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.gc.ca exists for that exact purpose. It has the advantage of being bilingual ("GC" expands to both "Government of Canada" and "Gouvernement du Canada", .gov.ca
by Sanzig 3y ago
.gc.ca exists for that exact purpose. It has the advantage of being bilingual ("GC" expands to both "Government of Canada" and "Gouvernement du Canada", .gov.ca omits the "u" in the French word gouvernement).
I believe the canada.ca thing relates to the centralization of federal government IT under Shared Services Canada (SSC) in 2011. SSC is an attempt to make a "one stop shop" for government IT services, and Canada.ca is an extension of that philosophy to web presence.
As an aside, SSC is very controversial in the Canadian federal government. They have a reputation for glacially slow delivery of services and inflexibility in IT policies. The head of StatCan actually resigned in 2016 in protest as a result of problems with SSC [1]. They have gotten better since then but it's still rocky.
[1] https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/statistics-canada-interview-wayne-smith-1.3769620 https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/statistics-canada-interview...
- graypegg 3y agoI completely forgot about gc.ca. I'm surprised they haven't kept with it! Didn't know about SCC, resigning over that is a pretty strong indicator of how the internals of the federal government's IT decision makers work haha.
- wlonkly 3y agoThey have. Canada.ca is the "marketing site", basically, and all of the federal internal systems and departmental apps are in .gc.ca, usually on a cryptic subdomain which is the English and French acronyms for the department.
- graypegg 3y agoWell that's good I guess. Just saying it would be nice for the external things I'm familiar with.