Government of Canada and Coveo sign MOU to advance AI adoption
OTTAWA, ON and MONTREAL - Dec. 17, 2025. The Government of Canada and Coveo (TSX: CVO), a Canadian leader in AI search and relevance technology, announced a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to boost innovation and adoption of artificial intelligence across public services. The direction is clear: make services smarter, faster, and easier for Canadians to use.
While details will roll out over time, the focus points to practical AI that improves findability, case resolution, and self-service-without adding risk or friction. For public servants, this is a chance to modernize service delivery and internal knowledge management with guardrails in place.
What this means for departments
- Better search and discovery across departmental sites, policies, and forms-so people get to the right answer sooner.
- Smarter case triage and knowledge suggestions to reduce call volumes and handle routine requests faster.
- Consistent information across channels (web, call centres, email) powered by unified knowledge bases.
- More accessible experiences for all Canadians, including bilingual queries and clear, plain-language results.
Immediate opportunities for public service teams
- Launch a small pilot on a high-traffic service page or top call driver. Measure deflection, time-to-answer, and satisfaction.
- Stand up an internal knowledge hub with AI-assisted search for frontline staff. Track first-contact resolution and handle time.
- Clean and tag content. AI works better when your source material is accurate, current, and structured.
- Set up a change plan: comms for teams, quick reference guides, and a 30-60-90 day rollout calendar.
Guardrails: privacy, equity, and accountability
Any AI use in government must meet policy, privacy, and accessibility requirements from day one. Run algorithmic impact assessments early, document decisions, and monitor outcomes continuously.
If you need a reference point, review the Government of Canada's Directive on Automated Decision-Making for requirements on risk ratings, transparency, and quality assurance. Read the directive.
How to get started in Q1
- Pick one service journey with clear pain points (search failures, form drop-offs, repeat calls). Start there.
- Define success upfront: KPIs like task completion rate, contact deflection, and response accuracy.
- Create a governance loop: weekly review of queries, misses, and false positives; ship fixes quickly.
- Train your front line. Provide simple prompts, do/don't examples, and escalation rules for edge cases.
Why this matters
Canadians want straight answers without digging. If this MOU accelerates practical AI in areas like search, content relevance, and service routing, we reduce friction for citizens and workload for teams. That's progress you can measure.
For the public release noted in the announcement, see newswire.ca. If you're planning team upskilling for 2025 projects, browse focused options by role here: Complete AI Training - courses by job.
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