The Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat has established the Standard on Geospatial Data for the Government of Canada. The Standard on Geospatial Data supports the Policy on Information Management and the Policy on the Management of Information Technology of the Government of Canada.

 The Standard will facilitate interoperability across institutions and increase their ability to identify, understand, use, and share geospatial data. This standard also allows institutions to maximize the reuse of existing mapping and related products.

 The scope of the standard currently comprises two ISO standards: ISO 19115 Geographic information - metadata and ISO 19128 Geographic information - Web map server interface. Both standards have been previously endorsed by the national GeoConnections program for use in the Canadian Geospatial Data Infrastructure (CGDI).

 The standard came into effect June 1, 2009. Departments will have until May 31, 2014 to fully implement the standard. Further information on the standard is available from the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat (The Federal government departments can access additional implementation guidance on the standard.

 More information and resources supporting the Government of Canada Standard on Geospatial Data is available at: http://www.geoconnections.org/en/communities/developers/standards/gc.