Australian Government Department of Finance CIO and CISO, John Sheridan
Acquia, Catalyst IT Australia and Bliss Media are among the first suppliers to be named on the Federal Government’s newly established whole-of-government govCMS Drupal Services Panel.
The Government put the call out to the local industry in December last year in its bid to populate the proposed new whole-of-government Drupal services procurement panel for its GovCMS platform, issuing a request for tender.
According to a statement by the Australian Government Department of Finance CIO and CISO, John Sheridan, the panel was established so all government agencies can buy the Drupal services they need from a range of service providers, including small and medium enterprises.
The procurement arrangement can also be used by agencies to help them build, maintain and support other Drupal websites that are not hosted by govCMS.
Launched in 2015, the govCMS platform is a Drupal-based open source web content management system hosted on the public cloud and managed by the Department of Finance. It is maintained by Acquia, which operates the platform under contract with the Department.
There are two offerings available to agencies within govCMS, a fully managed software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering, and a self-managed platform-as-a-service (PaaS) offering that provides web hosting.
Unsurprisingly, Acquia is one of the 10 initial suppliers on the new procurement panel arrangement.
Below is the full list of the initial panelists:
- Bliss Media
- Catalyst IT Australia
- PreviousNext
- Adelphi Digital Consulting Group
- Cogent Business Solutions
- Digital Gardens
- Loud & Clear Creative
- Ice Media
- OPC IT
- Acquia
Two categories of services can be procured from the new panel. The first category is for services based on specific skill sets, available at hourly and daily maximum rates.
These services include solution design and technical architecture advisory services and Drupal application programming services
They also include build and migration services, quality assurance services, integration services, application support services, documentation services and agile services
The second category is for services based on fixed-price packages. The services available in this category include website assessments and advisory services, website re-hosting and installation, Drupal theme development and enhancement and content migration and consolidation, among others.
The new panel will be in operation until 30 June 2019, and has two optional 12 month extensions. More suppliers will be announced as contracts are finalised.
