# An Upgraded Experience with Drupal 10

Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services

 

 

We upgraded 8 sites to Drupal 10 for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) ahead of deadline.

 

 

 

 - 600 CMS.gov editors
- 0 Downtime during upgrades
- 8 Sites upgraded
 
 

 CivicActions, along with our partner [Fearless](https://fearless.tech/), facilitated Drupal 10 upgrades across the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) suite of websites, bringing improvements for editors, better security and accessibility, and community contributions to streamline upgrades for large- scale Drupal. The new Claro administration theme is cleaner, clearer, and more accessible.

The new rich text editor CKEditor 5 provides many UI enhancements and an improved user experience. The most significant change from previous versions of CKEditor is that editors must now use a predefined set of elements to configure the content, which leads to fewer instances of invalid markup patterns making their way into the published site. Since invalid or non-semantic markup is often the cause of accessibility issues, this is a major upgrade. In addition, the improved Layout Builder experience makes it easier for content editors to control more complex layouts, while still keeping consistent with CMS Design System standards.

The 8 sites included in the upgrade, which occurred ahead of schedule, were: [CMS.gov](https://www.cms.gov/); [Medicare.gov](https://www.medicare.gov/); [Openpaymentsdata.cms.gov](https://openpaymentsdata.cms.gov/); [Data.medicaid.gov](https://data.medicaid.gov/); [Data.healthcare.gov](https://data.healthcare.gov/); SDIS.medicaid.gov (internal CMS site); PFS.data.cms.gov (internal CMS site); QIC.cms.gov (internal CMS site); and [Provider Data Catalog (data.cms.gov/provider-data)](https://data.cms.gov/provider-data/).



 

 ## Expertise

- User Research and Testing
- Information Architecture
- Content Strategy
- Workflow and Interaction Design
- Prototype Development and Testing
- Visual Design
- Mobile Optimization
- API Design and Deployment
- Accessibility
- MVP Rapid Prototyping
- CI/CD and Continuous Deployment
 
 

 

## Tools

- Sketch
- InVision
- Mural
- Figma
- GitHub Enterprise
- Drupal
- Pa11y
- Cypress
- Docker
- Jenkins
- BackstopJS
- Node.js
- React
 
 

 

  ## Key outcomes

### More Accessible Experience

The new Claro administration theme is cleaner, clearer, and more accessible. In addition, the shift to CKEditor5 decreases accessibility errors from invalid markup.



 



### Better User Interface for Editors

The improved Layout Builder experience makes it easier for content editors to control more complex layouts, while still keeping consistent with CMS Design System standards.



 



### Improved Human-Centered Design

Drupal 10’s new rich text editor CKEditor 5 provides many UI enhancements and an improved user experience.



 



### Better than On Time

This work was completed before the deadline and included upgrades on eight websites for CMS, meaning more improvements sooner.



 



### Improved Security

Drupal 10’s upgraded Symfony 6 allows for increased security, so site users can feel secure that their data is private.



 



### Seamless Transition

With zero downtime during upgrades, this work was swiftly executed with a seamless transition to Drupal 10.



 



 

 

  ## Meet the team

 ![Andy Hawks](/sites/default/files/styles/uncropped_600w_webp/public/people_archive_assets/andy-hawks.jpg.avif?itok=3qZBCqN3) 

### Andy Hawks

Director of Drupal

 

 

 ![Cameron Prince](/sites/default/files/styles/uncropped_600w_webp/public/people_archive_assets/cameron-prince.png.avif?itok=0T6cbmAt) 

### Cameron Prince

Back End Engineer

 

 

 ![Dan Feder](/sites/default/files/styles/uncropped_600w_webp/public/people_archive_assets/dan-feder.jpg.avif?itok=bFuYd4zK) 

### Dan Feder

Back End Engineer

 

 

 ![Janette Day](/sites/default/files/styles/uncropped_600w_webp/public/people_archive_assets/janette-day.png.avif?itok=T2Sb-V5-) 

### Janette Day

Back End Engineer

 

 

 ![Jess Straatmann](/sites/default/files/styles/uncropped_600w_webp/public/people_archive_assets/jess-straatmann.jpg.avif?itok=a2MLivxr) 

### Jess Straatmann

Back End Engineer

 

 

 ![Patrick Koroma](/sites/default/files/styles/uncropped_600w_webp/public/people_archive_assets/patrick-koroma.jpg.avif?itok=kyBedBdr) 

### Patrick Koroma

Associate Director of Drupal

 

 

 ![Paul Walker](/sites/default/files/styles/uncropped_600w_webp/public/people_archive_assets/paul-walker.jpg.avif?itok=ZCmwgeVu) 

### Paul Walker

Full Stack Engineer

 

 

 ![Sam Lerner](/sites/default/files/styles/uncropped_600w_webp/public/people_archive_assets/sam-lerner.jpg.avif?itok=fPZZR10k) 

### Sam Lerner

Back End Engineer