What is Single Digital Presence?

About Single Digital Presence (SDP)

Single Digital Presence (SDP) has three main products that DPC has named Bay, Tide and Ripple. These three products can be used by Victorian Government agencies as a complete package or separately.

Bay is the platform itself, it forms the infrastructure layer on which SDP has been built. Salsa and our partner amazee.io built Bay using open-source platform, Lagoon. This cloud-based solution allows Victorian Government agencies to build, test and deliver websites via the cloud. More about Bay.

Tide is the Drupal distribution that manages content. It’s a customised build of Drupal 8, purpose-built to serve Victorian Government information. It forms a central repository where all content can be managed. Importantly, Tide allows content sharing — one source of content that can then be ‘served’ to different sites. More about Tide.

Ripple is a library of components that delivers a consistent look and feel across government websites to increase usability and ensure WCAG 2.0 AA compliance. It’s built on Vue.js and Nuxt. More about Ripple.

Single Digital Presence (SDP) is:

• Fully open source

• Flexible

• Delivers on accessibility requirements

• Responsive, so websites can be viewed on desktops, tablets and smartphones

• Secure

• Supported (by DPC and Salsa)

As a fully open source platform, Victorian Government agencies will be able to leverage the frontend and CMS products once they’re available. This will make it easy for digital teams and agencies that service Victorian Government to use all or part of what they build. This will reduce costs and the time it takes to build new websites.

Under open source licenses the code for Bay, Tide and Ripple is free to use. Costs will be incurred for third-party services including hosting, implementation and support tooling.

The Single Digital Presence Project

The SDP project covered implementing a Drupal distribution to build the main site at vic.gov.au, site sections and providing/sharing content for semi-independent sites. Semi-independent sites are the other sites that have their content centrally managed. 

Digital teams and agencies can also build fully independent sites using the SDP products but not sharing content with the the main vic.gov.au site. Fully independent sites are completely separate installations of the whole distribution. Fully independent sites can use Bay, Tide and Ripple to build a site using the same headless Drupal backend for the content repository with the Vue.js frontend. Fully independent sites can also use the API to build different frontend frameworks that consume data from the content repository (Drupal backend) or can build a theme directly in Drupal if a headless solution is not desired.

Benefits to Victorian government agencies

With a ready-made platform, agencies will be able to:

• Reduce costs

• Focus resources and budgets on innovation instead of duplication

• Share and re-use features across agencies

• Access a central repository of content — write content once and re-use it

• Access an easy-to-use website solution

• Create websites in a secure environment that’s managed by DPC

Benefits for Victorian citizens

SDP will  deliver the following benefits to Victorian citizens:

• Centralised content that enables a ‘joined up’ user journey

• A consistent design and user experience across different websites

• Content that’s readily viewed on smartphones and tablets

• A citizen-centric website experience

• A generally improved online experience, including content written in plain English

How we can help Victorian government agencies

Salsa Digital provides a range of services around the Single Digital Presence, including:

• SDP assessment and readiness — We'll assess your site’s viability for SDP and recommend the best fit from the three above options. Salsa will also look at business requirements and solution direction, functional mapping and high-level project costings.

• Technical and visual design — Design, lead, coach, guide and direct visual and technical design as necessary (technical and visual requirements will depend on the option chosen).

• Build and migration — Site build and configuration to meet key functional requirements, content migration, and Drupal theming/module development  (if applicable).

• Integration — Integrate your site with open data (e.g. CKAN integration), EDM platforms (e.g. Campaign Monitor or Mailchimp), CRM systems such as Salesforce and Oracle, payment gateways (e.g. PayPal and Stripe), single sign-on systems like LDAP and Active Directory, and social platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.

• Quality assurance and testing — Site audits, user testing and performance testing.

• Application support — Ad-hoc enhancements and bug fixes, site management, release management and technical governance.

• Documentation — Functional documentation, technical documentation and user manuals.

• Agile — Option for full agile delivery led by Salsa including services such as discovery, user stories, sprint planning, code/config reviews, UAT, daily standups and overall project governance and stakeholder comms OR augmented agile delivery with Salsa providing key expert resources and/or SCRUM teams to augment client-led agile project delivery.

• Training — Drupal training courses and customised courses to meet your agency’s needs.

Read more about Single Digital Presence

SDP is a total digital solution, a digital landscape the Victorian Government can use to create a unified online presence. Below are more related Salsa publications covering everything from the value proposition to technical case studies:

• Creating a single digital presence for our citizens— an overview of the process, from tender to launch.

• SDP - delivering value— key insights into the value proposition for citizens, the Victorian Government and content authors

• Dissecting the SDP— a deep technical analysis of the three products within the SDP - Bay, Tide and Ripple

• Case study: Tide, the content distribution— Find out about Victoria’s new open source CMS

• Case study: Ripple, the presentation layer  — Find out about Victoria’s new presentation layer and Atomic LIbrary of reusable design elements

• Case study: Department of Treasury and Finance website — SDP pilot site

• Case study: Governor of Victoria website — SDP pilot site

Read Our Media Release

About Salsa Digital

Salsa is a highly specialised, enterprise-grade digital agency focused on open source for social good and innovation. We’re committed to the open government movement and to the many benefits this ethos provides including transparency, innovation, and sharing and improving problems and patterns solved by the pioneers before us.

The open source movement has played a key role in the evolution of Salsa. Over the years, as technology and practices have developed, this commitment to open source has grown to encompass a much broader base beyond open source content management systems (open CMS) — open data, open platform and open design. We contribute and deliver services in all these areas, with a strong involvement in specific open source initiatives such as Drupal, Wordpress, GovCMS, Single Digital Presence, Kubernetes/Lagoon and CKAN.

Why choose Salsa Digital?

Salsa won the SDP tender in 2017 on the strength of our response, which not only demonstrated our ability to build a distribution to meet their requirements but also showed innovative thinking around the open platform (which then became Bay).

“Salsa has been a true partner. They’ve shared the vision for open government solutions and they’ve communicated with authenticity, and frequently. They have a highly skilled workforce and also know when to bring in external consultants. They haven’t done what’s comfortable and familiar they’ve stretched their own innovation.”  Amber Benjafield, Senior Project and Engagement Manager, DPC

Get in touch today

We help government agencies around Australia deliver citizen-centric digital services. Use the form below or call us on 1300 727 952 to chat about your agency’s needs.