dot. Currently, Quebec has .quebec – imagine if you could visit store.toronto to know exactly where you’re headed in the Six? Better yet, imagine all municipal government services have their locale represented to the right of the dot.
At CIRA, we’re proud to support municipalities in our mission to build a trusted internet for all Canadians. To learn more about how CIRA can support your municipal government, contact [email protected].
Georgia is a Policy & Advocacy Analyst at CIRA and is very passionate about internet governance and digital policy.
