Transforming Government Services with Digital Platforms

By Jason Hopkins, Digital Platforms

In the Digital Platforms division of Nova Scotia’s Department of Cyber Security and Digital Solutions (CSDS), we focus on designing, building, delivering, and sharing reusable digital products and services that help departments and programs within provincial government and adjacent health services deliver their services digitally.  

While each digital service is unique in terms of what it provides citizens – often the end-users – there are a number of common components that are used time and time again to provide a consistent and high-quality user experience. This is where Digital Platforms come in. 

If you work for a government department that delivers programs and services digitally, or if you’re an end-user of these services, you’re probably already familiar with some of the Digital Platforms we’ve launched.  

• My NS Account provides citizen access and authentication to services such as the Registry of Joint Stocks, YourHealthNS, and the School Lunch Program.  
• NS Pay allows users to make secure digital payments. 
• NS Forms enables citizens to submit specific information required for a particular service in a user-friendly and secure way for grant submissions, contact requests, emergency relief, re-imbursement programs, etc.  
• novascotia.ca allows users to find services and information quickly.

Over the last several months, we have seen fantastic evidence that provides real-world examples of how Digital Platforms can accelerate the delivery and development of digital services and digital transformation. 

The YourHealthNS app was recently expanded to give all Nova Scotians access to their health records. The My NS Account digital platform is the citizen account used for validating the user’s health card information, giving them access to view their health records in the YourHealthNS app. My NS Account is an important piece of the puzzle to ensure citizens can access those records in the app without sharing them with others and violating their privacy or putting their information at risk 

Another example is the Nova Scotia Guard portal. This portal was recently launched to help Nova Scotians register to join the NS Guard, leveraging three of our Digital Platforms (My NS Account, Notifications, and NS Forms) in the process. These platforms make it quick and easy to register, deliver services and access information – and that encourages people to sign up.  Interestingly, there are also multiplier effects when digital platforms are leveraged this way. For example, YourHealthNS leveraging My NS Account, helps people realize they can access other digital services in government.  

Digital Platforms by the Numbers
My NS Account	Integrated with 50 digital services and 575k active accounts
NS Forms	65 forms in production supporting dozens of digital services
NS Pay	Integrated with 37 digital services
Notify	Integrated with 33 digital services sending reminders, updates and confirmations via text and email. 1 million+ notifications sent so far this fiscal year
novascotia.ca	An average of 1.1 million user sessions started each month on novascotia.ca websites as well thousands of content changes and updates

Digital transformation isn’t a destination. It’s an ongoing process that will evolve along with citizens’ needs and the digital services that enable us to meet them. We will continue to develop our core platforms and have some exciting new releases in the works. We also expect to make some major inroads with new platforms. We look forward to all of these initiatives and will continue to tackle them with a product mindset and approach.   

Thanks for reading!  
Jason Hopkins, Executive Director – Digital Platforms, Cyber Security and Digital Solutions 

PS: The blog post  you’ve just read was published on yet another one of our digital platforms. For more CSDS related blogposts check here:  Nova Scotia Government’s Blog Platform