Skip to main content

Tag: software

Bill C-36 and the Canadian Flag

Bill C-36: Is Your Business Ready?

What Canada’s Proposed Consumer Data Act Could Mean for Businesses and Employees Privacy legislation has a habit of sounding like something the legal department will worry about later. Until someone asks IT where the customer data is stored. Then things get interesting. Canada’s proposed Bill C-36, the Protecting Privacy and Consumer Data Act (PPCDA), represents a significant proposed modernization of Canada’s federal private-sector privacy framework. Introduced on June 15, 2026, the bill is designed to replace Part 1 of the Personal Information Protection and...

Continue reading

Tariffs - On Fire

Tariffs as a Weapon: Geopolitics Has Entered IT

For the past 18 months, geopolitical friction has become the background noise of business. Wars, sanctions, supply chain disruptions, changing trade agreements, economic nationalism, cybersecurity threats and increasingly competitive relationships between major economies have moved from the pages of international news into boardrooms and budget meetings. For Canadian tech companies, there’s an additional layer; the increasingly complicated relationship between Canada and the United States. The temptation is to think, “We are a software company, tariffs are somebody else’s...

Continue reading

Colourful Tim and Dolly Header

Tech Needs More Tims and Dollys

There are weeks when the news feels like a reminder that time moves faster than we would like and last week was one of them. Globally, headlines shared the deaths of two extraordinary creative figures: Dolly Parton and Tim Curry, both 80. Parton became one of the most recognizable figures in music and entertainment while building a business empire and an extraordinary philanthropic legacy. Curry became an international cultural icon through The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and then spent decades championing for the LGBTQ+ community while navigating a career in theatre, film, television,...

Continue reading

Second Page News

Second Page News: August Edition

There is a strange and for many of us, relentless phenomenon happening in technology news. Open almost any technology publication, news feed or social media platform and you will find AI. AI in your browser. AI in your database. AI in your image searches. AI in your coffee maker. Chances are, it’s AI writing those articles about AI. But underneath all the AI noise, something rather encouraging is happening. Software itself continues to get better. Open-source projects are becoming more secure. Programming languages are getting safer. Databases are becoming more capable. Cloud...

Continue reading

AI Brain Fry

This is Your Brain on AI: The Hidden Productivity Problem of Brain Fry

Remember when the biggest workplace concern about technology was spending too much time in meetings? Today, a new phenomenon is quietly making its way into boardrooms, project teams, and office conversations. It has an unofficial name that is surprisingly descriptive: AI Brain Fry. It is not a medical diagnosis, or a term found in a psychology textbook (yet). Instead, it is the growing feeling of mental fatigue, cognitive overload, and reduced critical thinking that can occur when employees rely heavily on generative AI throughout the workday. For business leaders, this is more than...

Continue reading

Powering Off

Powering Off: Why Time Away from Tech Improves Performance

The technology industry has a bit of a productivity problem. Not because people aren’t working hard enough, quite the opposite, they are masters of juggling full plates with competing priorities. Many IT professionals, developers, project managers, cybersecurity specialists, and technology leaders are working harder and staying connected longer than ever before. Smartphones, collaboration tools, cloud platforms, and remote work have created a world where it is possible to be available around the clock. The challenge is that our brains were never designed to operate this...

Continue reading

Neurodiversity

It’s Time to Talk About Neurodiversity in Tech

The technology industry has always celebrated innovation, creative problem solving, and thinking differently. Here at STEP, we see abstract thinking is a highly sought after feature. Yet many organizations continue to overlook one of the most valuable sources of diverse thinking available to them: neurodivergent professionals. While businesses compete for talent, navigate increasingly complex technology environments, and search for new ways to innovate, many leaders are discovering that neurodiversity is not simply a DEI initiative; it’s a misunderstood business opportunity. With...

Continue reading

Credential Sprawl

Credential Sprawl: The Hidden Risk Growing Inside Your Organization

Over the past several months, we’ve explored some of the biggest challenges facing technology leaders today. We’ve discussed technical debt, AI technical debt, digital sovereignty, workplace mental health, and the importance of maintaining a human-centered approach to technology. These topics may seem unrelated. The reality is, they all connect to a growing problem that many organizations are struggling to manage: Credential Sprawl It’s one of the most overlooked risks in modern IT environments, yet it has direct implications for cybersecurity, operational...

Continue reading

Technical Debt

Buried in Technical Debt

Most business leaders understand financial debt; borrow money today, pay interest tomorrow. Technical debt works much the same way. Every time leadership delays a software update, postpones a modernization initiative, extends the life of a legacy application by opting for a quick fix over a long-term solution, the business takes on technical debt. Sometimes that decision is necessary, budgets are limited, priorities shift, and businesses need to keep moving. The problem is, technical debt accumulates interest, and right now, the interest rate has never been higher and thanks to AI...

Continue reading

Garbage In - Garbage Out

Garbage in – Garbage Out: The 2026 Edition

For years, data cleansing has been treated like a back-office IT task, important, but rarely urgent. Things have changed. In the era of AI, automation, cybersecurity threats, and digital transformation, clean data has become a business-critical asset. Organizations investing millions into modernization initiatives are discovering a hard truth: bad data quietly destroys software projects, weakens AI systems, increases cybersecurity risk, and drives up operational costs. For business leaders responsible for technology budgets, the conversation is no longer about whether data...

Continue reading