ACCC races Budget to build new website

Australia's competition watchdog is racing to move from its nine-year-old content management system (CMS) to the open source Drupal platform before the Government tightens its budget in July.

Under 2012-13 federal budget savings measures, announced last November, agencies will be required to achieve an additional 2.5 percent efficiency dividend by reducing expenditure on consultants and contractors, travel, media, advertising, printing and publication.

A spokesman for the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) said it was working to a "very tight timetable" for the redevelopment of its website.

All work would be undertaken from May to June, so as to complete the project by the end of the financial year, he said.

According to ACCC tender documents, the commission will deploy Drupal version 7 to replace a Sytadel CMS developed by local company Synop in 2003.

Synop closed shop in 1 October 2006, and work on Sytadel effectively ended with the CMS becoming open source in 2009.

ACCC's annual report for 2010-11 reveals it sought to maintain the CMS when it "undertook a modernisation of the ACCC website’s technology base" using Sytadel 5.

It began using Drupal for a Freedom of Information document portal last year, joining several high-profile Drupal sites in the Australian public sector, including those of the Prime Minister, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Department of Regional Australia and Australian Law Reform Commission.

Tender documents published last week revealed that the ACCC had installed Drupal into a virtualised server environment, and was in the process of configuring the platform within its IT infrastructure.

Consulting services required

The ACCC called for an "experienced vendor" to help it develop a content migration strategy for moving from Sytadel to the new Information Architecture within Drupal.

It sought strategic technical advice, Drupal module selection and review, Drupal programming and related quality assurance work.

The successful vendor will work with an in-house Applications Management team, with the in-house team responsible for installation, configuration and long-term maintenance of the Drupal CMS.

Besides developing the new Information Architecture and website design for "a complex website structure of approximately 65,000 content pages", the vendor will be required to document best practice, train ACCC IT staff, assist with integration and provide advice on complementary toolsets.

Tender documents suggest that all work will be undertaken at the ACCC’s Canberra offices and will be costed on a time and materials basis with zero or “minimal” budget for travel.