govCMS platform goes live, crowds cheer

Remember how as a child, the weeks in the run-up to Christmas had you on the edge of your seat, counting down the hours till you could rip open those presents? Well, for those of us who've been monitoring the govCMS situation, the past couple of months have been a bit like that.

And now it's really happening. govCMS, the Australian government's custom-made content management system, has finally gone live.

Me first!

The very first site to be migrated to the govCMS platform was the behemoth australia.gov.au, which sees a whopping 2 million visitors every month. Hot on its heels was finance.gov.au, also one of the highest traffic sites in the entire government network.

To date, quite a few other agencies have already made the move, including the Department of Social Services, the Department of Communications and the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority.

But that's just the tip of the iceberg.

Up, up and away

Moving forward, govCMS will be made available to government agencies as an as-a-service option, and while it will not be mandatory for them to migrate their web infrastructure to the Acquia-designed Drupal-based platform, it's likely many will jump on the bandwagon thanks to the fact that it makes content management and web hosting so much more cost-effective and fuss-free.

In fact, over the next four years, analysts predict that between 182 and 450 government websites will be migrated to govCMS.

Early birds

Quite a few federal government agencies have already adopted the govCMS platform thanks to an early adopter programme encouraging them to make the switch early.

Websites that made the switch to the cloud-hosted service under the early adopter programme include those for the Office of the Registrar of Indigenous Corporations, the Guides to Social Policy Law and the National Disability Insurance Scheme.

What's next?

Over the next couple of years, scores of government agencies are going to be making the switch to govCMS. And here at Salsa Digital, we couldn't be more excited. We've always been a strong Acquia partner and fortunate enough to have a team at the office that goes bananas over Drupal.

So we're pleased as punch to have been handpicked by the government to work with its agencies on their transition to the govCMS platform.

We've had an overwhelmingly positive experience working with government agencies in the past, so we're only too happy to work with them again.

The next four years are going to be very busy, but we're ready. Bring it on!