TDSB automates workflows for Canada’s largest school board

The TDSB manages an increasingly complex IT landscape to accelerate digital transformation—establishing a platform on which to integrate enterprise-wide workflows and launch a custom application.

Canada’s largest school network

The Toronto District School Board (TDSB) is the largest and one of the most diverse school boards in Canada. It serves approximately 246,000 students in 582 schools throughout Toronto, and more than 130,000 life-long learners in its Adult and Continuing Education programs. More than 80% of TDSB graduates go on to university or college. It has 42,000 employees and an annual budget of $3.4 billion.

Operating at scale, with personal perspective

The challenge for TDSB is not so much to manage size, but to enable agility. It recognizes that education is a personal journey. While operating efficiently, it wants to allow a degree of educational freedom within its schools and teaching community. It also wants to accelerate the digital transformation of the classroom, and of the way it manages an increasingly complex IT landscape. To begin, it wanted to overhaul the way it addressed IT Service Management.

Enterprise-wide opportunities

In exploring IT Service Management, TDSB came to realize the platform opportunities of ServiceNow. The original scope of work expanded with the introduction of Customer Service Management to help the Human Rights Office handle inquiries and resolve race, bias, and hate incidents. 

Reacting to an unprecedented crisis

Plans for custom applications were brought forward with the arrival of COVID-19, and the closure of the city’s schools. TDSB initially created two surveys to help its response: the first, built using SAP Qualtrics, was a survey to gauge which students needed IT support to study from home; the second, created using ServiceNow Safe Workplace suite, was a staff survey to help smooth the eventual return to work.

Following Toronto Public Health guidelines, the school board also used ServiceNow to create an ambitious health screening app. Within a month of launch, the app was being used by 51,000 students and staff each day.

Enabling students and parents to self-serve

The engagement with ServiceNow creates a dynamic, efficient platform on which to manage a complex education environment. It is capable of linking TDSB’s diverse organizational siloes with the agility to spin up new services. Following the success of the COVID-19 response app, TDSB plans to accelerate the use of self-service and custom applications. It wants to enable students and parents to self-serve throughout the day, across the year. “We’re better able to provide solutions back to the organization that address real business issues,” says Singh.

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