We delivered and led an enterprise-grade digital transformation for the College of Nurses of Ontario (CNO), replacing legacy web infrastructure with a cloud-native, WCAG 2.1 AA / AODA–compliant platform. The new site gives Marketing and IT real-time control over content, provides secure member self-service, and uses a modular CMS to accelerate campaign velocity while maintaining trust and transparency.
Founded in 1963, the College of Nurses of Ontario regulates over 190 000 nurses across the province. As Ontario’s nursing regulator, CNO sets entry requirements, enforces standards of practice, and promotes safe, ethical care—supporting public protection and professional accountability through a unique self-regulated governance model within Canada’s healthcare system.
CNO needed to model digital trust and accessibility, yet its legacy CMS created fragmented user journeys, WCAG gaps, and mounting tech-debt. Marketing couldn’t publish quickly, and IT spent cycles on maintenance instead of innovation. A future-ready platform had to balance governance & compliance with a friction-free publishing experience.
CNO sought a single source of truth that could translate complex regulatory content into plain-language, accessible experiences, deliver speed to market for policy updates and public notices, slash the cost of complexity through a streamlined tech stack and self-service publishing for Marketing, and simultaneously strengthen risk mitigation and data security for sensitive member records.
CNO aimed to set a new benchmark for digital governance in healthcare: future-proof SaaS architecture, design-system governance, and secure SSO enabling deeper member engagement. Internal teams needed to own content without IT bottlenecks, while the organisation demanded scalable infrastructure to evolve alongside shifting regulations and public expectations.
Through HOLO discovery and strategy workshops, we performed a full WCAG 2.1 AA and AODA audit with remediation, crafted a marketing-friendly information architecture and scalable design system, deployed an enterprise-grade headless CMS with governed draft-to-publish workflows, and integrated a secure member portal for authentication and licence-status lookup; all delivered via agile sprints with detailed documentation and training that now let Marketing publish three times faster while freeing IT to focus on higher-value initiatives.
