Government of Canada Data Centres

Shared Services Canada operates data centres that host the applications and data supporting digital services for Canadians.

In these data centres, we operate and manage:

• telecommunications networks
• data processing systems
• centralized data storage
• data centre equipment, such as servers, network switches and mainframes

Types of data centres

We operate two types of data centres.

Enterprise data centres – Modern, reliable and secure facilities that serve the entire federal government. They are designed to eliminate the need for planned maintenance shutdowns, supporting the Government of Canada's work to deliver digital services for Canadians.

We have established four enterprise data centres:

• EDC Barrie
• EDC Borden
• EDC Gatineau
• EDC Montréal

Legacy data centres – Older facilities that serve individual departments or a cluster of departments. Not built for today's digital realities, these aging data centres store most of our data and applications across the country.

Data centre consolidation

We are working with other government departments to reduce the number of legacy data centres, moving their content into modern hosting solutions that meet their needs and providing a secure and reliable environment for their applications and data. Data centre consolidation is a major part of our work to modernize the Government of Canada's information technology infrastructure.

As part of this consolidation, we are:

• closing aging data centres and migrating applications and data to the Cloud or into Enterprise Data Centres
• reducing the Government of Canada's carbon footprint by reducing data centre space and establishing state-of-the-art data centres with built-in green technology and energy efficiency
• leveraging faster, better, and more secure technology to protect against physical and cyber threats