The GovCMS initiative of the Australian Government is to promote a culture of digital service to the Australian citizens making it easy for people to interact with and get information from the government. It helps the government transform its services to be citizen-friendly, transparent and fast. Benefits of GovCMS Platform At present, there are already over 70 agencies and departments using over 190 websites in the GovCMS platform1. While the Australian government has not mandated the use of GovCMS for Government Agencies and Departments, GovCMS gives you the freedom to independently customise whilst still retaining core benefits that include: Security GovCMS being a distribution of Drupal is by nature secure. Due to the strong backing of the community, regular security updates are provided with the necessary level of urgency and there is 24x7 monitoring against security threats and vulnerabilities. Responsiveness Websites developed on GovCMS will work well across any device (screen will resize depending on the device on which it is viewed whether mobile, tablet) increasing the audience that can be reached through the website. Compliance with Australian Government Web Guide Requirements GovCMS core functions and features are WCAG AA compliant and follow industry standard best practices including that of Digital Transformation Agency’s Digital Service Standards. Preferred Platform for Government Agencies Due to the fact that Drupal is the preferred content management system for 150+ governments worldwide. Reduced Total Cost of Ownership GovCMS allows agencies to start simple and scale up. Given that organizations are often challenged financially it makes sense to explore the possibility of feature additions as and when needed bringing down the total cost of ownership and being cost effective in the long run. Vendor Independence Due to the free and open source nature of Drupal, there is no vendor lock-in. Site development and feature enhancement can be continued by other agencies resulting in site longevity. Unique Look n Feel Even while sharing functionalities and modules each website can still be made to look unique and feel different through Drupal themes. Easy to Interact Forms Forms such as ‘Contact Us’ and feedback forms allow site visitors to interact with the agency or department for any specific defined requirement. Australian Government Locator Service(AGLS) Metadata Standard AGLS Metadata Standard is a set of guidelines to improve the site’s visibility and interoperability online, taking into account technical changes to support linked data and Semantic Web projects. Open Source GovCMS being a distribution of Drupal is an open source software. With a distribution like this, GovCMS reduces the overall work of the different departments and agencies through shared functionality( modules)and consequently minimising the time to market, cost, and longevity. Benefits of Open source include flexibility, agility, speed, cost-effectiveness, ability to start small and scale up. GovCMS fundamentally provides agility and flexibility to Australian government departments and agencies in their online/ digital initiatives. If you have the need for a particular feature on your site, the GovCMS community is a great forum to discuss various solutions for that particular need. Powerful Content Management System Drupal’s powerful content management capabilities include content modeling, content editing with clear publishing workflow definitions. Content authors and approvers for GovCMS websites can preview the content on the website prior to publishing on the live site. Custom workflows with access rights are possible through GovCMS. Content from all previous versions of each page is retained and can be retrieved, published or automatically set to be unpublished on specific dates. News Publication, Event and Media Release Management GovCMS provides publications, media and event management functionalities that can be utilized to deliver announcements and information through the website. Search Friendly GovCMS is flexible to the use of different search engines like Google, Funnelback, Apache Solr or Drupal CMS search through their respective interfaces. Rich Content Editor WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor greatly enriches content authors to develop and edit content that includes text and graphics. Search Engine Optimised(SEO) Websites built with Drupal (read GovCMS here- since GovCMS is a distribution of Drupal) are a great option for digital marketing as Drupal websites are optimised for search engines by their built-in ability to create SEO-friendly URLs, page titles, segmentation using highly effective taxonomy, easy revision options, and updating sitemap.xml. These multifold benefits of GovCMS give us a glimpse of the immense possibilities for any agency or department to build and implement an immersive digital strategy. Zyxware, an empanelled GovCMS Drupal service supplier can help you with all your migration and development needs. References: 1. https://www.govcms.gov.au/dashboard 2. https://www.drupal.org/project/govcms 3. https://www.govcms.gov.au/features/product-features govCMS Egovernment Leave a reply Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marker *

