FaHCSIA drafts three-year data centre strategy

Sharing FOFMS

Peter Qui, CIO for the Department of Families, Housing, Community Services & Indigenous Affairs (FaHCSIA).

FaHCSIA is extending the scope and scale of its online funding management system (FOFMS), which is used to manage funding arrangements with community service providers.

An independent review of its core system design, architecture and infrastructure was undertaken in June this year.

In response to the review’s recommendations, FaHCSIA is investing in a program of platform stabilisation and related enhancements in 2012-13, although Qui did not provide specifics.

However, Qui’s group wants to leverage its FOFMS investment for wider Commonwealth benefit.

Other government agencies using the system include the Department of Health and Ageing (DoHA) and the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR).

In April 2012, DoHA commenced a "proof of concept" exercise to evaluate the suitability of the FOFMS to support DoHA funding programs. 

Two months later, FOFMS was rated fit for purpose. Full rollout is scheduled over the next two years. 

Assessing web compliance

Federal websites are required to meet web content accessibility guidelines (WCAG 2.0) at the minimum compliance level of Single A by the end of the year.

FaHCSIA's disability portfolio responsibilities have made it a leader in WCAG 2.0 assessment and remediation in government websites. 

This work commenced back in 2010, with initial independent assessments of websites conducted.

“Since then our IT professionals have been collaborating with the Department’s communication specialists to review dozens of websites, comprising thousands of pages,” Qui said. 

The department's WCAG 2.0 assessors work closely with developers, website administrators, and content authors to identify areas needing assessment, prioritising and implementing identified changes, he said.

Among FaHCSIA’s quiet achievements is an automated assessment tool developed by the department's IT staff. It calls the W3C validators to scan HTML code for compliance and generates detailed assessment reports. 

“This tool has proved so successful that it has been requested by other agencies,” Qui said. 

Consideration is being given to providing to other organisations on a “best effort” basis, although it is unlikely to be offered outside the public sector because of the prohibitively large amount of support that would then be required.

The tool validates pages by crawling every link, much in the same way Google crawls the web for indexation purposes.

Prior to the development of the FaHCSIA tool, the W3C website had been used directly for assessment. This meant only one page could be assessed at a time.

With its crawling capability, the tool allows an entire website to be assessed in one operation.

To complement the tool, detailed manual checklists and remediation resources have also been created, and Qui was impressed with the progress made in moving towards WCAG 2.0.