Skip to main content
Blackberry Logo

Customer Story: Global Affairs Canada

To Securely Coordinate the 2018 G7 Presidency, Global Affairs Canada’s Summits Management Office (SMO) Turned to BlackBerry AtHoc

The G7 Summit is one of the most complex, high-security events in the world, bringing together international leaders to collaborate on a wide range of global issues. In order to keep communication streamlined, secure, and coordinated, Global Affairs Canada’s Summits Management Office (SMO) used BlackBerry® AtHoc® in their Summit Integrated Command Center (SICC).

Critical schedule changes and alerts delivered to thousands in minutes, not hours.

400+ federal employees and officials coordinated seamlessly across multiple agencies.

10,000 delegation members received secure, up-to-the-minute travel advisories and updates.

The Nerve Center of the G7 Summit

How Canada’s Summit Integrated Command Center ensures seamless operations through collaboration, agility, and advanced technology.

We’re basically the nerve center of the entire G7 Summit,” explains Michel Bouvier, Chief Operations Officer of the Summit Integrated Command Center (SICC). “We monitor VIP movements, recording activities in close collaboration with our partners. We also provide effective resolution to issues and challenges, coordinate schedule changes, and manage incidents and emergencies.

Coordinating the event is a massive undertaking, requiring a great deal of collaboration and agility. In Canada, this responsibility falls to the SICC, part of Global Affairs Canada’s Summit Management Office. To manage both the months-long lead-up to the Summit and the Summit itself, the Summits Management Office worked with multiple government agencies. The team for 2018, for example, was comprised of over 400 employees from various federal departments. Partners included Health Canada, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), Transport Canada, the Canadian Armed Forces, Shared Services Canada, Justice Canada, and many others.

When you’re running an event as complex as the G7 Summit, nothing ever goes exactly as planned. Anything can happen. BlackBerry AtHoc helps ensure that no matter what issues we encounter, we’re ready to address them quickly and efficiently. Michel Bouvier, Chief of Operations, Summit Integrated Command Center, Global Affairs Canada's Summits Management Office.

Security, Coordination, and Government-Grade Response

Mission Assurance at the G7: BlackBerry AtHoc in Action

Integrated capabilities enabled SICC to pre-empt incidents, execute rapid schedule changes, and meet security mandates for a global audience.

Coordinating VIP Movements with Precision

“One of our most important tasks is to know and define who will be where and when,” says Bouvier. “We need to know the movements of VIPs down to the minute, including leaders, ministers, and spouses.  It’s a big logistical challenge, as their movements constantly overlap with each other, and multiple events are usually happening simultaneously – it’s therefore critical that we’re coordinated in our approach.” The SICC assigns each VIP – leaders, ministers, and their spouses – a liaison officer. These liaison officers are responsible for providing the command center with by-the-minute updates on the VIP. SICC faced increased complexity, with nine ministerial meetings, evolving stakeholder requirements, and dynamic security needs. Legacy communications were insufficient for real-time incident response.

Streamlined Communication and Coordination

Liaison officers were given access to a range of prepopulated templates that allowed them to quickly and easily provide updates on VIP movements. For the Leaders Summit itself, the SICC established three separate operations centers including its core command center, and staff at each operations center were given the ability to view all notifications sent through BlackBerry AtHoc. “We had an operations center in La Malbaie, another at the CFB Bagotville Airbase and another in Quebec City,” says Bouvier. “All the logistics and communications were monitored and recorded through our command center, and BlackBerry AtHoc kept everyone within our organization in close contact with each other.”

Enhanced Efficiency with Secure Messaging and Automatic Logging

AtHoc’s IP-based messages are sent over a secure channel, which helps guarantee delivery and avoids many of the pitfalls associated with traditional SMS messages. Every time a liaison officer or official contacts the SICC, all details of their communiqué must be registered and recorded in a logbook for auditing purposes. For even a minor ministerial, this resulted in a massive volume of work. Thanks to BlackBerry AtHoc, much of this logging now occurs automatically. “For every movement/event reported and every alert published via BlackBerry AtHoc, we know who sent it, where they sent it from, and when they sent it,” explains Bouvier. “This information is automatically populated into a log, which can then be exported to a spreadsheet with a few clicks. Even though we do still get calls and need scribes to record them in our logbooks, BlackBerry AtHoc has saved us a ton of work.”

Secure Your Operations

Learn How BlackBerry Can Support Your Mission

Contact us to discuss your organization's specific requirements for secure communications and critical event management.