The primary goal of this project is to create a simple, user-friendly map that displays the locations of all Government of Canada (GoC) offices, based on the Directory of Federal Real Property (DFRP), and also including GCcoworking spaces.
Additionally, with the announcement of the common hybrid work model for the Federal Public Service, some public servants may be interested in examining the possibility of working from alternative workplaces within 125 km of their location, whether it be other GoC offices and/or GCcoworking locations. More information about GCcoworking is available on their GCpedia page (only accessible from the GoC network).
There are two maps available, depending on your use case.
Opening the map will display all GoC offices as small blue circles. Hovering over any of the offices will make a box appear with the name of the building, its location, and its tenant organization(s).
Similarly to Google Maps, you can use the scroll wheel on your mouse to zoom in and out on the map. You can hold down the left mouse button to drag the map. In the top-right corner, you can choose between displaying all GoC offices, displaying only GCcoworking locations, or displaying the GoC offices occupied by a given organization.
Another version of the map is the same as above, with one added feature. You can select your location on the map with a left mouse click, and a circle of radius 125 km will be drawn around that marker. Any small blue circles within the larger circle are within 125 km of the selected location. Another left mouse click will update your selected location marker and the surrounding circle.
The maps only include buildings that are located in Canada, and that have latitude/longitude coordinates in the DFRP.
The 125 km is a distance “as the crow flies”; it’s not based on a road network distance. So depending on the road density in your area, this may only serve as a rough approximation.
While the circle of radius 125 km will encapsulate all GoC offices within it, that does not mean that all (or any) of those offices are necessarily available as a work location for any given public servant.
If you want to run this code yourself, you can download the repository, as well as installing R and RStudio.
The data subfolder contains the DFRP data for GoC offices as of 2023-01-06. The R code file explains the steps needed to update the data.
If you want to provide feedback, you can e-mail me at (my GitHub username)(at)gmail(dot)com.
While I am working as a public servant as of the time of this writing, this project was developed and released solely in my capacity as a private individual. It has no affiliation with the Government of Canada.
This project was built using R and Leaflet. The R code file includes commented links to online resources (mainly Stack Overflow) where I was able to resolve analogous issues I encountered during development. Thanks to all of those awesome people.
Thank you to Reddit user graciejack who described the appropriate search criteria for the DFRP.
Special thanks to Darcy Reynard for his thoughtful and valuable feedback during the development process.