Drupal has been the choice of the world’s multiple large and top-notch organisations, across various fields. The royal family of the UK, the Greenpeace Greenwire, Oxford University, Warner Music Group, Tesla, Red Cross, and now the Australian Government - everyone is using Drupal. Security and the scope of customisation are two of the major reasons behind the selection of Drupal over other CMS platforms. In fact, the govCMS was also formed using Drupal to resolve the multiple issues faced by Government agencies viz. Security, cost, extraordinaire functionalities, flexibility, smooth process of procurement, et al.
As a dedicated Drupal-er for more than 6 years, AddWeb has worked on multiple enterprises and large-sized Drupal projects. And hence, we are cognizant of all the strengths that Drupal contains. This is exactly why we confirm with the Australian Government’s decision of choosing Drupal for creating govCMS.
There are multiple reasons that make govCMS an apt choice for Government organisations. govCMS is well-equipped to meet all the requirements of the Government organisation, along with following their guidelines of the web world.
Advantages of govCMS:
The Australian Government created the govCMS distribution by combining Drupal Core and a specific set of Drupal modules. So that uniformity is maintained across all the Australian Government’s websites and it the creation of the same also becomes easy. Let us how else does this, govCMS distribution proves to be advantageous:
Cost-Effective
Individual web hosting and creation of the sites demand time and money. The higher the security and quality of these sites, the higher the costing. govCMS saves on both of these factors and simplifies the entire process by choosing a single provider and hosting platform on Acquia Cloud Site Factory PaaS Service. In fact, whenever there’s an increase in resource usage, one can always upgrade the platform, which is eventually beneficial to all the other govCMS sites also.
Government Standards Compliance
The entire govCMS is created in a way that it perfectly complies with the standards of the Federal Government. Hence, this makes the further process quite smooth and sorted. Security being one of the major concerns while creating a website for such Government organisations. And hence, govCMS has complied with their guideline by completing the program process of Information Security Registered Accessors. Plus, every issue that is found and rectified in govCMS will also automatically be implemented to other govCMS sites too.
Software Maintenance
Drupal is one of the largest open-source platform available today and hence it has a large team of 600 expert community members, who work on making govCMS a consistently growing and highly efficient product. This is taken care by Acquia, which also provides 24x7 assistance for govCMS at application and hardware level.
Security Compliance
One constantly needs to confirm that there are no issues with the govCMS sites, for which a continuous process of testing, bug-fixing and other such process is required to be followed. This is very well taken care of, when it comes to govCMS and hence the security of this platform is kept intact. In fact, an automated testing process has also been set across the entire network by using Behat.
Responsive
In today’s day and age, a website that is not responsive is outdated. Fortunately, govCMS has been created with a base-theme that is responsive by default. This provides the developers in quick-creation of custom themes. This also helps in the creation of a standard look and feel of the Australian Government’s website, which converts into a user-friendly experience.
Accessibility Compliance
Every single Government website needs to be in compliance with the Web Content Accessibility Guideline (WCAG) AA 2.0. And hence, WCAG AA 2.0 has been at the base of creating the base-theme and hence it’s in complete compliance with the Government standards. This also helps in elevating the user-friendliness of the website. govCMS also provides a list of the accessible elements either via the content pages or the WYSIWYG editor.
Data Retention
Backups are a very critical and significant part of any website. So when it is a Government website, the stakes are even higher. The creation of govCMS is done in complete compliance with the National Archives of Australia Standards. This includes about 7 years of data retention on backups, which is a highly beneficial factor that works in the favour of these govCMS-based Australian Government’s websites.
govCMS is a pool of perfection when it comes to a platform meant for Government - highly secure, affordable and effective! AddWeb is glad to have worked on the creation of the govCMS website with all our expertise and experience over Drupal. We’ll be delighted to share more about it in our future blogs. If there’s anything specific in your mind that you wish to learn about govCMS then feel free to write to us in here. Also, we’re looking forward to creating and contributing more towards govCMS projects.