Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) wants a new global collaboration platform for unclassified material that operates separately to the TRIM EDRMS utilised by more than 5000 staff worldwide.

A Request for Tender calls for submissions to provide “an industry standard solution requiring a minimum amount of customisation or bespoke code to meet DFAT requirements”.

“DFAT do not wish to host the service internally using existing infrastructure and resources”

Integration with TRIM, MS Office, Skype for Business or other collaboration tools such as Instant messaging, Enterprise Social Networking, and internal Wikis is described as “Out of Scope” although the document says “Additional capabilities may be included in subsequent enhancement phases“.

It also wants content management included within the platform, and a capacity for archiving and searching of the archive.

DFAT wants a better way to interact with staff and a means to enhance external and cross-government collaboration. It also expects the new platform will be adopted by other government agencies.

“A Collaboration Platform is required in order to facilitate a collaboration ecosystem that supports a modern digital workplace and encourages users to share information and knowledge.

“The Collaboration Platform should provide virtual workspaces with a set of features that allow a group of people to work together in real-time.

“DFAT are aware that a collaboration solution may require the integration of multiple collaboration services and welcome industry's approach to building and managing an integrated collaboration solution.”

It will be mandatory that the solution is fully hosted at Australian based data centre(s) and must conform to the Australian government security standards defined by the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD).