Because the site had existed for a long while and supported a tremendous amount of content, there were a number of technical challenges in building the new site and migrating content. These included:

• Needed to merge, migrate, and account for over 30 content types
• Extremely specific permissions were required for each content authoring group on the site. Users of each group needed to be able to create and edit content only in their own section of the site
• Use of a Global Taxonomy with data pulled in from an external service
• Mayor's Question Time: video meta data needed to be pulled into the site and displayed to the end user in a dynamic way
• In my area: Providing region-specific information to Londoners
• Modern.gov Integration: We needed content served by a third party skinned to look like london.gov.uk
• Jobs needed to be imported into the site using feeds

In addition, because there were a large number of stakeholders with different aspirations working on the project, all of whom were located in different places, communications were sometimes an issue and bottlenecks could occur.

By using an Agile development process, new requirements were able to emerge and evolve and the scope and features for the site could change throughout development. This allowed City Hall to put their personas’ needs first, which increased end-user satisfaction with london.gov.uk. A key result of this was the site functionality for “In my area,” which was born out of user feedback and is now one of the most popular sections of london.gov.uk.

One of the largest pain-points when it came to the site design was the content. The team aimed to reduce the site’s content by 75% and turn it into compelling, multimedia content, written in plain English. This was a big job, but content modelling with Drupal allowed the team to introduce a totally new Information Architecture. Migrate Module contributed to streamlining this onerous task. The team focused on merging content types, retiring fields to remove complexity and legacy debt, and increasing the long term viability of the site while reducing cost of ownership and maintenance.

The team used Agile project management methodology, which allowed them to continuously incorporate feedback and deliver the 18-month project on-time, on-budget, and without major problems.

During the design process, CTI utilised Atomic Design principles, which are ideally suited to achieve consistent design patterns on large and complex web sites. We continually worked with the third-party agency in charge of visual design, collaborating together to refine the design and seeking their output. Using Drupal’s extensible architecture and comprehensive automated testing ensured we maintained quality, and we used Drupal’s mobile-first functionality to build a fully responsive website.

The redevelopment of the GLA site shifted the focus of the site to Londoners. Previously, the site had been a repository of information, but lacked any kind of user-focus. With the redevelopment, Londoners were put first in almost all decisions made. The team built the site to be an interactive resource that was easily accessible and relevant to most, if not all, of the 8.63 million people living within the city of London. The new site has been hailed as a great success by the GLA, the people of London, and Mayorwatch.

A vast improvement on its predecessor and the next Mayor and Assembly will have a robust, scalable platform from which to shout about their work

MayorWatch

MayorWatch

Because of the bespoke nature of a lot of the GLA requirements, no code was committed back to the community during the initial engagement. However, the Mayor's team are keen to show that open source principles are being embraced by publicly funded organisations. In the interest of setting a new standard for transparency and community engagement, GLA and CTI Digital are now working to identify candidates for contributed modules. The listed modules can be found on Drupal.org; these are the start of this process, and others will follow.