How to engage Salsa for your GovCMS project

Looking for a Drupal or GovCMS provider?

Lots of agencies are interested in using GovCMS or Drupal to leverage the many benefits of Drupal and the Australian Government Drupal distribution, GovCMS. For government agencies, this normally means writing a tender or request for quotation (see our blog on how to write a great tender) and approaching a panel, often the Department of Finance’s Drupal Services Panel.

However, if you take a look at that panel you may notice that Salsa isn’t on it, despite the fact that we won the GovCMS tender to build the next generation GovCMS for Finance (see below for why we’re not on that panel). We realise this is tricky for many agencies who’ve heard about how much we love GovCMS, not to mention our extensive experience with GovCMS, and would like us to bid on their project. There is a way!

How to engage our services

You can engage us to provide Drupal or GovCMS services by approaching us directly or procuring our services via one of the many government panels we are on.

Below are some different ways you can engage Salsa, depending on whether you’re a federal or state/territory agency.

Federal agencies

1. DTA - Digital Marketplace — This panel covers a range of digital deliverables, from user research and web development to cybersecurity. We’ve been on this panel since its inception, see Salsa Digital joins Digital Marketplace for more information. After logging into the Marketplace you can see Salsa’s DTA profile at https://marketplace.service.gov.au/supplier/75

2. Direct approach (aka Direct Source) <$80K — If you’re a non-corporate Commonwealth entity and your project is less than $80K, you can approach us directly to quote and execute your project via a limited tender. For more information, look at the Commonwealth Procurement Rules. Also note, if you’re a corporate Commonwealth entity this threshold is $400K.

3. You could procure our services via a primed engagement/collaboration with one of the existing GovCMS Panel members that are excited to work with us. Call us on 1300 727 952 to find out about our preferred Panel collaborators.

4. Direct approach (aka Direct Source) >$80K (non-corporate Commonwealth entities) or >$400K (corporate Commonwealth entities) — If you’ve gone to open tender and received unsatisfactory responses, you can procure Salsa’s services through a limited tender. Please see section 10.3 of the Commonwealth Procurement Rules for more information.

5. Australian Government, DHHS’s Creative and Digital Communication Panel — This panel covers everything from graphic design and web apps to editorial services. We’ve been on this panel for 3+ years.

State agencies

1. DTA - Digital Marketplace — This panel covers a range of digital deliverables, from user research and web development to cybersecurity. Importantly, it can be used by state/territory agencies as well as federal agencies. We’ve been on this panel since its inception, see Salsa Digital joins Digital Marketplace for more information. After logging into the Marketplace you can see Salsa’s DTA profile at https://marketplace.service.gov.au/supplier/75

2. Victorian Government eServices Register — This panel covers a range of IT services, such as software as a service (SaaS) solutions and data services. We’ve been on this panel for 3+ years.

3. NSW eTendering, ICT Services Prequalification Scheme — This panel covers a variety of IT services, including architecture and design, server management and telecommunications. We’ve been on this panel since November 2017. (Read our blog about the panel.)

4. QLD Panel — This tenders portal is set up for Queensland government agencies as a central place for tenders. Queensland agencies can access Salsa’s services through this tender process (or in other words, we can access your tender request through this portal!)

5. Direct approach (aka Direct Source) — You may also be able to approach Salsa directly to procure our services. Please see your relevant state/territory procurement rules.

6. You could procure our services via a primed engagement/collaboration with one of the existing GovCMS Panel members that are excited to work with us. Call us on 1300 727 952 to find out about our preferred Panel collaborators.

Comparing our quote

We can also make it easy for you to compare our quote with another vendor from the Drupal Services Panel. If you’ve received quotes via the Drupal Services Panel (which we encourage you to do) Salsa will respond with a panel-compliant quote (using the same pricing categories) so you can compare apples with apples.

Why Salsa for Drupal and/or GovCMS

We believe there are lots of reasons that make Salsa an attractive vendor for the delivery of Drupal/GovCMS services. Here are some of them:

• Salsa has been a pioneer/key contributor to GovCMS for the past 3-4 years

• We’ve delivered over 20 GovCMS projects

• Even before we won the recent GovCMS platform tender, we were the exclusive GovCMS training partner

• We’re the selected Drupal delivery partner for the Victorian Government’s Single Digital Presence and many other smaller projects (view our case studies for some examples)

• We’ve been working with Drupal for over six years, across different sectors

• In 2016 we were Acquia’s Partner of the Year 2016 across Asia-Pacific and Japan

• Our developers hold Acquia Drupal certifications and one of our tech leads is a Drupal Grandmaster

• We love Drupal and we’re really good at it :)

Salsa’s 20% public open government pledge

In addition, for any GovCMS project we have the pleasure of delivering, we’ll take 20% off the development cost of any new and/or enhanced features (e.g. modules or themes) we build for your agency and contribute back to the GovCMS community. In this way, both Salsa and your agency are giving back to the GovCMS community and taking part in the open government movement. Please see our blog on our open government pledge for full details.

All agencies who’ve participated in this program will be listed on our exclusive give-back register as well as being listed as one of the contributors on Drupal.org.

This is part of our commitment to the open government and open source community in Australia.

More about the Drupal Services Panel

The Drupal Services Panel is a list of suppliers offering a variety of Drupal and GovCMS services. It makes it easier for all government agencies to build, maintain and support Drupal sites with simplified contract management arrangements and access to approved vendors with Drupal and GovCMS expertise. The panel can be used by all levels of government (federal, state/territory and local) and other government bodies such as government educational institutions.

The panel makes sense. However, unfortunately we’re not on it.

Why we’re not on it

It’s a sad (and little embarrassing) story and in fear of not wanting to make excuses we don’t want to dwell on it too much.  It’s sad because we gave the submission significant love, responding to each category and crafting our services and prices for each fixed price GovCMS catalogue.  It’s embarrassing because we left it until two mins before the closing deadline (OCD got it in the way) to submit it via the portal — and of course Murphy’s law, the browser crashed.  Of course once we tried to resubmit the submission closed. :( Rules are rules, we respect the rules.

For the big GovCMS platform tender we made sure we gave ourselves at least 30 mins before the deadline — pushing past the urge to keep refining up to the last minute! :) Which is lucky, given we ended up being selected to build the next generation GovCMS. This win shows the calibre of our agency and our GovCMS expertise.