GCdocs

GCdocs is the Government of Canada's enterprise information-management platform and its official enterprise electronic document and records management solution. Federal departments use it to create, save, organize, share, search, protect and retain government information throughout its lifecycle.

The platform lets departments manage information securely up to Protected B, and Secret information is handled in a dedicated Secret environment, according to Shared Services Canada. GCdocs is an internal government system. It is not a bidding portal, and suppliers do not register for it.

What GCdocs does inside a federal department

GCdocs is a repository for what departments call information of business value. Employees save documents, emails and other records into a structured folder environment so that the records can be found, shared with the right colleagues, protected and retained under records rules. Shared Services Canada lists managing, organizing and protecting information as the core purposes of the platform, and reports that more than 70 federal organizations use it.

Departments set GCdocs as the home for their records. Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada identifies GCdocs as its official corporate repository for information of business value up to Protected B, and relevant records, including emails, are to be saved in the appropriate GCdocs folder structure. The Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat names GCDOCS as its official corporate repository for unstructured electronic information.

Who runs GCdocs and how it reached departments

Public Services and Procurement Canada (PSPC) operates the GCdocs Enterprise Program Management Office. According to a PSPC program description, the office was created in 2012. It provides enterprise-wide GCdocs tools, templates and best practices, along with services and licences to federal departments and agencies.

The same description records that GCdocs replaced the earlier EDRM tool at PSPC. Other departments have followed their own deployment paths, but the pattern is consistent: one shared enterprise platform, with a central office supporting departmental rollouts.

GCdocs and procurement files

GCdocs appears in the procurement process as the place where buyers keep their records. The CanadaBuys glossary explains that, within the Automated Buyer Environment, working copies, files and solicitation documents are used to issue and retain solicitation records, while GCdocs is used to retain the documents associated with a procurement file.

An audit by the Office of the Chief Electoral Officer points the same way. It states that official contract versions should remain with the procurement function and be saved in GCdocs, consistent with requirements for accurate and comprehensive procurement records (audit report). In practice, the contracting authority's evaluation records, contract documents and related correspondence are filed in the department's GCdocs environment, which is how the government keeps a complete record of a procurement.

What GCdocs means for a supplier bidding on Canadian public contracts

• It is not a supplier system. GCdocs is an internal Government of Canada records repository. There is no supplier registration for it, and it is not a certification you obtain.
• Your submission may end up there. Bids, contract documents and correspondence you send to a contracting authority can be retained in the buyer's GCdocs procurement file. Keep your own records of what you submitted and when.
• Follow the solicitation. If a solicitation or contract mentions GCdocs, follow its specific instructions for submitting, accessing or preserving documents. Submit through the channel the tender notice names, and confirm any contract version with the contracting authority.
• Mark sensitive content. Because GCdocs holds information up to Protected B, with Secret information in a separate environment, label sensitive material in your bid as the solicitation directs.