GovCMS Mega Meetup November 2024

Intro by Sharyn and Nathan

The recent GovCMS event kicked off with Sharyn’s and Nathan’s official opening remarks.

Sharyn set the tone with a trip down memory lane, recalling the days before GovCMS, with over 350 CMSs across Canberra departments alone. Compare that to today, with GovCMS providing unity, collaboration and efficiency in government digital services.

Sharyn talked about the new tools of Rules as Code and content API, and the importance of sharing content. This reflects a citizen’s online journey, as they move across jurisdictions and government agencies.

Finally, Sharyn mentioned GovCMS’ upcoming 10-year anniversary in March 2024 — a very exciting milestone.

Nathan kicked off his short opening focusing on the purpose of the meetup: celebrating community and sharing stories.

He touched on GovCMS’ growth and current stats, including some of the more recent launches.

He then moved onto the 2025 roadmap, mentioning key components:

• Enhanced community engagement and knowledge-sharing

• Technical improvements like new infrastructure to support smoother deployments, failover solution, analytics tools, new project dashboards and single sign-on

• Preparations for Drupal 11

Session 1: Case study, Damien Pratley, Independent Parliamentary Expenses Authority (IPEA)

Damien talked about a major uplift to how users can look at the work expenses for Parliamentarians, via importing large datasets in GovCMS SaaS. Working with Morpht, the IPEA redesigned the reporting feature using Solr for searching, to provide a significantly improved user experience. This feature was part of a larger IPEA web project.

Session 2: SSO for GovCMS, Yvonne Norris

Yvonne introduced single sign-on (SSO) as a major milestone for the platform. By leveraging agencies' existing identity providers, GovCMS aims to simplify login processes, reduce password fatigue and bolster security.

She also covered the steps for setting up SSO.

Session 3: Keynote, life event personalisation, (Possum) Michael Hodgkin

Michael delved into the concept of life events as a framework for service delivery. He stressed the importance of personalisation in user journeys, allowing government services to adapt dynamically to users' circumstances. He covered segmentation, sub-segmentation, segment overlap and individual personalisation.

Real-life examples included:

• Geospatial messaging during Black Saturday fires

• JobSeeker content reforms to reduce 17 pages of content into Q&A format with 1-2 paragraphs of customised content

• Google integrations, such as marking up Centrelink information in search and maps to dramatically improve public access during crises

Michael also emphasised the potential of Rules as Code to further enhance personalisation, particularly in complex use cases.

Session 4: Content as an API, Sharyn Clarkson and Danni Marlow

Sharyn and Danni introduced a bold vision for content as a shared API. They outlined a future where agencies seamlessly access and share verified, up-to-date content, tackling long-standing challenges of jurisdictional fragmentation.

This initiative aims to build a centralised content capability powered by community collaboration. Sharyn closed the session asking for community input.

Session 5: Case study, Great Barrier Reef Report website, Reef Authority

This case study focused on managing the transition to GovCMS from a small agency perspective. The Reef Authority has four websites, three on GovCMS SaaS and one on GovCMS PaaS. They focused on the unique challenges for the Reef Report website.

Session 6: Keynote, If you're not communicating, who is? Penelope Jones

Penelope talked about the importance of strategic comms, providing examples from the campaign to rebrand myGovID to myID. She highlighted key stages/strategies, including:

• Listening (to media and the public)
• Whole-of-government collaboration
• Focusing on a user-centric website
• Strategic comms
• Monitoring and adjusting as necessary

Community and Innovation Awards

The event concluded with a celebration of excellence. Congratulations to the winners:

• Connecting with Community Award: Australian Space Agency

• Innovation Award: Respect.gov.au

• Built for Users Award: Aboriginal Hostels Limited

• GovCMS Community Spirit Award: Margery Tongway, Department of Finance

Salsa Digital’s take

We had six Salsarians at the Meetup and everyone loved the event! The sessions were engaging and the atmosphere was super collaborative. We’re already looking forward to the 10-year celebration in March next year. The event was a testament to the power of community, proving once again that together, we’re stronger.