Media release
Canberra, 27 Sept, 2023 – Salsa Digital and (a company) are honoured to announce a three-year contract to provide a whole-of-government, open source content management system and web hosting service for the GovCMS .
GovCMS approached the market for the third generation of GovCMS with an emphasis on maintaining the resilience, security and stability of the current platform balanced with new innovations.
“As the incumbent, Salsa Digital in strong collaboration with our partner amazee.io, wanted to make sure we weren’t complacent,” said Alfred Deeb, Salsa Digital Founding Director and Open Government Advocate. “We took the approach to market as an opportunity to re-imagine how we could push the GovCMS program further, without compromising the strong foundations that we’d built over the past five years.
“It’s an opportunity to further align the GovCMS program to world-class government digital service standards such as open source, accessibility and security.”
The new contract recognises the hard work and dedication both teams have exhibited in re-imagining what the program could be for the next GovCMS phase. This builds on our focus over the past five years on platform stability, security and resilience during unprecedented traffic due to the COVID-19 pandemic and an ever-increasing cyber threat landscape. It also leverages our strong service desk support, with consistently high customer service ratings.
"We are profoundly privileged to once again be chosen, alongside our partner Salsa Digital, to continue our work on the GovCMS program,” said Franz Karlsberger, amazee.io CEO. “Platform stability and the highest security standards are at the forefront of our joint collaboration and together with all stakeholders we look forward to perpetuating our journey of success, fostering continuous innovation, and delivering excellence - the open source way - to the Commonwealth of Australia.”
Platform stability and increased security
Over the past half-decade, Salsa Digital and amazee.io have focused on designing, building, maintaining, securing and scaling the second-generation GovCMS platform. We have implemented multi-layered security protocols and consistently ensured a nearly flawless uptime record, a testament to our commitment to providing a secure and reliable platform. Moving forward, we pledge to maintain and further enhance the fortified infrastructure, meeting the evolving needs and expectations for national security and individual privacy.
Business continuity in the interest of the Commonwealth
Over the past five years, our collaborative efforts with the Department of Finance exemplified business continuity in the Commonwealth’s best interests. We demonstrated an adaptive approach, meeting unforeseen challenges head-on to ensure the uninterrupted and robust functioning of government digital platforms. This commitment fostered trust and reliability, pillars that hold strong as we move into the next phase of our partnership.
Accelerating innovation
As we move into the next chapter, Salsa Digital and amazee.io are committed to pushing the boundaries further. Our roadmap includes integrating new state-of-the-art technologies (on top of Kubernetes) that build on GovCMS’s strong foundations to even further improve the platform’s resilience, security and user experience.
Looking ahead
As we embark on this new stage of the journey with the Department of Finance, we maintain a visionary outlook, balancing innovation with stability and security. We are thrilled that the Department of Finance has entrusted us with this responsibility once more.
Together, Salsa Digital and amazee.io will continue to work collaboratively, maintaining the high standards of excellence that have been the hallmark of our partnership so far.
We look forward to a future of sustained growth, continued stability and innovation that show our commitment to serving the Commonwealth of Australia and its citizens.
For further inquiries, please contact:
Phillipa Martin for Salsa Digital (phillipa.martin@salsa.digital)
Jason Lewis for amazee.io (jason.lewis@amazee.io)
About GovCMS
is Australia's whole-of-government website management platform built on the open source content management system (CMS) Drupal. It was officially launched by the Department of Finance in February 2015. GovCMS provides all the tools and environments for developing, testing, deploying, managing, supporting and hosting GovCMS websites. It also delivers a host of benefits, such as: a stable and reliable CMS; 24x7 enterprise support and proactive monitoring; security compliance at the highest level; an easy-to-use CMS; compliance with DTA’s Digital Service Standards and the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines; and responsiveness across different devices (desktop, tablet and smartphones).
About Salsa Digital
Salsa Digital is an open source digital innovation company that designs, builds, supports, hosts and secures websites, open data portals and digital platforms. We have a strong legacy in digital transformation for government programs, contributing over the past 11+ years. We’re currently responsible for managing and supporting many of the largest Drupal websites across multiple jurisdictions in Australian government.
Salsa Digital was founded in 2003 with a legacy in open source and has grown from a home-based business to an enterprise-grade company.
About amazee.io
is part of Mirantis, which helps organisations ship code faster on public and private clouds, increasing developer productivity by removing the stress of managing infrastructure. The company combines intelligent automation and cloud-native expertise to provide a ZeroOps approach to managing and operating Kubernetes and cloud environments. Mirantis delivers a public cloud experience on any infrastructure, from the data centre to the edge, with one cohesive cloud experience for complete app and DevOps portability, a single pane of glass, and automated full-stack lifecycle management, all based on open source.