Digital Strategy For E Governance Using GovCMS
The GovCMS initiative of the Australian Government is to promote a culture of digital service to the Australian citizens making it easy for people to interact with and get information from the government. It helps the government transform its services to be citizen-friendly, transparent and fast.
Benefits of GovCMS Platform
At present, there are already over 70 agencies and departments using over 190 websites in the GovCMS platform1. While the Australian government has not mandated the use of GovCMS for Government Agencies and Departments, GovCMS gives you the freedom to independently customise whilst still retaining core benefits that include:
Security
GovCMS being a distribution of Drupal is by nature secure. Due to the strong backing of the community, regular security updates are provided with the necessary level of urgency and there is 24x7 monitoring against security threats and vulnerabilities.
Responsiveness
Websites developed on GovCMS will work well across any device (screen will resize depending on the device on which it is viewed whether mobile, tablet) increasing the audience that can be reached through the website.
Compliance with Australian Government Web Guide Requirements
GovCMS core functions and features are WCAG AA compliant and follow industry standard best practices including that of Digital Transformation Agency’s Digital Service Standards.
Preferred Platform for Government Agencies
Due to the fact that Drupal is the preferred content management system for 150+ governments worldwide.
Reduced Total Cost of Ownership
GovCMS allows agencies to start simple and scale up. Given that organizations are often challenged financially it makes sense to explore the possibility of feature additions as and when needed bringing down the total cost of ownership and being cost effective in the long run.
Vendor Independence
Due to the free and open source nature of Drupal, there is no vendor lock-in. Site development and feature enhancement can be continued by other agencies resulting in site longevity.
Unique Look n Feel
Even while sharing functionalities and modules each website can still be made to look unique and feel different through Drupal themes.
Easy to Interact Forms
Forms such as ‘Contact Us’ and feedback forms allow site visitors to interact with the agency or department for any specific defined requirement.
Australian Government Locator Service(AGLS) Metadata Standard
AGLS Metadata Standard is a set of guidelines to improve the site’s visibility and interoperability online, taking into account technical changes to support linked data and Semantic Web projects.
Open Source
GovCMS being a distribution of Drupal is an open source software. With a distribution like this, GovCMS reduces the overall work of the different departments and agencies through shared functionality( modules)and consequently minimising the time to market, cost, and longevity. Benefits of Open source include flexibility, agility, speed, cost-effectiveness, ability to start small and scale up. GovCMS fundamentally provides agility and flexibility to Australian government departments and agencies in their online/ digital initiatives. If you have the need for a particular feature on your site, the GovCMS community is a great forum to discuss various solutions for that particular need.
Powerful Content Management System
Drupal’s powerful content management capabilities include content modeling, content editing with clear publishing workflow definitions. Content authors and approvers for GovCMS websites can preview the content on the website prior to publishing on the live site. Custom workflows with access rights are possible through GovCMS. Content from all previous versions of each page is retained and can be retrieved, published or automatically set to be unpublished on specific dates.
News Publication, Event and Media Release Management
GovCMS provides publications, media and event management functionalities that can be utilized to deliver announcements and information through the website.
Search Friendly
GovCMS is flexible to the use of different search engines like Google, Funnelback, Apache Solr or Drupal CMS search through their respective interfaces.
Rich Content Editor
WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor greatly enriches content authors to develop and edit content that includes text and graphics.
Search Engine Optimised(SEO)
Websites built with Drupal (read GovCMS here- since GovCMS is a distribution of Drupal) are a great option for digital marketing as Drupal websites are optimised for search engines by their built-in ability to create SEO-friendly URLs, page titles, segmentation using highly effective taxonomy, easy revision options, and updating sitemap.xml.
These multifold benefits of GovCMS give us a glimpse of the immense possibilities for any agency or department to build and implement an immersive digital strategy. Zyxware, an empanelled GovCMS Drupal service supplier can help you with all your migration and development needs.
References:
1. https://www.govcms.gov.au/dashboard
2. https://www.drupal.org/project/govcms
3. https://www.govcms.gov.au/features/product-features
