Accelerating the Government’s Digital Platform

The public sector offers unique perspectives, challenges, and opportunities. Public sector organizations must continually update their digital presence to meet evolving expectations, and also remain consistent, dependable, and accessible resources. Citizens use public sector resources to make some of their most important life decisions. Offering ease of use, accessibility, comprehensive information, regulatory guidelines, and engaging experiences is a difficult digital tightrope to walk. 

Phase2 has successfully partnered with agencies in this sector for more than 20 years, becoming intimately familiar with its shifting landscapes and ever-evolving needs. Phase2 has been at the forefront of helping public sector organizations of all types and sizes -- state, local, and federal -- adopt tools, processes, and strategies that have propelled them into the digital age. Our work in the government’s digital transformation began in 2009, as whitehouse.gov moved to Drupal, This site unlocked the potential for more open-source content management in the public sector. Many other agencies followed suit, leveraging Phase2’s OpenPublic™ distribution as the basis for their digital properties -- providing a mobile-friendly, component-based platform that featured out-of-the-box functionality for typical government use cases. 

Today, more than 300 agencies are still using OpenPublic™. While we’re past the days where a “simple” website redesign provides true transformation in mission and operational impact, citizens continue to expect more tailored, efficient, and connected services from government agencies. This means integrating multiple systems, processes, and functions to enable a robust digital platform. In addition, the 21st Century Integrated Digital Experience Act (IDEA) is a new law that requires government digital products to meet standards related to search, accessibility, security, and align to the US Web Design System.

Phase2's Digital Government Accelerator (DGA) helps organizations meet all the standards of the 21st Century IDEA Act, but also accelerate their ability to develop digital products that meet and exceed the expectations of citizens. The Digital Government Accelerator (DGA) includes:

Frontend Standardization and Design Consistency at Scale with Outline

Outline is an open-source design system builder where the United States Web Design System (USWDS) components come standard. 

Outline leans into the learnings that have been discovered since design systems became the best way to scale multi-site/multi-product ecosystems with consistent content, design, and branded elements. Using the versatility of web components, Tailwind, and PostCSS, developers are able to pick and choose the features they want to obtain, rather than having to consume an entire package, causing bloat and bottlenecks to performance. With the USWDS style guide built in, public sector clients are able to save more than four weeks of development time.

Personalization and Accessibility From the Beginning

Phase2 compiles and visualizes the data in a consumable dashboard using developer tests that are industry best practices. At a glance, this custom dashboard arms product owners with the right information to make important decisions and understand the high-level state of accessibility in their workstream.

More than simply WCAG accessibility standards, citizens require that messaging and features are customized to their needs. By implementing Phase2’s data and analytics dashboarding, product owners are able to execute a true personalization strategy that delivers the right experience to each audience segment.

Infrastructure Efficiency Lifeline |  Automating Testing and Speeding Performance with Octane

This includes pre-selected Drupal modules that work together for a clean, effective infrastructure. Phase2 has waded through module and tooling options to develop industry agreed-upon methodologies for the public sector. (Git Workflows, GitLab CI pipelines, Kubernetes Phase2 DevCloud, testing framework, and local development tooling.

The DGA can efficiently speed product development, allowing government entities to focus on the task at hand: the Citizen. 

Phase2 has implemented the DGA for several significant entities in government and expects it to become the standard for public sector sites -- much like our historical contribution to public sector digital platforms with OpenPublic™. 

For more information on the Digital Government Accelerator, join our interest group and we will share content and insights. Or, you can reach out to Ben Coit, Managing Director, Public Sector to discuss directly.