Data Reference Standard on Date and Time Format

1. Preamble

• 1.1 This data reference standard provides Government of Canada departments with a consistent way to present dates and times in their systems and datasets.
• 1.2 This data reference standard is based on the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 8601 Date and time: Representations for Information Interchange.
  • 1.2.1 Appendix A outlines the required format that will be updated accordingly to include additional date and time formats.
  • 1.2.2 Appendix A is copied by the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat with the permission of the Standards Council of Canada on behalf of ISO. The French translation of this standard is not official. The standard can be purchased from the national ISO member in your country or the ISO store. Copyright remains with ISO.
• 1.3 The steward of this data reference standard will review the data formats in Appendix A as required to ensure it remains current.
  • 1.3.1 Data reference standard steward: National Research Council Canada, Metrology Research Centre
  • 1.3.2 Data reference standard custodian: Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat, Office of the Chief Information Officer of Canada

2. Effective date

• 2.1 This data reference standard takes effect on September 27, 2024.

3. Requirements

• 3.1 This data reference standard provides details on the requirements set out in subsection 4.4 of the Directive on Service and Digital.
• 3.2 Service owners, data practitioners and other individuals who interact with data must:
  • 3.2.1 Use the data formats outlined in Appendix A to format date and time in datasets and systems, to the extent that they can, when storing, sharing and publishing data.

4. Application

• 4.1 This data reference standard applies to departments described in section 6 of the Directive on Service and Digital.
• 4.2 This data reference standard applies to all datasets and systems developed after the effective date of this data reference standard.

5. References

• 5.1 This data reference standard should be read in conjunction with the following:

6. Enquiries

• 6.1 For interpretation of any aspect of this data reference standard, contact ServiceDigital-ServicesNumerique@tbs-sct.gc.ca.

Appendix A: Data formats

This section is reproduced from ISO 8601-1:2019 Date and time – Representations for information interchange Part 1: Basic Rules sections 5.2.2.1, 5.2.3.1, 5.3.1.2, 5.3.4.1 and 5.3.4.2 and reorganized under Appendix A.

A.1 Date sequence

• A.1.1 An all-numeric date consists of the following data elements from left to right:
  • A.1.1.1 (Calendar) year-month-day
  • A.1.1.2 (Ordinal) year-day of year

A.2 Characters

• A.2.1 Arabic numerals from set 0, 1, 2, ... 9 are used.

A.3 Date elements

• A.3.1 A calendar date consists of three elements:
  • A.3.1.1 four digits to represent “year”
  • A.3.1.2 two digits to represent “month”
  • A.3.1.3 two digits to represent “day”
• A.3.2 An ordinal date consists of two elements:
  • A.3.2.1 four digits to represent “year”
  • A.3.2.2 three digits to represent “day of the year”

A.4 Date separators

• A.4.1 A hyphen “-” is to be used as a delimitator, when required.

A.5 Time elements

• A.5.1 An all-numeric time consists of the following time elements from left to right:
  • A.5.1.1 Two digits between 00 and 23 to represent “hour”
  • A.5.1.2 Two digits between 00 and 59 to represent “minute”
  • A.5.1.3 Two digits between 00 and 59 to represent “second”
• A.5.2 If a time zone is needed for the recording of time, the offset from the Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) standard consists of:
  • A.5.2.1 A “+” if the time zone comes before UTC
  • A.5.2.2 A “–” if the time zone is after UTC (all of Canada is after UTC)
  • A.5.2.3 Two digits to represent “hour”
  • A.5.2.4 Two digits to represent “minute”

A.6 Time separators

• A.6.1 A colon “:” is to be used as a delimitator. If it is not used, then a capital “T” shall be inserted at the beginning of the string.