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Alberta’s public shared procurement program adds communications hardware and services

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Alberta’s ShareIT public procurement program has now added a variety of telephony equipment, licensing, and services to its catalogue of offerings. The “unified communications” (UC) services will make it easier for education institutions to administer secure phone and videoconferencing tools across their entire organizations. This is expected to further ease costs and reduce workloads for […]

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Students in southern Alberta are learning to “hack” open data to gain in-demand technology skills

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This morning, over 100 Grades 7-12 students are learning in-demand digital literacy skills – including data analysis and coding – at the Southwest Alberta Hackathon, hosted by Cybera, the Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences (PIMS), and Palliser Regional Schools. Working out of the Picture Butte High School gym, students will use open data from

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Alberta post-secondaries come together to fight cybersecurity threats

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To combat rising cybersecurity threats to education and research organizations, Alberta’s 26 post-secondary institutions (PSIs) are teaming up to collectively share information and strategies to enhance the security and privacy of their digital assets. Facilitated by Cybera, this first-of-its-kind collaboration will not only save time and money for individual organizations looking to tackle these issues,

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In the spirit of giving, Cybera’s Internet Buying Group offers its 13th major price decrease

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Friday the 13th marks an appropriate day for Cybera to announce the 13th major price decrease for the Internet Buying Group since its launch in 2012. As of January 1, 2020, the price of bandwidth for Group members will go down from $1.50 per Mbps to $1.35 per Mbps, a 10% drop. The Internet Buying

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Understanding our planet through aurora: An NREN case study by Cybera

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People have been intrigued by the majesty of the Aurora Borealis for thousands of years. Far from just a beautiful atmospheric phenomenon, auroras help us model and predict space weather, understand the earth’s magnetosphere, and experiment with plasma physics. Through decades of aurora research, we have uncovered a treasure trove of scientific information about the

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Cybera’s response to the Competition Bureau’s review of anti-competitive conduct in the digital economy

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Last week, Cybera submitted a response to the Competition Bureau’s call for comments on anti-competitive conduct in the digital economy. In its discussion document, the Competition Bureau called attention to the increasing market concentration of certain core digital markets, including digital platforms such as Facebook and Google. The Bureau noted the role that big data

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Cybera’s response to telco petition to increase wholesale internet rates

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Last week, Canada’s largest telecommunications providers, including Bell, Rogers and Telus, petitioned the federal government to reverse the CRTC’s August 2019 decision to lower wholesale rates. These rates are what the large telecommunication firms charge to resellers to provide internet services.  In its August 2019 decision, the CRTC stated that; “The Commission considers that the

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Cybera’s Data Science for Albertans fellowship helps local startup streamline injury claims

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In January 2019, Edmonton-based entrepreneur Mike Zouhri was injured in a car accident, requiring him to navigate Alberta’s complex legal system. Like the other 17,000 automobile injury claims that happen in Alberta every year, he had a complex legal claim he needed help to resolve. In order to do that, Zouhri realized he would need

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Alberta’s Cost-Saving Public Shared Procurement Service Adds Vital Public Cloud Offerings

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Since it launched in 2017, ShareIT has saved Alberta’s education sector nearly $9.5 million.  Alberta educators have come to rely on cloud-based tools to deliver classroom learning content, as well as to manage their back-end operations. To meet this growing need for cloud services, Alberta’s ShareIT public procurement program has added Amazon Web Services (AWS)

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Callysto’s nation-wide classroom rollout is underway

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A free interactive learning platform that brings computational thinking, coding, and data science skills into classrooms is rolling out across the country, thanks to new funding from the national CanCode program.  Callysto is a curriculum-based learning and skills development platform for students in Grades 5-12 that is accessible from any device with an internet connection. The tool

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Data transfers and consumer privacy part two: Cybera’s response to Innovation, Science, and Economic Development Canada

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In early September, Cybera submitted its response to a consultation by Innovation, Science and Economic Development (ISED) Canada on the modernization of Canada’s Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA). (This followed our August submission to an Office of the Privacy Commissioner (OPC) consultation on transfers for processing.) Comments were requested on a number

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Platform built on Rapid Access Cloud is deepening understanding of Canadians’ online mental health

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There have been many interesting news stories popping up recently about artificial intelligence (AI) being trained to identify human emotions. Like so much else to do with humans, reading emotions is a nuanced, complicated endeavour, particularly for machines. But the benefits of having technology that can do this are immense — far beyond just creating

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Easing schools’ student login headaches with Cybera’s Pika service

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Student login management is one of those little-talked-about but painfully frustrating tasks for school administrators. Each year, across Alberta, thousands of student accounts are created or updated to allow them to login to their Adobe or Google (or dozens of other) online tools, which have become foundational for modern education. But as well as creating

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Cybera roadshow coming to Lethbridge and Grande Prairie

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As Cybera prepares to launch its next 3-year Strategic Plan, we are planning a series of collaborative discussions with our community. Our next stops will be Lethbridge and Grande Prairie. These free, half-day sessions will review the digital resources available to Alberta’s public and education sectors to create efficiencies and improve computational literacy. They will also identify

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