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“The Managed Web Services is used solely to deliver non-sensitive information and services to visitors. Secure systems such as ‘My CRA’ Account will continue to be hosted on separate platforms and servers within the current GC network,” she said.

The move to Canada.ca, spearheaded by the Conservatives in 2013, was touted as a key part of the federal government’s technological transformation which was supposed to help the government save money and become more efficient by better streamlining the technological needs of the 90 departments and agencies that will soon be calling Canada.ca home. Previously, each of the entities had their own website with a difficult to remember URL.

In March 2015 the government awarded a contract to Adobe Corp. for “a fully hosted service that includes a content delivery network, analytics, and hosting environments.” The initial value of the contract was $1.54 million. The deal has seen Adobe contract Amazon Web Services in the U.S. to handle all of the government’s website data.

That contract has been extended by one year and the value has already ballooned to $9.2 million.

All departments have until December 2017 to switch over to the new Canada.ca website.

The initiative is happening without the involvement of Shared Services Canada, a federal agency reporting to Public Works and Government Services Canada.

Shared Services Canada has been tasked with overseeing all of the government’s technology renewal and has an annual budget in excess of $1.4 billion and more than 5,500 employees. The government is in the process of reducing the number of federal data centres from 300 to fewer than 20, combining more than 100 email systems into one, and reducing the 3,000 overlapping computer networks that now exist to serve the 377,000 federal government employees working in more than 3,500 buildings across the country.