Credit: ID 55578362 © Victor Diola Jr | Dreamstime
The federal government’s Department of Finance is on the hunt for suppliers to populate its planned new whole-of-government GovCMS Drupal services panel.
The proposed panel is set to replace the current whole-of-government Drupal services procurement panel for its GovCMS platform, which will expire on 30 June this year.
The government first put the call out for local suppliers to join its expiring Drupal panel in late 2016 in preparation for an April 2017 launch of the procurement arrangement. By September 2017, Acquia, Catalyst IT Australia and Bliss Media had been named among the first suppliers to be included on the current panel.
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. To date, GovCMS hosts more than 300 websites for almost 100 different government entities.
The platform provides services to Commonwealth, state and local government organisations.
Now, the Department of Finance has issued a request for tender (RFT) to establish the new whole-of-government panel. As such, any supplier on the current panel is required to submit a new tender in response to this RFT in order to be considered for the new Panel.
According to tender documents, the new panel will be established for an initial three-year period to 30 June 2024, plus an optional one-year term extension. However, the Department of Finance reserves the right to refresh the panel annually to enable new suppliers to apply.
All potential suppliers are required to tender for the provision of the panel’s General Drupal Services category. This includes:
Solution Design and Technical Architecture Advisory Services
Provisioning of Drupal Application Programming Services
Build and Migration Services
Content Design, Editing and Publishing Services
User Research and Customer Experience Analysis Services
Quality Assurance Services
Integration Services
Application Support Services
Documentation Services
Agile Services
Suppliers can also choose to tender for the provision of some, or all of the packages in the panel’s second category, Fixed Price Drupal Services, but aren’t required to do so.
Providers have until 15 March to get their tenders in.
