Where are we now?

The Government of Canada (GC) is a large, complex institution that provides services to millions of Canadians every single day. Whether renewing a passport, filing taxes, or accessing benefits, people expect government services and transactions to be as easy as streaming a movie or shopping online.

While work is underway to review and improve service standards for government services, we are still in a place where not all services are easy to access and use. Some still involve paper-based processes or the lack of clear online information resulting in clients moving to the phone or in-person service channels.  Others are using complex PDF forms for simple procedures, such as informing the government of a change of address or marital status.

These things shouldn’t be difficult.

At its core, digital government is about modernizing and adapting the way we work to make the Government of Canada more responsive, more resilient, and most important, better at serving people.

Our strategy is ambitious, but we have some foundational policy pieces already in place to support this work. For example,  Digital Standards were introduced to provide guidance for public servants to develop open, agile and user-focused digital services, and the renewed Digital Operations Strategic Plan elaborates on how the Digital Government Strategy will be put into action, with government-wide priorities and key activities in a 3-year timeframe. Similarly, the Policy on Service and Digital establishes conditions for better integration of service delivery, information management, technology and cybersecurity, and  Shared Service Canada has developed a  cross‑government approach to IT planning and delivery and cloud‑first strategy.

Like everything digital, this work will be an ongoing effort.  

Canada’s commitment to digital leadership will help us adapt and remain competitive in the economy of the future.