CSSDGS

Digital strategyInformation architectureIntranet

One dot ≈ 100 websites.

Turning about 30,000 websites with no shared rules into one ecosystem a school service centre can actually keep up.
  • 31,995students
  • 55schools and centres
  • 7,085employees
  • 30,000websites built over the years, with no shared rules
For years, teachers had been building websites on their own. The result: about 30,000 of them.

The Centre de services scolaire des Grandes-Seigneuries serves 21 municipalities on Montréal's South Shore. Its digital presence had grown faster than its structure: no shared standards, no common architecture, and families left to find their way through it all. That's almost one website per student, as if every kid had started a blog. The goal was to bring order to it in a way the organization could actually sustain.

  • Families and studentsOne clear front door instead of thousands of school pages
  • StaffA redesigned intranet within the wider ecosystem
  • IT teamsA technology inventory to know what exists and who owns it
Workshops across the organization. IT, communications, school administrators and teachers in the same rooms, mapping what each one needed.
Research, then training. User research with staff and families, plus design thinking training so teams could carry the method themselves.
One architecture for decades of sprawl. An information architecture able to absorb thousands of sites into a navigable ecosystem.
A roadmap people could follow. Three years of priorities, sized for the team that would live with them, including a technology inventory and a new intranet.

How we worked

Co-created, so they could hold the course

The transformation was co-created with the CSSDGS team. The goal was simple: after my analysis and architecture, they had to be able to keep the course on their own.

Stakeholders from across the school service centre took part, from IT and communications to school administrators, teachers and school secretaries. Three workshops set the frame: a problem analysis, an enterprise framing with a SWOT and a content inventory, then alignment.

We interviewed about fifteen people from five groups and turned what we heard into personas. Each persona had goals, irritants and a wish list. The architecture then had to solve the problems of the people we had talked to.

The SWOT, written by the team

SWOT sheet from workshop 2, written by the CSSDGS team. Text version below.
Workshop 2, enterprise framing. Built in the room by the CSSDGS team, then completed with the exploration sailboat: what pushes us, where we want to go, what holds us back and what could sink us. Anonymized and simplified. Translated from French.

Strengths

  • Teams open to new technologies
  • Microsoft 365 already in place
  • Interest and transparency in the teams
  • An organization that wants to fix its problems

Weaknesses

  • Many competing priorities
  • Information scattered, no shared architecture
  • Many processes still on paper

Opportunities

  • One entry point to find information and tools
  • Become the reference everyone actually uses
  • Simpler tasks, more efficient communication
  • Microsoft 365 governance to set common rules

Threats

  • Forgetting key stakeholders, like educational services and HR
  • Assuming we already know what people need
  • Unclear access to the data and the tool
  • Becoming one more tool among many

Persona: the school secretary

Persona sheet for a school secretary, built from the interviews. Text version below.
One of the personas built from the interviews: the person most likely to answer the phone when something goes wrong, and the one the new architecture had to help first.

Quote: “We need support fast, because we are constantly putting out fires.”

Goals

  • Share the important information in the school
  • Answer parents
  • Answer requests from teachers and the principal

Behaviours

  • Checks email every morning
  • Takes attendance, calls parents, records absences
  • Answers parents by phone, teachers on Teams
  • Multitasks all day

Irritants

  • Hard to find documents
  • Hard to work with other departments to put out fires
  • Left alone at the start: onboarding is very hard
  • Constantly interrupted

Wish list

  • Easy access to procedures and forms
  • The latest version of every document
  • One place to find everything

Influences

  • School principal
  • Human resources and finance
  • Teachers
  • Parents

The ecosystem, in EDGY

One portal, four levels of information

The workshop maps, redrawn with EDGY. Every space is a communication channel. The portal holds what everyone shares. Each team gets its own space, then a workspace to collaborate. Each employee gets a private space. Everything else stays outside, linked rather than copied.

Circular EDGY map of the CSSDGS ecosystem: the main site at the centre with the staff directory, eight team spaces around it (communications, each school, each profession, HR, performance and procurement, IT, educational services, governance bodies), their workspaces in the outer ring, and tools, the private employee space and external communication outside.
Ecosystem vision. Every team, school and profession gets its own space, then a workspace. Arrows show where information gets published.
Circular EDGY map of the four levels of information: level 1 shared information on the main site, level 2 team information, level 3 shared workspaces, level 4 personal space, external tools outside. A side panel follows an HR infraction through every level.
Ecosystem architecture. Four levels, from what everyone shares to what belongs to one person, with an HR example that runs through all of them.

A three-year roadmap, followed

Public milestones from the CSSDGS annual reports, once the plan was in motion. The staff's eagerness to get it right did a lot of the heavy lifting.

  1. 2021–22The board adopts a digital transformation plan, and 7,000 new devices go out: three years of replacements in one.
  2. 2022–23Maestro, the new employee intranet, is rolled out.
  3. 2023–24Second phase of Maestro and wider use of Microsoft 365.
  4. 2024–25Schools keep rolling out their digital action plans.

Where the CSSDGS is today

The CSSDGS is still carrying its digital shift forward. Its 2024–2025 annual report says digital transformation now runs through all four orientations of its plan. Schools keep rolling out their digital action plans, and staff training targets the digital skills each role needs. Figures from cssdgs.gouv.qc.ca.

The CSSDGS has followed the three-year roadmap on budget and on schedule, a rare result for a public-sector digital transformation of this size.

Credits

Business analysis, UX, information architecture and facilitation
Jean-Sébastien Daigle · &friends
Client
Centre de services scolaire des Grandes-Seigneuries