Australian Government Migrates Its First Site to govCMS Digital Government Platform

SYDNEY – November 11, 2014 – Acquia, the digital experience company, today announced that Australia.gov.au, the “home page” for the Australian Government and a central destination for digital government services used by  more than 2 million visitors every month, is the first site to move to Australia’s new govCMS platform.

An officially sanctioned distribution built on Drupal, govCMS will help government agencies across Australia decrease costs and increase their agility and ability to  better engage citizens with government services. At a press briefing today in Sydney, the Australian Government’s Chief Technology Officer, John Sheridan, announced that the first site to use the innovative govCMS platform has gone live on the Acquia Cloud, the cloud-based platform innovated by Acquia to support some of the world’s most sophisticated  and ruggedly resilient digital experiences.

The Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority will be among the first external agencies to adopt govCMS; the full migration of the authority’s site to govCMS is planned for early 2015.

The Department of Finance is working with Acquia to provide govCMS, an open cloud platform for the development and continuous delivery of its Drupal-based govCMS service. Currently Acquia is working with the govCMS team to create common themes and templates that may be used by a variety of government Departments, Agencies, official blogs, and policy microsites. Together they’re also developing a range of procurement options and pricing plans to provide greater value and flexibility to agencies that adopt govCMS.

The Government will offer free Get Ready for govCMS training courses on Friday 14 November in Canberra, Sydney, and Melbourne. The courses are part of Drupal Global Training Days, an initiative of the Drupal Association to introduce new and beginning users to Drupal.

govCMS is an important service offering for Australian Government entities. It reflects the Government’s commitments regarding the use of shared, cloud-based services. Agencies using govCMS will benefit from a standardised procurement model and achieve compliance for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). govCMS incorporates and extends the aGov Drupal distribution, which was developed specifically for Australian government organisations.
 
Acquia helps the Australian Government meet these requirements through its Acquia Platform, which brings together key capabilities for engagement and digital experience management. The platform features Acquia’s Digital Experience Cloud, which supports DevOps best practices by helping engineers create and manage high-quality applications faster. The Digital Experience Cloud simplifies the management of a complex portfolio of sites for engineers and architects, helping them build, govern, and scale the continuous delivery of many experiences across an organisation while administering them from a single administrative dashboard. The Acquia Platform also empowers government agencies to tap into the innovation of the global Drupal community, connecting new applications, modules and technologies to their sites as they emerge.
 
“Acquia’s Digital Experience Cloud and world-class professional support is enabling the Australian government to go to market faster with a solution that delivers on the promise of eGovernment to agencies all across the Commonwealth,” said Chris Harrop, director for Asia Pacific and Japan, Acquia.
 
About Acquia
Acquia is the digital experience company. Pinterest, Mercedes Benz, Warner Music Group, and Stanford University are among the more than 4,000 organizations that are transforming their digital businesses with Acquia. 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 +61.2.8607.8446.
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Media Contacts:       
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Progressiva
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