A few teams have brought forward this question around which gender options should be available for users to select.
There currently is no know standard for gender options at the GOA. The following are approaches currently in use across different areas of the GOA
Approaches
Income Support and AISH
Male
Female
Gender diverse
Prefer not to say
MADI / Plan my path
Male
Female
X (Unspecified)
Indian Status Checks
M (male)
F (female)
X (another gender)
CICIO (limitations of legacy system?)
Male
Female
CPE surveys
Female
Male
Neither or other
Prefer not to disclose
IRC
Sex at birth
Male
Female
Other
Gender (note this was tested with citizens and gov workers and performed quite well)
Man
Woman
Transgender
Two-spirit
Gender diverse
Other
Prefer not to disclose
Homeless Information Management System (HIMIS)
Male
Female
Transgender
No Response
Other
Background
One of the issues we have been encountering in Housing and Homelessness are data element inconsistencies and quite often we hear we should align with the FEDS terminology. I just reviewed a SCSS Ministry doc from Nov 2021 regarding data quality issues and this is one of the many elements that was identified that needs a data governance team to "standardize reporting guidelines for this element"
Also you should be aware that there are Legacy GOA systems such as LISA that at least SCSS public applications interface with due to payments and other connections I do not fully understand. And given that these are mainframe systems from the 70's they only have Male and Female for Gender. When doing discovery for Income Support we found out that, since our application had one of these tentacle like connections to LISA, we had to ask the Gender question even though we found that Case Workers, other than out of respect for the client, did not need to know. But LISA would code any entry that was not Male or Female as Male because it only had a binary choice. Income support app offered Male , Female, Gender Neutral or Prefer not to say.
Spark450
commented
1 month ago
Background
A few teams have brought forward this question around which gender options should be available for users to select.
There currently is no know standard for gender options at the GOA. The following are approaches currently in use across different areas of the GOA
Approaches
Income Support and AISH
Male
Female
Gender diverse
Prefer not to say
MADI / Plan my path
Male
Female
X (Unspecified)
Indian Status Checks
M (male)
F (female)
X (another gender)
CICIO (limitations of legacy system?)
Male
Female
CPE surveys
Female
Male
Neither or other
Prefer not to disclose
IRC
Sex at birth
Male
Female
Other
Gender (note this was tested with citizens and gov workers and performed quite well)
Man
Woman
Transgender
Two-spirit
Gender diverse
Other
Prefer not to disclose
Homeless Information Management System (HIMIS)
Male
Female
Transgender
No Response
Other
Background
One of the issues we have been encountering in Housing and Homelessness are data element inconsistencies and quite often we hear we should align with the FEDS terminology. I just reviewed a SCSS Ministry doc from Nov 2021 regarding data quality issues and this is one of the many elements that was identified that needs a data governance team to "standardize reporting guidelines for this element"
Also you should be aware that there are Legacy GOA systems such as LISA that at least SCSS public applications interface with due to payments and other connections I do not fully understand. And given that these are mainframe systems from the 70's they only have Male and Female for Gender. When doing discovery for Income Support we found out that, since our application had one of these tentacle like connections to LISA, we had to ask the Gender question even though we found that Case Workers, other than out of respect for the client, did not need to know. But LISA would code any entry that was not Male or Female as Male because it only had a binary choice. Income support app offered Male , Female, Gender Neutral or Prefer not to say.
Other background information
Jennifer Cao
“Thanks for bringing up this question. There can also be considerations for the language we use, depending on the type of form. (eg. ‘Other’ might feel expansive when a user can select multiple checkboxes and there is an open ended/write-in option. Selecting ‘Other’ might feel different for users when the form only allows them to select one option.)Additional resources/food for thought:” https://www.gsrc.princeton.edu/creating-inclusive-forms https://www.cdnaids.ca/wp-content/uploads/Trans-Inclusion-Takes-Different-Forms.pdf