Case Study | Skills Competences Canada Ontario
Building the Future: How Zazz Advanced Talent in Trades and Technology
Built for national scale — secure, compliant, and optimized for youth engagement across all platforms.
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Commissioned by Skills Compétences Canada and backed by the Government of Canada, this platform serves as a national digital hub for promoting trades and technology careers. Our team engineered a full-scale solution that combines native mobile apps, a secure CMS, cloud-native infrastructure, and IAM-compliant backend systems—positioning it as the digital backbone for Canada’s skilled trades ecosystem.
The Engineering Impact
Engineering outcomes that withstand regulatory scrutiny, national scale, and multilingual complexity
Nationwide Scale
Deployed in 13 provinces, powering bilingual experiences via native apps and a Canada-hosted backend.
Government-Grade Security & Compliance
Delivered a PIPEDA-compliant system with encryption, RBAC, Canadian cloud residency, and WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility across mobile, CMS, and backend.
Zero Downtime During National Events
Ensured uptime during high-traffic events with autoscaling, DevOps monitoring, and a robust CI/CD pipeline.
The Challenge
Skills Compétences Canada needed to modernize its digital infrastructure to support national-scale events, virtual skill assessments, and mobile-first engagement across all provinces and territories. Key challenges included:
- Fragmented Tech Stack: Disconnected tools for events, registration, and communication were limiting operational efficiency and scalability.
- No Mobile Reach: No native mobile apps existed, which hindered youth engagement and prevented real-time interaction at competitions and workshops.
- Data Residency & Compliance Gaps: Services needed to meet PIPEDA, Canadian Centre for Cyber Security, and WCAG 2.1 accessibility standards—while ensuring data remained within Canadian borders.
- Manual Content Workflows: The absence of a centralized CMS made it difficult for non-technical staff to manage, update, and approve bilingual content across platforms.
- No Central Identity & Access Management: No RBAC, session monitoring, or administrative controls existed to manage users and roles across departments, partners, and volunteers.
The Objective
The strategic mandate was to deliver a multi-tenant, modular, and secure digital ecosystem with the following capabilities:
- Deploy fully branded, bilingual native apps (iOS & Android) supporting both online and offline use cases.
- Engineer a headless CMS capable of handling large-scale content workflows, including multi-role access, WYSIWYG editing, and approval pipelines.
- Data Residency & Compliance Gaps: Services needed to meet PIPEDA, Canadian Centre for Cyber Security, and WCAG 2.1 accessibility standards—while ensuring data remained within Canadian borders.
- Ensure 100% compliance with Canadian cybersecurity, accessibility (WCAG 2.1), and privacy regulations (PIPEDA).
- Implement a centralized IAM system using SAML 2.0 / OIDC, RBAC, and audit trails.
- Build API integrations with SCC’s CRM, event management tools, and reporting systems.
- Enable real-time analytics, notification workflows, and app-based push communications during national events.
The Solution
We built and launched a comprehensive solution spanning mobile, backend, and infrastructure layers:
1. Mobile Applications (iOS & Android)
- Developed in Swift and Kotlin, supporting full offline access and real-time push alerts.
- Fully bilingual (EN/FR), aligned with SCC’s accessibility commitments.
- Custom modules for skill assessments, event tracking, and program discovery.
- Integrated with mobile accessibility features and designed to meet WCAG 2.1 AA.
2. Backend & Infrastructure
- Cloud-native architecture using containerized microservices, hosted on AWS cloud to guarantee data residency.
- RESTful APIs secured by OAuth 2.0, supporting mobile app, CMS, and CRM integrations.
- Custom modules for skill assessments, event tracking, and program discovery.
- PostgreSQL with managed backups, high availability, and geo-redundancy.
- Autoscaling groups for event-driven traffic spikes (e.g., Skills Canada National Competition).
3. Content Management System (CMS)
- Built a custom CMS with:
- Role-based authoring, editing, and approval workflows
- Full version control and rollback
- Content tagging, scheduling, and multilingual publishing
- Admin dashboard for non-technical users to manage all content in real-time
4. Security, Compliance & Data Governance
- Encryption: TLS 1.3 for in-transit data; AES-256 for data at rest
- Compliance: Fully aligned with PIPEDA, Canadian cybersecurity frameworks, and WCAG
- Penetration testing & VAPT: Quarterly tests and patch management
- Immutable audit logs and real-time monitoring via integrated dashboards
- Data retention policies and automated backups to meet federal data lifecycle requirements
5. IAM & Access Controls
- Integrated with centralized IdP using SAML 2.0 and OIDC, enabling secure SSO
- RBAC architecture with fine-grained role permissions (Admin, Editor, Reviewer, Regional Coordinator, etc.)
- Real-time audit trails, session logs, and policy-based access governance
- Support for privileged access management (PAM) and emergency break-glass access
6. DevOps & CI/CD
- GitHub Actions for automated builds, test suites, and deploy pipelines
- Infrastructure as Code (IaC) using Terraform for reproducible cloud environments
- Real-time audit trails, session logs, and policy-based access governance
- Container orchestration with Docker Compose and horizontal scaling for high-traffic events
- Continuous monitoring with uptime tracking, alerting, and rollback support
The Impact
- 100,000+ app downloads across iOS and Android
- Real-time mobile engagement during national competitions, empowering students and instructors alike
- Streamlined content ops: CMS enabled staff to push real-time updates in both English and French without dev support
- Zero compliance gaps post-launch — full alignment with PIPEDA, WCAG 2.1, and Canadian Cybersecurity Framework
- 95% reduction in manual workflows for content approvals, event scheduling, and push notifications
- Seamless interoperability between mobile, CMS, and CRM — with real-time synchronization and unified data governance
- Platform continues to scale as the national digital engagement hub for Canada’s skilled trades and technical career ecosystem
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