The launch of GovCMS for Australian Government websites is upon us for February, 2015.
GovCMS is a Drupal based web content management system designed to apply a standard to website management and content publishing for Australian Government websites; acting as a spiritual successor for aGov developed by Canberra-based Drupal shop PreviousNext.
Drupal is the leading content management platform for Government websites, responsible for powering over 25% of federal websites in the USA. The move to Open Source technology and the popularity of Drupal in the growing government space is growing greater than ever.
Whilst GovCMS promises to deliver a centralised content management framework for Australian Public Sector websites, a call for industry comment showcased some concern.
One user questions the lack of developer pool in direct comparison to the largest CMS platform: WordPress. John Sheridan expresses his awareness of the advantages and disadvantages of a WordPress distribution and highlights the existing Government WordPress Service – GovSpace.
John went out of his way to also point out that GovCMS is a completely different focused service – and that great research with analysis went into discerning that Drupal was the best solution.
Another user outlined competitive concerns with a dramatic advantage to Drupal Development shops over existing agencies that work with governments.
The most legitimate criticism was the concept of ‘vendor locking’, – why pick “one” solution when every website has a completely different context and may require different technology stacks to solve their problems.
John concludes his comments by listing the various areas of influence behind the fruition of the GovCMS platform:
- CMS Review Report: Presented to the ‘Department of Finance and Deregulation’, John links to the CMS Review Report that concludes that Drupal was the best solution.
It will be interesting to see how adoption of GovCMS will come about during 2015. In December the GovCMS blog had a callout for Drupal Partners wanted for GovCMS posted by Gavin Tapp of Acquia. The need of Acquia Certified Drupal Developers is a big factor for GovCMS adoption as the growth of digital for government will only be as strong as industry will allow it to be.
Right now, we’re in wait and see mode.
Peter Macinkovic
Digital Strategy Consultant / apexaction.com.au
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