How to Evaluate Government Intranet Partners in 2026
Every intranet pitch looks the same on paper. Same platform logos, same "user-centred" line on slide four, same tidy three-phase diagram. The things that actually decide whether this goes well don't show up in a capability statement, and by the time they do, you've signed.
One regulatory point is worth pinning down, and it sits near the bottom, because anyone with a template can answer a standards checklist. What can't be templated: work the agency has already built, the phone number of someone who lived through one, and a straight answer about who'll do yours. Here's what to ask.
Key Takeaways
- Named, published work you can go and look at beats a capability statement. Ask for links, not logos.
- Ask for referees you can ring, and speak to whoever ran the project rather than whoever sold it.
- Find out whether an agency already knows government and health delivery, or learns it on your budget.
- Get the names of the people who'll build it, and who's still around after handover.
- A new or replacement Commonwealth intranet has been in Digital Service Standard scope since 1 July 2024, and WCAG 2.2 Level AA is the current reference point.
Ask What They've Built, Then Go and Look
Start with the simplest question in the room. What have you built that's like this, and can I see it?
You want named clients and published case studies, not "a large government department" and "a leading health provider". Sometimes anonymity is a genuine confidentiality obligation. Often it's a hedge. Ask which. Intranets sit behind a login, so ask to be walked through the live system on a screen share. An agency proud of its build says yes before you've finished the sentence.
Be fussy about what "like this" means. Fifteen public websites and one intranet is fifteen websites' worth of experience. Intranets live or die on unglamorous things: whether the staff directory matches what HR thinks is true, whether the policy library is findable once its author has left. Ask to see those, not the homepage. (Everybody's looks good in a deck.)
References You Can Ring, Not Just Testimonials
Ask for testimonials by all means, then treat them as what they are. A written quote has been past someone's comms team. A phone call hasn't.
Ask for two or three referees, including one from a project that hit a rough patch. Then ask what they can't script: what changed between the first estimate and the invoice, who you dealt with day to day, whether you'd do it again at the same price. The pauses tell you as much as the answers.
Sector Experience, or Translation From Retail?
Government and health work has a rhythm commercial projects don't. Procurement cycles that stall for weeks, security reviews that land late, machinery-of-government changes that redraw an org chart overnight. An agency translating from ecommerce work will learn all of it. The question is whose budget pays the tuition.
So ask plainly. How many government or health intranets have you delivered, and who on your team has worked inside a regulated environment? Politeness gets expensive here.
Who Actually Does the Work
The people in the pitch often aren't the people in the build. Not a scandal, since senior people do sell, but you're entitled to know the difference. Ask for the names of the developers and designers, what else they're booked on, and who your day-to-day contact becomes after signing. Ask where the team sits, too; time zones decide how fast a stuck decision gets unstuck.
What Happens After Launch
Intranets don't fail at launch. They fail a few months later, when nobody owns the news feed and the policy library has quietly gone stale. Ask what support covers after handover, what training the editor group gets, and what a small change costs in year two.
Then ask who owns it. Tenancy, admin accounts, documentation, and whether content exports in a format a human can use if you part ways. Cheaper to settle now than to discover later.
Ask What They'd Say No To
Best question in the evaluation, and it's six words. What would you talk us out of?
An agency that agrees to everything is selling you scope, and scope is where budgets go to die. A partner who says you probably don't need a custom build, because configuration and better information architecture will handle it, just talked themselves out of revenue. I'd take that over enthusiasm every time.
The Compliance Line Worth Pinning Down
Write this into the brief. Since 1 July 2024 the Digital Service Standard has applied to new and replacement staff-facing services, so a new government intranet is in scope; existing staff-facing services are excluded. WCAG 2.2 Level AA is the current reference point for Australian Government services and Digital NSW, though older contracts cite 2.1. Establish which version you're quoted against before signing, not during UAT.
Where Webcoda Fits
Fair's fair: this article says demand named work, so here's ours. Webcoda built the SharePoint intranet for NSW Justice Health, with a searchable, filterable, exportable employee directory, a media hub for news and announcements that surfaces trending documents, and a knowledge hub for policies and documents. There's a custom SharePoint intranet for NSW Health at 1 Reserve Road, and another for Mid North Coast Local Health District. Saluda Medical, Infrastructure NSW, Net Zero Economy Authority (NZEA) are also just some of the clients we have built amazing intranet solutions for!
Sydney-based, delivering since 2005, a certified B Corporation and a Microsoft Partner, building on current versions of SharePoint or Kentico, with planning that starts at scoping, workshops and stakeholder meetings. Ask us for referees, same as you'd ask anyone on the shortlist. And if your requirements point somewhere simpler than you'd budgeted for, we'll say so.
Frequently Asked Questions
Four questions do most of the work. What have you built that's like this, and can you show me? Who are two referees I can ring? Which named people will do the build, and are they free? What would you talk us out of? Everything else, including the platform debate, tends to sort itself out once you've got honest answers to those. Notice that none of them are technical. That's deliberate, because the technical response is the part an agency has already written a hundred times.
You can't click a link, so ask for a screen share of the live system with a person narrating it, and ask your questions during the walkthrough rather than after. Ask to see the staff directory, the document search and the policy library instead of the homepage. Published case studies help too, since a named client and a described feature set is a claim the agency has committed to in public and the client has agreed to. Anonymous portfolio entries aren't worthless, but do ask whether the anonymity is a confidentiality clause or a preference.
The build is similar. The delivery isn't. Government and health projects carry longer approval chains, security reviews that land at awkward moments, restructures that redraw the org chart mid-project, and accessibility expectations written into policy rather than into someone's good intentions. An agency that hasn't worked in that environment will adapt, but you're paying for the adaptation. Ask how many they've delivered in your sector and who specifically worked on them.
For a new or replacement service, yes. Since 1 July 2024 the Digital Service Standard has applied to new and replacement staff-facing services as well as public-facing ones, and an intranet is a staff-facing service. Existing staff-facing services are excluded, which is why plenty of live intranets aren't measured against it. State agencies and councils work to their own arrangements, and some adopt the Commonwealth criteria anyway, so check which policy layer you're sitting in before you write the requirement.
WCAG 2.2 Level AA is the current reference point for Australian Government digital services and for Digital NSW. The complication is that older policy documents and existing contracts still say 2.1 Level AA, so quotes arrive written against different targets and you end up comparing two prices that aren't for the same thing. Ask each agency in writing which version their quote assumes, and ask how they test, including whether people who use assistive technology are involved.
Ask for names and roles, not team sizes, and ask what else those people are committed to over your delivery window. Ask who takes over as your day-to-day contact after the sale, and whether anyone from the pitch stays involved. It's reasonable to ask for the key people to be listed in the contract. A straight answer here is a good sign in itself, because an agency comfortable naming its team is an agency that expects the team to still be there.
Talk to Webcoda
Webcoda is a Sydney-based, B Corp certified digital agency that has been building websites and enterprise web applications since 2005, for organisations including Sony, BridgeClimb, the Australian Federal Government and NSW Health. We are an Umbraco Gold Partner, a Gold partner for Xperience by Kentico and a HubSpot Solutions Partner, so platform advice comes without a single-vendor agenda.
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