Australian Government Standardizes on Acquia for Digital Government Platform

BURLINGTON, MA--(Marketwired - Sep 15, 2014) - Acquia, the digital business company, today announced that the Australian Government selected Acquia for govCMS, its Government Web Content Management System. govCMS will help agencies decrease costs and increase their agility as they better engage citizens with government services. The Department of Finance has selected Acquia to provide an open cloud platform for the development and continuous delivery of its Drupal-based govCMS service. Australia.gov.au and finance.gov.au are among the most prominent federal sites that are already on Drupal and planned for migration to govCMS.

"We designed govCMS to save costs while empowering agencies to act independently. We're supporting innovation by relying on Drupal, a technology proven in governments around the world," said John Sheridan, Australian Government CTO. "Open source technologies like Drupal, when paired with an open cloud platform like Acquia Cloud, are creating efficiencies in government and disrupting the way we deliver digital citizen experiences -- for the better."

govCMS is an important service offering for Australian Government entities. It reflects the Government's eGovernment and the Digital Economy Policy pre-election commitments regarding, using shared or cloud services. Agencies using govCMS will benefit from a standardized procurement model and achieve compliance for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).

Acquia helps the Australian Government meet these requirements in various ways:

• govCMS will incorporate Acquia Cloud Site Factory, a SaaS application for Drupal that simplifies the operation, management, and governance of hundreds of sites.
• govCMS is delivered on Acquia Cloud, which provides a secure development and delivery environment that speeds time to market and ensures application quality, a critical component for site scalability and resiliency.
• Government agencies can tap into the innovation of the global Drupal community, connecting new applications and technologies to their sites as they emerge. govCMS also incorporates the aGov Drupal distribution, which was developed specifically for Australian government organizations.

A recent survey from Accenture Digital reports that 70 percent of citizens want to access government services online. This trend, coupled with increasing budget pressures, is inspiring a wave of innovation in how government delivers information and services. In addition to the Department of Finance, the Department of Social Services, the Department of Environment, the Department of Employment, and more than 100 Federal and State government agencies rely on Drupal today to deliver citizen services and information.

"Drupal is rapidly becoming the gold standard among governments around the world. We're proud to see the Australian Government taking a progressive approach to delivering citizen-centric digital experiences," said Chris Harrop, Director for Asia Pacific and Japan, Acquia. "Acquia helps organizations as vast as the Australian government deliver services at a far lower cost and achieve a faster time to market with our resilient cloud platform and world-class professional support."

About Acquia

Acquia is the digital business company. Pinterest, Mercedes Benz, Warner Music Group, and Stanford University are among the more than 4,000 organizations that are transforming their digital businesses with Acquia. Global 2000 enterprises, government agencies and NGOs rely on Acquia to create new revenue streams, lower costs, and engage audiences more deeply through content, community, commerce and context.

For more information visit www.acquia.com or call +1 781 238 8600.

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