Case studies

Chief Government Information Office, New South Wales, Australia

 The Government Chief Information Office (GCIO) provides the NSW Government with sector-wide leadership and advice on ICT procurement, e-government and other ICT initiatives.

 The agency produced an ICT strategic plan defining key objectives including: consolidate infrastructure, streamline the delivery of services and improve the purchasing of ICT while reducing cost to Government. Senior management revealed the existence of 380 agency websites hosted independently resulting in wasted public funds on duplicated and in many cases expensive solutions. The NSW Treasury 2009 review established an ICT savings target of 5 per cent in 2010/2011 and one of 10 per cent in 2011/2012 for agencies to meet.

 GCIO Shared Web Platform

Driven by meeting the objectives in the ICT strategic plan the NSW Government Chief Information Office launched a project to consolidate the delivery of web solutions. A cluster of servers powered by an open source software stack running the Plone content management system, was deployed with an architecture designed to support 20-30 websites. To date, the shared web platform currently provides multiple agencies with affordable public facing websites and portals along with support and maintenance. The GCIO selected PretaWeb to provide high level comprehensive managed services for the platform, in addition PretaWeb carries out  web development and design work, end user and technical support for individual client agencies.

 Costing comparisons reveal real savings reflected in improved budget outcomes, together with reduced management time the agencies are able to redirect resources to frontline services. One agency alone saved $63,000 relative to a lowest quote received from a private sector organisation for an upgrade to their website. More agencies are able to join the GCIO shared web platform at significantly reduced cost, effort and risk, when compared to running their own systems.

The total cost of ownership reductions are realised in two ways; firstly shared managed hosting allows many websites to reside on the same group of servers. This reduces maintenance and support expenses as costs are shared across individual websites owned by separate agencies hosting on the servers.

Secondly all software used to power the web environment are open source resulting in zero licence fees, this includes the Linux operating system, Apache web server, Zope application server and Plone content management system. The savings gained with the zero licence fees allows that money to be directed towards more functionality when developing the web solution and/or funding of ongoing support and maintenance.

 A major outcome of the platform is the ability for smaller agencies with limited resources, to use leading edge web technology. Agencies can now effectively manage the increasing amount of information requiring rapid dissemination to citizens as the Plone CMS enables non-technical people to easily create and manage content. They have unlimited access to hundreds of open source plug-ins such as RSS, events calendaring, Google mapping, social bookmarking, video/audio sharing, blogs, online polls and more. The result— all agencies on the GCIO shared platform are using Web 2.0 technology to improve public services cost effectively.

 Security is a high priority in government, which is a prime motivator for selecting Open Source and in particular Plone. Plone is built with security in mind at every level of it's architecture and has the lowest occurrence of critical security incidences of any major open source CMS. The PretaCloud service with built in security monitoring, 24x7 security response service and regular security audits gives the GCIO peace of mind.

 An additional benefit of this project is the whole of platform enforcement of compliance with the Government’s website directive which includes meeting W3C accessibility standards and consistent branding.

The platform is used by the following NSW agencies:

• Premier and Cabinet
• Aboriginal Housing Office
• Services & Administration
• Roads and Traffic Authority
• Independent Transport Safety & Reliability Regulator
• Parramatta Park Trust
• Parramatta Stadium Trust

The Commission is an independent organisation that reports directly to the NSW Parliament. The Commission issues certificates to Self Employed People who work with children to certify they are not prohibited from child related employment. The solution allows the Commission to easily access application records that are electronically submitted to the system from the Police, record assessments and print certificates.

The solution delivered on time and within budget included the following components:

• Certificate Database (ZODB) – storage and access of application forms along with assessments, certificate ids and state information.
• Certificate workflow – defines transitions and permissions from the various states of the records in the certificate database.
• Database UI – customisations to an out of the box Plone theme that creates a UI for CYPC staff to login, create reports, search and access records in the database, edit and transition those records where appropriate.
• Plone Mail Merge – a subsystem that allows document templates to be combined with database records to generate high quality print jobs that can be sent to a printer to produce both certificates and letters.
• Plone Print Queue – this works with an open office server to produce printed certificates.
  

The ICT Centre is CSIRO's hub for innovative information and communication technologies. This high load website allows 200 scientists to upload content about current research projects. The deployment required integration with active directory and NTLM authentication including groups and roles. It was configured to provide multiple workflows and WebDAV support.

The Greens NSW is a member body of The Australian Greens a confederation of state and territory-based Greens parties.

Four websites: Greens NSW, Greens Mining, John Kaye MP and Silvia Hale MP were converted to Plone V3 with new designs all developed from the same base theme. They were deployed running off one ZODB making maintenance significantly easier and cheaper.

An additional feature allows newsletter content to be aggregated from member submissions who are registered with the website. A workflow was set up that allows review of submissions before being placed into a ready for e-newsletter format.

The InnovationXchange is a leader in the practice of open innovation. The IXC Intermediary service offers a secure platform for organisations to share confidential information and ideas for tangible business and research outcomes.

PretaWeb was engaged to conduct business anaylsis, develop and implement an intranet data repository solution providing full search capabilities. The "Vault" provides customised content types and forms. Secure pre-defined permission access to staff was critical to protect sensitive corporate data.

Other clients include:

• NSW Department of Health
• NSW Womens Refuge Resource Centre
• NSW Womens Refuge Movement
  
• Attendant Care Industry Association of NSW
• Safe Communities Foundation (New Zealand)
• O'Brien Glass Industries
• Historica
• Electronics By Design
• Optimal Health Services