Evidence of meeting #6 for Government Operations and Estimates in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was post.
A video is available from Parliament.
4:40 p.m.
Acting Senior Assistant Deputy Minister, Data Centers, Shared Services Canada
I cannot really respond to this question, but I can follow up and get back to the committee.
4:40 p.m.
An hon. member
[Inaudible—Editor] what is it?
4:40 p.m.
Some hon. members
Oh, oh!
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Liberal
4:40 p.m.
Liberal
David Graham Liberal Laurentides—Labelle, QC
It's not the kind of translation they can help us with.
PGP is “Pretty Good Privacy”. It's a fairly old standard, but it allows cryptographically signed or encrypted emails. It's something that I've used in the open-source community for many years.
4:40 p.m.
Liberal
David Graham Liberal Laurentides—Labelle, QC
Yes, it's pretty good privacy, implemented to the GNU privacy guard. It's a long thing.... But it's a very reliable and very well-known system outside of government in the technology community, and I would like to see it or some kind of variant used in government. It's another level of security to have PGP signed emails with a trust ring, where I've sign your key and you've signed my key.
I'd like to at least have the government explore that, if that's possible.
4:40 p.m.
Acting Senior Assistant Deputy Minister, Data Centers, Shared Services Canada
Okay. We can explore and get back to the committee.
4:40 p.m.
Liberal
David Graham Liberal Laurentides—Labelle, QC
When the response comes back, I'll translate it back for you, Mr. Blaney.
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President, Shared Services Canada
Mr. Chair, we'll come back with an explanation of what we do in terms of secure keys and that type of service, but I'll just note that Shared Services Canada does not provide services to the House of Commons.
4:40 p.m.
Liberal
David Graham Liberal Laurentides—Labelle, QC
No, that's fair, but this is government-wide. This is a lot of email accounts, a lot of servers, and a lot of systems.
Are we moving the government over to full IPv6 support across the network?
4:40 p.m.
Acting Senior Assistant Deputy Minister, Data Centers, Shared Services Canada
IPv6? I'm the data centre ADM at—
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Liberal
David Graham Liberal Laurentides—Labelle, QC
Then we can have a nice long conversation and nobody will have a clue as to what we're talking about.
4:40 p.m.
Acting Senior Assistant Deputy Minister, Data Centers, Shared Services Canada
No, no. I'm quite familiar with IPv6.
4:40 p.m.
Some hon. members
Oh, oh!
4:40 p.m.
Acting Senior Assistant Deputy Minister, Data Centers, Shared Services Canada
We have initiatives under way, mostly with our network area or our network branch. They've been implementing and looking at implementing IPv6, but I couldn't give you all the details. I would have to go back to our network branch specialists.
4:40 p.m.
Liberal
David Graham Liberal Laurentides—Labelle, QC
What kind of hardware are we running mostly? Do you know?
4:40 p.m.
Acting Senior Assistant Deputy Minister, Data Centers, Shared Services Canada
For network?
4:40 p.m.
Acting Senior Assistant Deputy Minister, Data Centers, Shared Services Canada
On the server side, we're running all existing hardware, probably from the last 15 years, that we have in our 400 or so data centres right now, but the newer platforms are mainly blade-type servers.
4:40 p.m.
Liberal
David Graham Liberal Laurentides—Labelle, QC
Okay. That's a little bit.
Out of morbid curiosity, perhaps, can I ask how many domain names we own as a government? Do you have any idea?
4:40 p.m.
Acting Senior Assistant Deputy Minister, Data Centers, Shared Services Canada
I couldn't respond. We have one main domain, which is “.ca”.
