Australian government likely to standardise on Drupal

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"GovCMS is intended to support more effective web channel delivery functions within Government, and enable agencies to redirect effort from non-core transactional activities, towards higher-value activities that are more aligned with core agency missions," a draft statement of requirements issued by AGIMO states.

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It appears buzzword abuse is becoming an international problem across multiple industries and agencies. I recommend a UN task force to look into it and take the appropriate measures. Sanctions are defiantly in order, but at this point nothing should be off the table.

So basically, getting past the people who have no idea what they're talking about, the Australian Government wants some private company to sell them something similar to Gov.UK as a hosted service. Is that about right?

I used to work for AGIMO, and I personally implemented the first version of australia.gov.au. Funny story: I got caught posting something on Slashdot that they interpreted as critical of their decision making (spoiler: it was, because their decision making was hideous), so they decided not to renew my contract. They still had me doing the australia.gov.au project though. I took what was, basically, a Photoshop document produced by some mob up in Brisbane, and turned it into something usable, accessible and extensible, with a strong focus on accessibility for visually impaired and disabled users and on old or non-desktop browsers. I had to fight every step of the way to fix the original Photoshop design to make it work, but I was vindicated when the site won awards... which were given to the mob in Brisbane.

Meanwhile, they had a grand opening at Parliament House to which all the media were invited -- and I was very pointedly not invited, presumably because they were worried I'd say rude things about them (spoiler: I would have). Then the leader of the National Party chose that morning to resign, and nobody from the media came to the launch party because they were busy over the other side of the House interviewing him. So I felt a certain degree of whatever that German word is for "serves you right, you bastards".

Meanwhile, australia.gov.au had a bunch of redesigns and is even better now, so the three guys they brought in to replace me obviously did good work...

The Australian Government CTO's blog post (on finance.gov.au - where else?): http://www.finance.gov.au/blog/2014/05/07/seeking-industry-c...

The draft Statement of Requirements for GovCMS: http://www.finance.gov.au/sites/default/files/GovCMS%20State...

Some notable tidbits:

- No analysis seems to have been done on the approach of hiring their own developers to develop a custom-yet-cohesive solution, a la Gov.uk.

- The CTO says "Drupal appears to offer the best enterprise-level as shown by our previous extensive analysis". Can someone refer me to this extensive analysis? Have they considered the security risks of standardizing on a single platform? http://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability-list.php?vendor_id=1...

- "A solution hosted offshore would not be excluded from consideration" So, putting Australian Government infrastructure in the US is OK. Subject to US laws. Fantastic.

- Does anyone know if the government intends to contribute to Drupal development? They say that they expect some "feature rich" sites to require custom modules, but what about Drupal itself?

It has been my experience that nobody takes AGIMO seriously.

They do a lot of research, produce a lot of reports, publish a lot of "standards", and then everyone else just ignores them and stumbles on with whatever they were doing before.

The people who are already married to some solution will remain married to their solution; they will successfully argue for exemptions.

Those who are determined to use something else will use political capital to get another exemption.

Those who are forced to make the switch will make the switch, but the old system will probably hang around for a long time, more than doubling the overall cost due to double-entry and errors.

Some will make the transition, it will fail, then transition back.

In the end the government standard will be taken up by a handful of sites, AGIMO or its heirs and successors will declare total success, the Minister will have been rotated to something else or kicked out at an election and nobody will give two hoots.

Welcome to public sector computing! It's like enterprise, except even crazier.