Building on the Government of Canada’s (GC) digital achievements outlined by Minister Brison November 7, and in support of our commitments under the 4th Plan on Open Government, we are chalking up additional milestones across government in pursuit of providing better digital services. Critical to this effort is strengthening the foundation upon which these services stand, by modernizing our policies and directives to be digital-ready.

Updating policies and directives may seem like news only a policy wonk would love, but it’s much more than that. Modernizing our policies is a critical step in meeting the public’s expectations for digital government by ensuring we provide reliable, accessible, and seamless services using the right technologies in the right way. By modernizing requirements and strengthening guidance for departments we can embrace new methods and tools to improve how government builds and delivers its services.

We’ve done this by updating the Directive on Management of Information Technology (Directive on IT), which is a part of the GC Policy on the Management of Information Technology. The current updates support a coordinated and consistent approach when applying IT solutions, through two primary vehicles: Enterprise Architecture and Application Programming Interfaces (APIs).

Enterprise Architecture Enterprise Architecture is the coordination of information, applications, technologies, security and privacy for IT projects across the government. It’s an essential mechanism to guide departments and agencies through the steps necessary to execute their strategies. Our changes better merge technology and policy by fostering conversations earlier in the procurement process.