Modernizing Old Age Security’s delivery: Strengthening support for Canada’s seniors

For more than 7.4 million Canadian seniors, receiving their monthly Old Age Security (OAS) payments on time can be essential to make ends meet. OAS is a monthly benefit that provides financial support for eligible seniors aged 65 and older and helps seniors with their basic living expenses. To ensure this happens without delay, Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) worked with Deloitte to modernize OAS service delivery and its enabling technology (i.e. with Cúram software at its core). The new system also processes the Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS) for people most in need.

Prior to this modernization, OAS payments were processed with technology dating back nearly 40 years. Recognizing the need to future-proof Canada’s largest social benefit program, ESDC collaborated with Deloitte, as part of the federal government’s Benefits Delivery Modernization (BDM) programme to deliver a secure, scalable, and innovative solution. As part of this programme, we introduced a GenAI-enabled agent assistant called ‘AssistMe’ to support agents in serving seniors.

“It’s a dramatic change,” says Lead Client Service Partner for ESDC Michael Pentland at Deloitte. “We always kept in mind that it needed to be successful, and it was ultimately about serving seniors better.”

This project migrated over 10 million client records from legacy systems and included training over 5,000 employees. Security and privacy were top priorities, which were confirmed through a third-party assessment.

As Canada’s population ages, more Canadians will collect OAS. By 2030, the Government of Canada will disburse over $100 billion in OAS to more than nine million seniors. This new technology will build a sustainable system to support the growing number of seniors that will receive OAS and GIS for years to come.

Deloitte's work to deploy technological innovations in the public sector is one of the ways that we're working to create more trusted institutions and build public confidence in systems that citizens rely on.