Australian Government Plans To Save With Open Source Drupal

The Australian government is looking to build a unified content management system (CMS) based on the open source Drupal software to power the 1,200 websites used across the government, according to the Australian Department of Finance.

The platform, provisionally called GovCMS, would be a major win for Drupal, which already has a strong presence in government, along with education. Whitehouse.gov is among the high-profile government sites to use the system, while more than 100 federal, state and territory government sites in Australia run on Drupal.

Cloud service

“The Government Content Management System (GovCMS) is envisaged as an important service offering for Australian Commonwealth Government agencies,” said the Australian government’s CTO, John Sheridan, in a statement. “Our preference is for Software-as-a-Service on public cloud, using open source Drupal software.”

The Australian Department of Finance has published a draft version of the Statement of Requirements for GovCMS and is soliciting feedback on it until 21 May.

Large-scale switchover

The Australian government is looking to switch the first websites over to GovCMS in September, beginning with Australia.gov.au and Finance.gov.au, and projects that 182 to 437 sites can be switched over the next four years.

Drupal would allow lower costs, facilitate security and accessibility compliance, improve mobile websites and allow for sharing of code between government bodies and the wider community, according to the Australian government.

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