The Zone

The Zone Team

Featuring Anray Liu from uOttawa!

Developers (IT-02):

• Wendy Gaultier
• Mathis Marcotte
• Bryan Paget
• Souheil Yazji

Team Lead (Acting IT-03):

• Jose Matsuda

Executive Summary

• The Zone is an open source, Protected B data science platform (with iATO) serving 2,500+ users.
• Built on Kubeflow, it supports Python, R, SAS, Julia, and Protected B LLM-assisted development.
• Recent milestones: iATO, platform hardening, CronJobs for automated workflows, Protected B LLM Proof of Concept.
• Designed for scalability, reproducibility, and sovereignty, aligning with the Shift to Open Source strategy.

A unified, secure environment where legacy, modern and future data science methods can coexist.

Strategic Objectives

1. Modernize StatCan's analytical infrastructure while enabling Shift to Open Source.
2. Democratize access to scalable, cloud-native tools across analytical communities.
3. Automate & industrialize workflows through GitOps, Kubeflow, and CronJobs.
4. Enhance productivity with LLM-assisted coding, without compromising data security.
5. Foster collaboration via shared tooling, version control, and open source principles.

Bridging stability and innovation.

What Is The Zone?

The Zone is an open source Protected B data science platform based on Kubeflow, designed to orchestrate notebooks, jobs, and machine learning workflows.

Core Capabilities:

• JupyterLab, VS Code, and RStudio with multi-language support (Python, R, SAS, Julia)
• CronJobs for scheduled, GitOps-driven workflows
• Portable architecture currently running on Azure AKS
• LLM-assisted coding (Proof of Concept complete)

The secure, modern foundation for StatCan's data science future.

Our Story

One Platform, Two Zones

• The Advanced Analytics Workspace was the first Zone
• The Zone is the Protected B counterpart to the AAW
• Built on the same foundation: Kubeflow on Kubernetes

Same core. Same capabilities.
Higher security.

Platform Evolution

From Growth to Maturity

• 2,500+ onboarded users (+300 since August 2025)
• 290+ active daily notebook sessions (2× increase since August)
• Platform hardening: improved security, stability, performance, and resource efficiency
• LLM-assisted coding: tested on CPU, Protected B infrastructure

Transitioning from experimental adoption to production quality ability.

Demo: Platform Capabilities

A Unified Experience Across Tools & Languages

1. Multiple Environments: JupyterLab, VS Code, RStudio
2. Multilingual Workflows: Seamless R, Python, SAS interoperability
3. Reusable Storage: Persistent volumes outlast notebook servers
4. Ollama + Continue: Context-aware code generation

One platform. Your preferred tools.

Demo: Anomaly Monitoring System

1. Intelligent Data Monitor (link)

• Synthetic data, statistical anomalies, CronJobs, Python, GitOps

2. Anomaly Monitoring Dashboard (link)

• GitLab as a Dashboard, CronJobs, R, GitOps

3. Anomaly Situation Investigator (link)

• Protected B LLM, anomaly analysis, Git report history, CronJobs, Ollama, Qwen3:0.6b on CPU

End-to-end automation: from detection to AI-assisted insight.

Roadmap: What's Next?

Strategic Evolution

• Argo Workflows for complex, versioned workflows
• Apache Spark integration (Python/R libraries ready)
• Bigger LLM models: moving beyond Proof of Concept to operational LLM assistance
• Expanded training & community enablement Videos in particular

Building StatCan's next-generation data science community.

A Federated Future

The Zone is open source and designed to scale. It can be deployed by:

• Other teams at StatCan
• Federal departments
• Provincial and municipal governments

Same foundation. Same security.
Deployed where you need it.

Enter The Zone

You are invited to:

• Access the platform: https://zone.statcan.ca
• Attend training, workshops and watch videos
• Help shape the future of data science at StatCan
• Host the next Zone in your department

The Zone is a movement toward openness, sovereignty, and shared capability.