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First insights into the Government Site Builder 11

What is the GSB?

The Government Site Builder (GSB) is an initiative of the Federal Information Technology Centre (ITZBund) to provide a standard solution for the efficient creation of responsive websites. The GSB takes into account the technical requirements of the Barrier-free Information Technology Ordinance (BITV).

While GSB 7 is based on the CMS CoreMedia (and thus generates annual licence costs) and GSB 10 was a self-developed open source solution, GSB 11 made the sensible decision to develop the entire framework on TYPO3 12. Points in favour of TYPO3 include the following

  • TYPO3 is designed for professional, accessible, secure, stable and scalable use and benefits from an active open source community in German-speaking countries.
  • Due to the large scope of relevant functions, fast maintenance and upkeep is possible.
  • Due to the widespread use of TYPO3 in the federal administration, a simple GSB migration and quick familiarisation can be expected.
  • Long-term support over 3 years is an essential feature for the stability and reliability of the TYPO3 CMS [1].

GSB 11 for everyone

From the ITZBund's perspective, the target group of the GSB are federal, state and local authorities that want to convert their existing customised solutions into a BITV-compliant standard solution. However, thanks to its responsive approach, the GSB 11 is of course a solid starting point for any project that should or would like to fulfil the requirements of the BITV. After all, BITV 2.0 will also be mandatory for products and services such as online shops from 28 June 2025 [2].

Kickstart

Since June 2024, central source code components of Government Site Builder 11 (GSB 11) have been publicly available as open source on Open CoDE [3].And from now on, there is no reason not to get involved with it.

The GSB Sitepackage Kickstarter should be the starting point for a first insight [4]. In general, it should be noticed that the architecture introduced in the Kickstarter seems esoteric to some extent and, with the introduction of special, hidden vendor directories, ensures that ddev no longer behaves as usual. If you are used to the ‘ddev typo3’ command, you always have to take special paths in this project, such as ‘ddev exec .composer/vendor/typo3’. This makes getting started quite counter-intuitive. Assuming a healthy amount of experience and a willingness to experiment, the researcher will then be rewarded with a TYPO3 backend login and the typically friendly smiling federal eagle.

Get started

Unfortunately, the two packages `gsb-frontend` and `gsb-distribution` are not yet(?) in the publicly accessible area of GSB 11, so that we have to make do with an unstyled frontend for the time being. So let's concentrate on the published extensions.

a11y_backend

This extension contains improvements to the accessibility of the TYPO3 backend. These are primarily revised templates and the question arises as to why these thoroughly sensible revisions were not contributed to the TYPO3 core but outsourced to a separate extension.

gsb_clustered_caching

As GSB 11 is used in a clustered environment in the public sector, this extension offers special middleware that takes care of emptying the caches.

gsb_core

The actual site package. This is where special content elements and backend modules are used for quality assurance.

gsb_feusermanagement

Provides a backend module for the administration of frontend users.

gsb_metadata_cleaner

A great addition to the topic of data protection. This extension removes all metadata on images and PDF files apart from copyright and any other configured fields directly when the file is uploaded to TYPO3.

gsb_solr

An extension for the well-known extension `apache-solr-for-typo3/solr`.

gsb_widgets

Useful widgets for the TYPO3 backend dashboard will be collected here. At the moment, it offers a widget for convenient viewing of personal favourites.

Security for all

For me as a technician, security is always an important point. Both for my own developments and for frameworks that I develop for. TYPO3 has always impressed me with its own security team and regular updates. The fact that TYPO3 is the basis of GSB 11 means that the CMS is on the radar of the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI). In future, the BSI will not only disseminate the security reports published by TYPO3, but will also carry out its own audits and screenings of the entire system. If security vulnerabilities are found, they will be fixed in the TYPO3 core. In this way, GSB 11 supports the security of all TYPO3 users.

Conclusion

All in all, the GSB 11 is a solid and well thought-out project with many sensible ideas and concepts. We at F7 are definitely looking forward to many exciting projects with the GSB.