Case study: Brisbane, California

Brisbane Website

What we Did

On our recommendation, The City of Brisbane  chose to implement an open source Drupal system over Microsoft-based solutions for their new municipal website.  Meetings were conducted with almost every employee (about 30 people) in groups and individually to hear what people needed and how they worked.  Then the necessary components of the stable of over 7000 Drupal modules were assembled and the system was configured to meet their needs.

Emphasis was placed on assessment of the city’s workflows and style operation and the system was assembled and configured to meet those needs in an iterative fashion.  This resulted in a unique system but not a custom built one.  Many vendors love to talk about their "custom" solution.  This we see as a major problem.  The moment one has a custom solution, vendor lock-in starts to engage.  Custom module work was done to bring over data from their asp.net legacy website, as a one-time operation, but the site is 100% “stock” Drupal and a carefully collected set of modular add-ons.

Brisbane benefited directly from the community supported open source paradigm.  Because there are no licensing fees for the CMS itself, the database it runs on, or the server operating system, money was freed up for consulting, configuration and training.  Furthermore, because Drupal is built on a common framework, there was no vendor lock-in.
 
The result is a very workable system that the city is very happy with - not just in its aesthetics but also in how it enables them to use the system actively to communicate with the public. The site balances aesthetics, navigability, access, and data storage in a way that works with the city.
 
The project was completed on time and on budget. 
 

What They Said

[brisbaneca.org] was a daunting project, with the huge amount of information most government sites house, but C.J. has the know-how and experience to make even the most complex websites extremely easy to navigate and maneuver.  He was constantly thinking from the perspective of the citizen, laying out department menus and information in a way that was not only easy to find, but enjoyable to go through, too!  I think that made all the difference in our website being so widely received and welcomed by the community.  I had a great experience myself working with C.J. -- I just wish we had found him sooner!”
 
-Caroline Cheng, Administrative Management Analyst
 

Some Features of the Site:

  • A workable blog/news/tips section supports news from various departments
  • An easy to update calendar is well integrated
  • Content structure supports meetings, including agendas, minutes, attachments, video and integration with the calendar.
  • Staff can actually format pages and upload photographs they can edit pages freely
  • The site has custom forms that really do what the city wants and the data doesn't go into black holes
  • The site has integrated feedback mechanisms that work in addition to the forms, Uservoice is integrated (see the tab on the right).
  • Google analytics integrated