Victoria enlists Section for whole-of-gov website delivery

The Victorian Department of Premier and Cabinet is set to upgrade the state government’s content management system after partnering with US-headquartered edge-as-a-service provider Section.

Section was selected to provide content delivery network (CDN) and edge computing services for the single digital presence (SDP) platform late last year following a competitive tender.

The SDP platform, which was built by a blended team from Salsa Digital and DPC, was first introduced in 2018 as a test case for a wider consolidation of public-facing government websites.

More than 100 websites from nine departments and Victoria Police have now been consolidated onto the platform to improve public access to information, with a further 49 agencies expected to transition during this financial year.

The government set aside $29.2 million over two years in last year’s budget to support the SDP as agencies continue their transition.

Under the new contract, Section will work with Salsa Digital to provide a range solutions, including application performance optimisation, security and edge hosting, and routing.

Section said these solutions would be “streamlined by DevOps workflows and meshed with DPC’s continuous integration [and] continuous delivery (CI/CD) capabilities”.

It added that DPC had “identified opportunities to push more edge-enabled solutions” and would look to leverage its edge services marketplace for web application firewalls, bot blocking and testing.