Outdated Technology and Data Practices Put Canadian Public Safety at Risk, RCMP Advisory Board Warns
Aging infrastructure, siloed legacy systems, and outdated data management practices across the Royal Canadian Mounted Police are undermining the national police force’s ability to keep Canadians safe, according to a stark new advisory letter from the RCMP’s Management Advisory Board (MAB).
The letter, sent to Commissioner Mike Duheme in February and recently published online, delivers an urgent message: the RCMP’s information management and information technology (IM/IT) systems are failing, and the consequences extend directly to public safety.
Systemic Failures Compromising Policing Effectiveness
MAB member Doug Moen, who chairs the board’s Standing Committee on Finance and Administration, wrote that current IM/IT limitations — including outdated infrastructure, siloed legacy systems, and isolated databases — are compromising policing effectiveness, evidence-based decision-making, and ultimately the safety of Canadians.
“Temporary solutions are costly and unsustainable,” Moen stated. “Significant transformation is therefore essential. This requires a major overhaul of existing IM/IT systems.”
The letter warns that the RCMP is increasingly falling behind its partner agencies technologically, creating gaps in coordination and operational capability that could have serious consequences for national security and law enforcement.
Four Key Recommendations for Reform
The advisory board outlined four general recommendations for the RCMP, urging leadership to prioritize funding for technology improvements, break down internal silos to enhance data sharing between units, and develop a more effective plan to accelerate IM/IT modernization.
Central among the board’s frustrations is the lack of progress on eliminating the RCMP’s technical debt — the accumulated costs of quick-fix software development approaches that make future changes more difficult and expensive. The MAB noted that addressing this debt has not been a key priority for the force’s leadership.
“Adequate funding has been scarce and many recent attempts to secure it have been unsuccessful,” the board wrote. “The RCMP has a vision of where it wants to be, but needs senior leadership support, a detailed plan and the necessary resources and mechanisms to get there.”
Small Improvements Show Promise
Despite the broader systemic challenges, the report highlights that even modest technological upgrades have produced tangible benefits. New automation and artificial intelligence tools for processing Access to Information and Privacy (ATIP) requests, transcription bots, and mobile decryption assistance have all delivered measurable improvements to police operations.
The RCMP has also developed a generative AI chatbot called “Polly” designed to help employees quickly find answers about organizational policies — an example of the kind of innovation the advisory board wants to see scaled across the force.
The report also noted that the workforce security program, which conducts security clearances on potential new hires, would benefit enormously from technological upgrades. Improving this process is particularly critical given the federal government’s stated goal of hiring 1,000 new RCMP employees as quickly as possible.
Basic Infrastructure Gaps Create Operational Bottlenecks
In some cases, the challenges are remarkably fundamental. Several RCMP units are facing severe infrastructure limitations, including limited computing power and slow internet connection speeds, that are creating bottlenecks, delaying access to critical datasets, and reducing data processing capacity.
These basic infrastructure gaps are not merely inconveniences — the report emphasizes they are slowing critical work and impacting both operational effectiveness and data security.
RCMP Responds to the Advisory Board’s Findings
RCMP spokesperson Marie-Eve Breton said the force welcomes the MAB’s findings and is already implementing many of the recommended changes “to the greatest extent possible in the current financial context of the RCMP.”
Breton stated that data integration and governance modernization remain priorities for the force. “As part of this work, the RCMP is implementing enterprise data governance, advancing a national data pipeline and investing in modern infrastructure to support secure, reliable and timely access to data,” she wrote.
Procurement Hurdles and Risk-Averse Culture
Beyond funding shortfalls, the advisory board identified two additional barriers to modernization. IT procurement — a persistent challenge across the federal government — is described as slow and overly rigid, causing significant concerns within the national police force.
Additionally, the MAB pointed to a broader cultural issue, noting that the RCMP’s institutional culture is generally risk-averse across all areas, including IM/IT. “Addressing this cultural challenge is critical to the digital environment,” the board wrote.
A Longstanding Problem With Ominous Implications
This is far from the first time concerns about the RCMP’s outdated technology have been raised. In 2010, the Federal Auditor General revealed that the RCMP was aware some of its technological deficiencies could increase risks to police and public safety and could result in injury or death.
More recently, in early 2025, the RCMP’s internal audit team sent leadership a detailed report on its IT systems, concluding that since the auditor’s comprehensive report 15 years ago, “the RCMP’s progress in modernizing aging IT systems has been weak.”
The MAB acknowledged that some progress has been made since then but emphasized it has been far from sufficient to address the scale of the problem.
Northern and Remote Communities Face Unique Challenges
The report also flagged “operational challenges” in northern and remote communities, noting these issues could have ominous geopolitical implications. While the MAB did not discuss these concerns in detail, it recommended that the RCMP continue working closely with the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of Defence to address security gaps in these regions.
As Canada faces an increasingly complex security landscape, the advisory board’s message is clear: without significant investment and a fundamental transformation of its technology and data management practices, the RCMP risks falling further behind — with potentially serious consequences for the safety of all Canadians.
