Shared Services Canada (SSC; french: Services partagés Canada (SPC)) is an agency of the

Government of Canada The government of Canada (french: gouvernement du Canada) is the body responsible for the federal administration of Canada. A constitutional monarchy, the Crown is the corporation sole, assuming distinct roles: the executive, as the ''Crown-i ...

responsible for advancing, consolidating and providing

information technology Information technology (IT) is the use of computers to create, process, store, retrieve, and exchange all kinds of data . and information. IT forms part of information and communications technology (ICT). An information technology system ...

services across federal government departments. It was established in 2011 to combine digital services such as data storage that were at the time duplicated by each agency.

Mandate

The SSC mandate came into force 4 August 2011 as part of the passage of the ''Shared Services Canada Act'', which established SSC as an agency responsible for consolidating IT Systems across the federal government. The Act provides for a minister to oversee the agency and report to

Parliament In modern politics, and history, a parliament is a legislative body of government. Generally, a modern parliament has three functions: representing the electorate, making laws, and overseeing the government via hearings and inquiries. ...

, currently

Filomena Tassi Filomena Tassi is a Canadian politician who has served as the Minister responsible for the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario since August 31, 2022. A member of the Liberal Party, Tassi represents the riding of Hamilto ...

, the

Minister of Public Services and Procurement The minister of public services and procurement (french: ministre des services publics et de l’approvisionnement) is the minister of the Crown in the Canadian Cabinet who is responsible for overseeing the Government of Canada's "common service ...

. SSC provides support for 44 separate Departments and Agencies across the Government of Canada.

Key initiatives

As part of SSC's mandate, a number of key projects were identified in order to consolidate and modernize the Canadian Government's IT infrastructure:

Email Consolidation Initiative

SSC is working to consolidate the email systems of its partner agencies which include over 550,000 mailboxes into a single system. The project has been met with multiple delays due to its large scope and complexity.

Data Centre Consolidation

SSC began the process of consolidating the Canadian Federal Government's approximately 800 Data Centres down to 7 newly designed Enterprise Data Centres (EDC). As of April 1, 2017, SSC has closed 92 data centers across the country and had begun to migrate applications to new EDCs located in: * Borden, ON * Barrie, ON * Gatineau, QC * Montreal, QC SSC estimates that current legacy systems comprise over 56,000 m² of Data Centre space, over 70 PB of computer data storage and over 14,000 applications.

Telecommunications Transformation Program

SSC is working to consolidate Canadian Federal Government Networks down from 50 separate Wide Area (WAN) Networks down to a single network for all departments. Another initiative is to consolidate Centrex phone lines through the use of VoIP and Mobile Phones. On 5 October 2017, SSC signed a $176M CAD contract with

Telus Telus Communications Inc. (TCI) is the wholly owned principal subsidiary of Telus Corporation, a Canadian national telecommunications company that provides a wide range of telecommunications products and services including internet access, voi ...

to consolidate over 80,000 phone lines and expand desktop video conferencing and instant messaging.

Criticism

SSC has been criticized for slow service delivery and for putting the mandates of key federal agencies at risk due to poor support. Former

RCMP The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP; french: Gendarmerie royale du Canada; french: GRC, label=none), commonly known in English as the Mounties (and colloquially in French as ) is the federal and national police service of Canada. As poli ...

Commissioner

Bob Paulson Robert Wilfred Paulson, (born 1958) is a former Commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. He retired from the RCMP at the end of June 2017. Life and career Paulson was born in Lachute, Quebec in 1958. His father was an Icelandic C ...

criticized SSC for outages including access to key databases such as CPIC and for outages of the Agency's

BlackBerry The blackberry is an edible fruit produced by many species in the genus ''Rubus'' in the family Rosaceae, hybrids among these species within the subgenus ''Rubus'', and hybrids between the subgenera ''Rubus'' and ''Idaeobatus''. The taxonomy of ...

service. In August 2016,

Chief Statistician of Canada The chief statistician of Canada (french: statisticien en chef du Canada) is the senior public servant responsible for Statistics Canada (StatCan), an agency of the Government of Canada. The office is equivalent to that of a deputy minister and as ...

Wayne Smith resigned to protest the effects of Shared Services Canada on Statistics Canada.

References

External links

Shared Services Canada official website
Federal departments and agencies of Canada Government of Canada {{canada-gov-stub