GovBenefits will use FirstGov’s content management system

The Labor Department this summer will piggyback on the content management system of the General Services Administration’s FirstGov portal for the government’s GovBenefits site.Denis Gusty, project manager for GovBenefits.gov, one of the 25 Quicksilver projects, said Labor will use Vignette Corp.’s content management system. The Austin, Texas, company in April signed a five-year software and maintenance contract with GSA .“We were pretty far down the path when we learned FirstGov purchased Vignette, and we could use it,” Gusty said.Labor had been looking at other content management systems but decided to go with Vignette because of the cost savings available through GSA’s contract, he said.“The commercial product will be much easier for our stakeholders to add content to the site,” Gusty said. “The software will take the place of manual effort we use to update the site now.”The addition of the content management system is an enhancement the Labor team is planning for GovBenefits’ second anniversary in April. Since April 2002, GovBenefits has had 8.1 million visitors, referred more than 1.5 million citizens to benefit programs and added materials from more than 419 federal and 100 state benefit programs.Besides the content management upgrade, the team has three other projects on tap: