Salsa Digital’s GovCMS community give-back pledge

Our commitment to open government

We’re committed to open government.

We’re committed to open source.

We’re committed to GovCMS.

Not just because we’re the Department of Finance’s service delivery partner for the next generation of GovCMS.

Not just because we were selected as the implementation partner for the Victorian Government’s statewide initiative, Single Digital Presence.

And not just because we’re committed to delivering best-in-class government websites covering GovCMS projects (such as the Victorian Budget website and Stay Smart Online) and open data initiatives (such as Victoria’s Open Data Portal and CKAN migration).

But because we believe in what it represents, which is much more than just great technology, much more than great architecture.

It represents open source.

It represents community.

It represents freedom.

It represents innovation.

Ultimately however, it represents a platform that enables our government to connect to our people, to deliver great digital services and great digital content.

Selfishly, it also represents something special, something personal — an opportunity to leave a legacy, to be a role model for my sons (read my blog Once I was 7 years old… for more on my personal beliefs and aspirations).

Our pledge

For any GovCMS project we have the privilege of delivering, we’ll take 20% off any new and/or enhanced features (e.g. modules or themes) we build for your agency and contribute back to the GovCMS community.

Below are the basic guidelines around Salsa’s 20% give-back pledge:

1. Time tracked against an individual story (development, testing and remediation)

2. Upon acceptance by the community, 20% of total time will be credited to the agency

3. The agency can choose to use the time within the project or outside the project (within 12 months)

4. The agency decides which contributions are made

In this way, both Salsa and your agency are giving back to the GovCMS community and taking part in the open government movement.

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.

Why Salsa?

Salsa Digital’s 15-year legacy in open source has evolved to a more recent focus in becoming a strong contributor to open source for open government.

Our focus spreads across four key pillars:

1. Open content management systems (open CMSs): Enabling government to deliver great digital content and great digital services in a way that’s easy and intuitive to access and digest.

2. Open data: Enabling government to easily open, manage and maintain their datasets to promote greater transparency and encourage co-production with citizens to interpret data and build solutions in innovative and visual ways. To make complex and difficult datasets easy to digest, quickly.

3. Open design: Enabling government to share and access open design patterns and artefacts, improve upon them, and then contribute them back to ultimately ensure better citizen user experiences.

4. Open platform: A new paradigm shift for government and industry. Salsa Digital and Amazee.io together with the Victorian Government brought the very first fully open source hosting platform to Australia. The second-generation GovCMS open platform was also just launched. For the first time this makes the entire technology stack open source. So what? Open platform offers all the same benefits we know, understand and appreciate of open source for CMS — non-proprietary, no vendor lock-in, technology promoting global collaboration and innovation at lower costs. The benefits speak for themselves.