Authors: Anoop John, Vimal Joseph, Thomas P. Thomas E-governance has grown and developed rapidly reflecting the social, economic and cultural changes happening. The increased usage of the web by the citizens, the ease of use, the ubiquity of digital connectivity, IoT have allowed for the emergence of a number of applications for Government to Citizen, Government to Government and Government to Business Services. Leveraging the web for citizen engagement, delivery of government services to citizens, businesses and inter-government departmental services is key to strengthening the e-governance capability of a government. This necessitates an appropriate web tool. In the current state of affairs, the choice narrows down to a distribution built on a powerful, scalable and adaptive Web Content Management System (WCMS). From amongst the Open Source alternatives given, Drupal stands out as a superior choice, as a tried and tested alternative. Drupal is specifically adopted as the technology platform for building websites of federal institutions in US and many other nations. The govCMS initiative of the Government of Australia is another prime example of using Drupal for e-governance initiatives on the web. Primary reason for this is, Drupal offers scalability to build websites ranging from simple to complex and customised websites. FEATURES IN DRUPAL OPTIMIZING E-GOVERNANCE INITIATIVES Notwithstanding the fact that there are a lot of CMS available out in the market, Drupal stands out from others due to its security, robustness, customizability and its ability to evolve with emerging trends in the digital technology space. Here are some of Drupal’s features that make it especially suitable for e-governance. Citizen Engagement APIs: Generate APIs for third party websites so that Agency details reach the citizens through multiple ways. Integrate third party APIs for offering services from other authorised sites. Social Media Integration: Merely publishing on website is not enough. The Drupal CMS platform provides all major social media integrations so that citizens receive updates instantly on social media. Custom Modules: Grievance Redressal module, RTI submission, SMS notifications, Polls etc are some custom modules designed to meet citizen needs on the website. Web Content Publishing Easy to Use Workflow: No matter who all are in charge of the website administration, user roles and permissions can be set to decide who publishes a content. By default there will be draft moderation, review, publish and unpublish states offering finite levels of control. Custom workflow can be created to suit the organisational needs. Built in Content Types: Whether the need be publishing of Government Orders, Gazette notifications, Events, News, Tenders, or Careers, specific content types can be incorporated for each of these. Along with this, revision and archiving helps to keep track of changes. Multilingual: Leveraging on the multilingual module of Drupal, the portal will enable easy publishing and dissemination of content in English and the official language(s) of that particular country/province/state. Role Based Content Access: Some contents/files can be made private and accessible to only those who have a particular role in the CMS. Media and Digital Asset Management: This feature helps to organise various media files to display them and reuse them in various formats like slideshows, image gallery and videos. Custom Theming and Modular Layout: Front end can be customised to suit the organisation branding while content blocks can be configured with simple drag and drop to suit the needs. Guarding Government/Citizen Data and Web Infrastructure Security: More than any other website, Government websites are vulnerable to security threat. Drupal 8 lines up a series of security features like Twig templates, no PHP input to core, exportable site configuration, hardened user sessions etc limiting penetrability to core through various actions. The dedicated community also identifies new threats and creates patches to ensure that vulnerability is restricted. DRUPAL 8 AS THE DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY PLATFORM Drupal 8 (D-8) is the latest offering from the community and it is a highly scalable platform that can create websites to handle millions of hits without affecting speed and performance. It is flexible to adding various functionalities and in handling large data. The architecture is designed for mobile first and it has excellent content authoring features with built in WYSIWYG editors. Flexible content delivery suits the API economy and D-8 offers seamless integration with the best-of-breed technologies to give the best digital experience. Advantages for Building and Maintenance of CMS platform on Drupal 8 for Government Agencies The CMS platform for government built on Drupal 8 comes with the following advantages that make it powerful and robust. No licensing cost on account of Drupal 8 being Open Source. No vendor lock in- as there is no mandatory lock in agreement with the provider. Since the source code is open, the Government has the option to develop a team to enhance the features on their own. Easy to upgrade and update given the vibrant community that backs Drupal and their practices of quick releases of updates and patches and commitment to roadmap. Agility is offered by the scalable and highly modular nature of Drupal making it easy to maintain, integrate with other systems and build additional features. Reusability is possible by coding as per Drupal coding standards making integration with other custom made Drupal applications extremely easy. Civic centred through simplifying website management and maintenance and cutting down expensive investments into those areas. Consistent brand experience using Atomic Design where design components are prepared at the atom level of the layout. Templates created out of these components ensures that the brand uniqueness is maintained. Further the components are reusable to create new layouts. This can generate an experience of familiarity with icons and layouts while visiting multi sites of a