From Insight to Innovation: Expanding the Boundaries of Enterprise Monitoring
By Edward Pham
By integrating real-time alerts into enterprise IT monitoring tools, we proved that with the right expertise, anything in the enterprise can be monitored
Introduction
A while ago, during Canada’s national election, ensuring reliable public access to Elections Canada’s toll-free information network was mission critical. Our team designed and implemented a custom monitoring solution that seamlessly integrated toll-free call availability and performance metrics into existing IT monitoring systems.
This approach provided instant visibility, proactive alerts, and faster issue resolution - all within the same dashboards used for other enterprise services.
The success of this initiative demonstrated that with the right knowledge, methodology, and integration capabilities, organizations can extend monitoring far beyond traditional IT systems - empowering governments and enterprises alike to safeguard public trust through innovation.
Requirements
Elections Canada was experiencing low response rate (less than 80%) when citizens were calling the returning offices (RO) during the election period. When a general election or by-election is called, Elections Canada needs more than 800 tollfree numbers activated and set up at returning offices across all provinces and territories.
Some of the challenges contributing to the low response rate were:
· Excessive Telco network busy
· Excessive phone line busy
· No answer
· Courtesy routing error due to incorrect time zone setup
· Incorrect tollfree numbers published due to human errors
Elections Canada wanted to improve its operations, and as part of a new Voter Information System (VIS). selected RealIT to design and develop this solution.
Solution
Leveraging the Bell Canada’s Call Detail Record information, we designed and developed an application to monitor and generate alerts for the following metrics:
· Lack of CDR data feed from Bell Canada
· Excessive Telco network busy
· Courtesy response routing error
· Excessive RO busy
· Excessive ring with no answer
We integrated these alerts with the enterprise IT management solution (HP Operations Manager) that Elections Canada was using at a time, thereby, providing centralized event management.
In addition, we added a feature to discover new tollfree numbers as they become activated by Bell Canada technicians. This helped eliminate human errors in publishing toll free numbers.
It took 5 months from start to finish and Elections Canada was able to use the application for the May 2004 election. As a result of using this application, RO response rate shot up above 92%.
As a bonus, Elections Canada won a bronze medal in October 2005 in Group I, Federal Wards B in the category of Enhancing Government Operations. Our application is one of the five technologies used to support the nomination for this award.
Closing
The success of this project went far beyond improving call response rates. It demonstrated how innovation and technical expertise can redefine the boundaries of enterprise monitoring. By applying proven IT management principles to a complex toll-free network, we showcased the flexibility and scalability of modern monitoring frameworks.
This initiative proved that with the right knowledge, integration approach, and collaboration, any service within an enterprise - even those traditionally considered outside the IT domain - can be monitored, measured, and improved.
At RealIT Management, we continue to drive innovation in enterprise observability and monitoring solutions. The Elections Canada project stands as a strong example of how we transform operational challenges into intelligent, automated, and measurable outcomes - ensuring visibility, reliability, and performance across every layer of the enterprise.