The Department of Finance has awarded a $250K contract to solutions provider iCognition to transition its on-premise Content Manager system to the iCognition cloud platform. iCognition won the Software as a Service (SaaS) open tender and will implement the solution over 2024-25.

The decision to retain Content Manager as its digital records platform shows Finance has moved on from the Digital Records Transformation Initiative (DTRI) it championed over a number of years that sought to move Australian federal government agencies away from “traditional Electronic Document and Records Management System[s].”

This commenced with a project initiated by Finance in 2017 looking to develop a Whole-of-Government Digital Records Platform. It received $A9.1M funding under the Public Service Modernisation Fund and ran over two years.

This initiative evolved in 2019 into a series of joint tenders with federal government agencies, seeking an “innovative solution that makes use of contemporary technology,” and one that “provides automated tagging and classification through analysis of new and existing content.”

The DTRI culminated in 2021 with Finance and the Digital Transformation Authority (DTA) announcing the DTA’s purchase of RecordPoint’s Records365 product.

Then Minister for Finance Simon Birmingham stated, “Australian company, RecordPoint has helped deliver a records management solution for DTA, designed specifically for records managers, creators, and information users within government.

"The parliament and the public can have confidence that data is managed appropriately, providing greater transparency and accountability.”

RecordPoint has since achieved success with other federal government agencies, however Content Manager maintains a strong profile with a large number of agencies continuing to use it in their compliance and transformation strategies.

The Finance contract shows the Digital Records Transformation Initiative (DTRI) did not result in a standard template for an approach to government record-keeping.