Case studies

New South Wales Chief Government Information Office Shared Web Platform

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

The shared web platform provides small to medium-sized agencies with an easy-to-use, affordable, web hosting facility, allowing them to redirect resources to frontline services.

The objective is to provide smaller agencies with cost effective enterprise content management solutions.

The total cost of ownership reductions are realised in two ways; firstly shared 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 enterprise 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.

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

The platform is used by the following NSW agencies:

• Premier and Cabinet

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

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.

CABAC is an electronics manufacturer and the marketing department needed a visually dynamic, easily up-dateable website (www.cabac.com.au) to promote their products and specials.

The solution involved customised design development including:

• 2 layout models for Plone pages.
• small and large dynamic promotion elements such as an interface to add, reorder and publish.
• alternative linking behaviour for promotional items.

Workflow and notifications allow marketing staff to submit content regularly to be approved and published by management efficiently.

Other clients include:

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