It was established in 2011 to combine digital services such as data storage that were previously duplicated by each agency.

SSC's mandate came into force 4 August 2011[3] as part of the passage of the Shared Services Canada Act, which established SSC as an agency responsible for consolidating information technology (IT) systems across the federal government.

[5] As part of SSC's mandate, a number of key projects were identified to consolidate and modernize the federal government's IT infrastructure: SSC is working to consolidate the email systems of its partner agencies which include over 550,000 mailboxes into a single system.

On 5 October 2017, SSC signed a $176M CAD contract with Telus to consolidate over 80,000 phone lines and expand desktop video conferencing and instant messaging.

[9] SSC has been criticized for slow service delivery and for putting the mandates of key federal agencies at risk due to poor support.