Ottawa’s March 2026 commitment of up to $40 million for the Canadian Digital Core Library is framed as strategic infrastructure, treating archived drill core and geoscience data as a foundation for critical mineral sovereignty across cobalt, copper, lithium, nickel and rare earths. Masoud Aali, founder and CEO of Scient Analytics, argues that simply scanning core is inadequate if preprocessing, interpretation, hosting and workflow integration are outsourced to foreign platforms, which “digitise the rock and export the advantage”. He points to Australia’s two‑decade National Virtual Core Library as a model for a large, open, continuous system that embeds domestic analytical capability.

NOCN Group has launched a digital skills passport linked to its skills hub, giving CPCS and other card holders a secure, real‑time record of certifications, CPD, compliance and skills that employers can verify and share digitally. The integrated platform architecture is designed to sit alongside existing contractor and training systems, providing digital logbooks and API connectivity first tested in the 2021 DigiKey pilot linking skills passports to machine controls on HS2. The passport was trialled in India with Nettur Technical Training Foundation and TCS iON, signalling potential for large‑scale, cross‑project workforce competence tracking.

Seequent, the Bentley Subsurface company, is expanding its subsurface modelling and data management tools to help miners better locate, characterise and extract orebodies, building on findings from its 7th Geoprofessionals Data Management Report. The report points to persistent issues with fragmented geoscience datasets, manual workflows and poor interoperability between drilling, geological modelling and mine planning systems. Seequent is responding by tightening integration across its portfolio (including Leapfrog, Central and GeoStudio) so multi-disciplinary teams can work from a single, continuously updated subsurface model.