department or a ministry making site access convenient. Reduced complexity and effort duplication through modular components which is designed considering the typical content publishing needs of a Government agency. Quick onboarding of content publishers through a user friendly dashboard that enables easy content updating. Modification is easy without the need of any particular technical skill set. Easy management of a portfolio of sites using Multisite Feature of Drupal. Removes duplication of content updating efforts while maintaining data consistency. Reduced risk with common site architecture and validated code-Automated deployment of new modules and functionalities. Enhanced Security Capabilities of Drupal 8 for Government Agencies In built Drupal 8 security features ensures privacy. Clickjacking, XSS attacks, SQL injections, are prevented in core. Presentation layer and data is separated to prevent intrusion. Core Security of Drupal 8 takes care of basic security requirement. Development of best practises enhance the security of the site. Community contributions: Highly active community to detect threats and do patching. Data privacy is secured by building with high standards of security ensuring citizen's rights to privacy and protecting the government site from external attacks. Citizen Experience High-end User Experience-People are culturally more tech savvy, expecting quicker and interactive services and the framework is designed considering these new technical culture. Rich Citizen Engagement features including the following Multilingual Mobile first-Making the services reach the growing ‘mCitizens’ Location based content delivery-District based notifications Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) compliant-Ensuring inclusiveness by enabling accessibility for differently abled as well Social Media sharing-Ensures the policy awareness reaches the citizens quickly and directly High uptime leveraging on Drupal 8's core modularity and inherent strengths Due to these very same reasons, we recommend to design the CMS for governments using the latest version of Drupal. Drupal 8 platform is the most advanced in open source technology and offers a host of features to create the best user experience. By building a base version of a distribution in Drupal, it can be expanded in scope to suit the purpose of various government organisations. Zyxware Technologies has helped and is in the process of helping various governments in their e-governance initiatives. To know more, get in touch with us. (Edited by Nisha Oommen) Drupal 8 Egovernment Leave a reply Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marker *

The last decade has seen the quickening in the maturation of E-Governance across the world. This has been supported by rapid increase in internet accessibility, emergence of a number of applications for Government to Citizen, Government to Government and Government to Business services. This brief note works out the key values that should underlie an E-Governance initiative in a democratic government, a categorisation of digital initiatives - the key pillars - that constitute E-Governance and specific set of digital initiatives with in each category. This is only meant as a quick primer to think about building an E-Governance agenda and draws upon a selected work of McKinsey and Co in the area. An E-Governance Framework For a democratic government, its e-governance initiatives must stand the test of participative nature, inclusiveness, transparency, respect for citizen rights, efficiency and effectiveness. Therefore, these become the key values around which e-governance initiatives have to be conceptualized. It is on top of these values that we look at the key pillars of web-enabled governance initiatives. Adopting a framework owned by McKinsey and Company, the key pillars of web-enabled governance initiatives are as below: Digital Citizen Interactions This includes a set of initiatives designed to disseminate information from the government to citizens as well as to gather information and feedback from citizens leveraging websites, social media, and mobile applications. Digital End to End Processes Here, government procedures and services workflow is managed using digital technology. This can enable efficiency, accountability, and transparency in service delivery. Digitally and Data-Enabled Decisions The technology advances in analytics can be exploited to improve decision making as well as improve transparency and accountability. Data Sharing and Publishing Government by virtue of its functioning gathers data of varied kinds. This data can support research into many key areas and contribute to improving the discourse in these domains. The above has been summarised in the table as below. With the above key premises, we have put together a set of initiatives that a government can undertake as part of their E-Governance agenda. These are not in any recommended sequence or priority. Forwarding the agenda of democratic governance using the medium of digital has been made possible like never before with the advance in technology. A clear roadmap keeping in mind the reality of each polity and a commitment to the principles of democracy can help governments empower their citizens to lead fulfilling lives - especially in developing countries marked by resource scarcity. Source: Karim Tadjeddine and Martin Lundqvist, “Policy in the data age; data enablement for common good”, McKinsey Insights, August, 2016 http://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/digital-mckinsey/our-insight…, accessed October 2016. Egovernment Leave a reply Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marker *