Get feeds in and pipe them out. Tag items within them so you can port filtered content across the site. Make any feed auto-discoverable from any page.

Preset tools for reminding authors (not CMS users) to check content, and escalation options for when they don't. Hook it up to analytics and SEO insight tools to give authors tough love about how well or badly their pages are performing. Scheduled management reports showing out of date content in need of the feather duster.

Preset vanilla templates for common government content types, with standard fields and eGMS metadata and semantic markup as per the great suggestions discussed here http://is.gd/8BgvY

Base it on COI usability toolkit wireframes as per http://usability.coi.gov.uk/

To contain:

Minister's profile, speech, statement
News story, press release, social media release
Publication, consultation, consultations index pages
Policy article, FAQ
Campaign
A-Z index (with synonym terms)

Set up all the bits you need for your page (metadata, images, downloads, widgets) there and then, not in some other part of the CMS. And when you publish the page, publish all the things it contains too. Is that so much to ask?

Designed not as a kitchen-sink-comes-with-everything platform, but recognises that specialist services will need to be integrated. Comes with RSS/XML/JSON consumption and display tools, has lots of RSS/Atom/RDFa output, has a back end that plays nicely with other web services and makes it easy to add the email newsletter or form builder tool of your choice

Insert any kind of third party embed code (video sharing, maps, slide decks, documents, widgets and apps) or javascript or flash without chewing it up.

We all want them. The ideas are out there. So why don't most CMSs have a set of killer sidebar widgets as standard? RSS, text/html, tag clouds, recently changed pages, related or recommended content (based on semantics or user behaviour), most popular pages (hooked up to analytics API), RSS and email alerts from this page...

Make it impossible for a user action to cause an internal link to break anywhere on the site without doing something about it first. Run a daily scan for dead external links which offers ways to fix, replace or remove them.

Information for admins about contributors’ past performance (this user has had 40% of their pages rejected in the past). Diff tools, dip sampling, quality assurance checklists and scorecards built in. Automatic feedback to contributors when their pages are corrected. Promotion and demotion of role memberships based on QA activity (as a kind of built in accreditation system). Spell check configurable to house style guide.

Generate relevant tags, keywords, IPSV subject terms on the fly based on the page content as it's keyed in

Upload custom CSS files for individual pages, and override the main CSS for own-brand campaigns.

Replace any string of characters in any part of the site with another, either by electing to 'replace all' or by flicking through them manually. Useful when you find your employer has got a new name while you'd popped out to buy a muffin during the latest machinery of government change.

Get content out and put content in from other CMSs easily. Vital for reshuffles and machinery of government changes when speeches, profiles and entire sections can move home.

Export all content as a spreadsheet showing structure. Hit a button to print off cards or export to virtual tool for card sorting. Get reports based on all selections of metadata; like last updated, sell by date, who owns it, page length, depth within site, most/least edited - or any combination of available data in the site.

Select any bit of metadata or sidebar content and cascade it from a parent to all of its children. Specify if new children added later should also inherit the same values.

Create an index page, or embed an index anywhere within a page, based on any type of item and any combination of data values in the CMS. Specify sort order (alphabetical, chronological, relevance).

That other place could be a website, or service, microblog, mini-blog (tumblr, posterous) but instead of making a copy the content it is "represented" and referenced. Content Tranclusion http://is.gd/91R73

Search the CMS to find anything, across any fields.

Make it impossible for a user to enter invalid markup, set link targets to a new window, embed an image without alternative text. Not everything can be automated but a lot can, and isn't always. (Exhibit A: WYSIWYG rich text editors with underline and font colour options and no option to turn them off, FFS).