Ongoing Drupal Support and Consulting New York State Senate
Improving Constituent Engagement with New York Legislation
NYSenate.gov is designed to inform & engage the public in the legislative process. It provides a space for efficient and accessible two-way communication between constituents and their senators.
*Case study images use placeholder text to protect internal information.
Developer Support and Process Refinement
After a complex upgrade from Drupal 7 to Drupal 9 with Drupal 7 end of life nearing, the web team at the Senate turned to Aten to support, maintain, and iterate upon the solid foundation of their site.
The first few months of our new engagement were spent getting familiar with the site’s code base, fixing high priority bugs, and getting to the root cause of issues in the theme layer to stop them from happening again so we could set the stage for proactive iterations.
We recommended and implemented changes to reduce bloat in the codebase, improving performance and increasing maintainability. We also found interesting ways to streamline the in-house development team’s process for deployments and Drupal module updates and we support Pantheon deployments on any site upgrades.
Constituent Dashboard
With NYSenate.gov safely upgraded to modern Drupal and issues resolved, the Senate team first wanted to create new ways of engaging their constituents with state legislation. We worked together to identify immediate updates while leaving room for future innovation.
We first set out to expand and enhance their existing Constituent Dashboard — a platform for New Yorkers, activists, and journalists to create an account in order to receive updates on general legislation, senator questionnaires, and petitions.
The Senate wanted each user to have a home base or dashboard where they could browse and filter the content they are interested in. The dashboard features a summary of the users’ interaction with the site and the search functionality we created allows constituents to filter content by keyword, issue, record type (bills, press releases, etc), month, and year.
Senator Dashboard
As a mirror to the Constituent Dashboard, we are currently completing an overhaul of the Senator Dashboard for each Senator (and their authorized staff) to see summarized visitor participation with their associated content such as support or opposition to their sponsored bills.
We redesigned the dashboard menu for improved navigation and created a new landing page that gives a clear overview of each senator’s constituent engagement. From this page, staff can access detailed information, including full demographics, contact details, engagement with key issues, and support for sponsored bills.
Additionally, they have access to robust lists of New Yorkers actively engaged in issues, petitions, and questionnaires. To ensure privacy, staff can only view constituents within their respective districts.
We had a complex, decade-and-a-half-old Drupal website and a small in-house development staff, and we weren’t interested in just outsourcing work. We needed a true partner to work alongside our internal team, and knew Aten’s ability to communicate and collaborate would be just as critical as the development skills they brought.
Aten delivered from day one. Our project manager is one of the best we’ve ever dealt with, our primary developer is an outstanding talent and pleasure to work with, and they’ve pulled in experts to help solve specific design and accessibility challenges.
Does your Drupal website have unique and complex needs that require a team of experts to tackle?