govCMS Adoption Doubles Expectations in First Year
SYDNEY – March 13, 2016 – Acquia, the digital experience company, today announced govCMS marked its first full year of operation with more than double the number of government agencies and institutions participating than initially estimated. Entering its second year, govCMS today supports 58 government sites for 28 agencies, including the Department of Human Services, Australian Taxation Office, Department of Social Services, Department of Communications, the Australian Financial Security Authority, the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority, and more.
govCMS is the cloud-based, Drupal-powered initiative offered to local, state, and national public institutions. Built on the Acquia Platform, govCMS enables the Government’s commitment to open source innovation, the use of shared, cloud-based services, and its commitment to unify and transform the digital connection between millions of Australian citizens and their government. The govCMS team has an ethos that the adoption of govCMS should reflect the quality of the service, and as a result, the service is not mandated. Those that do adopt govCMS benefit from a standardized procurement model and achieve compliance for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) and other compliance requirements.
Government agencies have launched govCMS sites on a pace of more than one per week since the Department of Finance officially launched govCMS last March, doubling estimates for first-year adoption outlined in an earlier Department of Finance commissioned study. There are 16 additional sites currently in development on the govCMS platform.
Last month, govCMS also announced a ‘Government as an API’ service with Acquia Content Hub, to help government agencies to create Content Once, and Publish Everywhere (COPE).
govCMS was made available for download as a open source Drupal distribution in July 2015, and since then has been downloaded more than 8,000 times. An active developer community is collaborating on the project on Drupal.org and at GitHub, where community discussion and input on govCMS has more than doubled in the past four months. While Acquia manages the govCMS platform and delivers application level support, the value-add activities such as design work, site-builds and migration services are wholly performed by Australian owned small businesses.
“The govCMS project is truly a global example of digital transformation and best practice on an outstanding scale. We’re proud to support the govCMS team in exceeding its goals well ahead of time. We would also like to acknowledge the hard work of our teams both locally and globally, and our partners, who have collaborated with the Australian Government to deliver this exceptional transformation project,” said Graham Sowden, General Manager, Asia Pacific & Japan, at Acquia.
About govCMS
govCMS is a whole-of-government Web Content Management System for Australian government sites available both as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS). As a full stack agile platform, govCMS reflects the Government’s commitment to open source innovation and the use of shared, cloud-based services.
govCMS helps Commonwealth state and local government agencies in Australia meet the digital government standards by using a secure, reliable, flexible open source solution. It provides a managed cloud platform for delivering websites either via a customised or templated process to help teams, some with limited resources and skills, save time and effort on development, storage, processing and hosting.
Agencies using govCMS benefit from a standardised procurement model and are provided with a standard distribution, which is compliant with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). govCMS brings together themes that are commonly used by government agencies, such as official blogs, microsites and policy consultation.
For more information visit https://www.acquia.com/govcms.
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About Acquia
Acquia is the digital experience company. The Australian Government, through the govCMS platform, Flight Centre, Foxtel, TransLink and IAG are among the more than 4,000 organisations that are transforming their digital businesses with Acquia’s open cloud platform. Global 2000 enterprises, government agencies and NGOs rely on Acquia to create new revenue streams, lower costs, and engage audiences more deeply through content, community, commerce and context.
For more information visit www.acquia.com or call +61 2 8607 8446.
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