The challenge

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is working to improve the confusing experience many Veterans have when navigating multiple VA sites built on a mix of legacy technologies.

Having launched a reinvigorated VA.gov in 2018 as an important step to a unified Veteran-first digital platform, the agency still needed to build out a common content management system (CMS), establish consistent descriptions for services, and organize the information in an accessible way for Veterans in need of health care.

Client goal

The large-scale pilot effort focused on using one of the regional VA Medical Centers as a model for all future VA.gov content. This would empower the VA to:

• Provide better healthcare management and scheduling online
• Explain benefits clearly and provide intuitive paths to apply for them
• Help minority and women Veterans find services specific to their needs
• Provide online connection with care coordinators
• Establish a model for content publishing and governance VA-wide

We integrated the new CMS with the existing site architecture and helped create standards for content and design that make it easier for VA staff to do their jobs—while directly improving quality of life for millions of Veterans seeking health care and benefits.

Our approach

Working alongside our partners Agile Six and Nava in collaboration with the U.S. Digital Service at VA and other organizations, our team was one of many moving parts in a complex project. We provided technical leadership and modeled transparent communication practices that helped the various teams work effectively together.

The technical strategy shifted to a “decoupled” approach partway through the project, requiring us to integrate the new CMS backend with the VA’s existing frontend system so that Veterans and caregivers could access content across multiple platforms. Agile practices helped us navigate this and other evolving priorities in a large ecosystem undergoing significant changes.

Smooth the technical transition

We managed the move to the new CMS without “pausing” the old site so the VA could re-use their existing front-end technology instead of starting from scratch. This meant we had to juggle content being served from two sources (GitHub and Drupal) during the transition, while training VA staff to use the new CMS effectively. We also set up a CI/CD pipeline for automated testing to ensure healthy functioning systems.

Find out what people need

To make sure health services and benefits are easy to find and understand, we tested navigation and content with real people, including unique groups like women, minority, and LGBTQ Veterans. We also interviewed VA staff responsible for maintaining the website, to understand their pain points and develop authoring and approval processes that make their jobs easier.

Empower a Veteran-first approach

The VA has been working to pave the way for a Veteran-focused digital experience, and this project was a landmark moment in propagating that approach throughout the organization. Human centered design and plain language are no longer the sole purview of digital experts — we developed systems that allow VA staff across the country to participate in the modernization of service delivery.

CivicActions, along with our partner Fearless, 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; Medicare.gov; Openpaymentsdata.cms.gov; Data.medicaid.gov; 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).

The challenge

The CMS Information Security and Privacy Group (ISPG) is in charge of the policies and programs that ensure the security and privacy of data that is handled by CMS information systems. ISPG staff and contractors work to maintain policies, distribute guidance, communicate with customers, support security programs, and promote new initiatives.

While doing this important work over the years, they amassed a large collection of documents and resources that were spread across various locations and formats. This led to issues with version control and made it hard for people to find the information needed to do their security-related tasks.

Without a single, trusted location for cybersecurity information – and with many of the documents being in static PDFs that were full of jargon and hard to understand – finding essential information from ISPG could be onerous, negatively impacting CMS’ overall security posture.

Client goal

To improve their customer service and promote better security across CMS systems, ISPG engaged our team to develop a user-friendly website (informally known as “CyberGeek”) at security.cms.gov that is recognized as the authoritative home for CMS security and privacy information. With this project, ISPG aims to:

• Improve customer service through modern information delivery
• Support CMS security personnel with the resources needed for their critical work
• Make security topics and policies more approachable and human-centered
• Build user-friendly processes to help ISPG staff maintain their content
• Establish a platform where customers can find news and updates from ISPG

Our Approach

Together with our partner Affix Digital, we worked closely with ISPG stakeholders and customers to understand the cybersecurity ecosystem at CMS. We built relationships across ISPG and partnered with their leadership and program teams to streamline their content into a single, trusted platform that makes cybersecurity information approachable and human-centered.

First, listen and learn

We started by interviewing ISPG customers to make sure we built the site’s information architecture in a way that made sense to the people using it. Card sorting – a process that involves users in the design of the site navigation – helped solidify the menus and categories that would be the foundation of a user’s journey through the site.

Open source and accessible

We built a decoupled site using Drupal and React to give the client flexibility for technology changes in the future. Utilizing the U.S. Web Design System (USWDS), we created a component library that ensures the site meets government requirements for things like accessibility and mobile responsiveness. We used Storybook to build components in isolation before deployment to the site, catching errors in real-time so they could be fixed on the spot.

Search at the core

One of the main problems ISPG wanted to solve for their customers was the headache of searching for security documents, templates, and program information – which had been difficult to find in various internal repositories. We implemented a powerful search feature using Algolia, with filter options to help people find information specific to their needs. Improvements to search are ongoing as we learn more about how people use it.

The challenge

The Georgia Board of Health Care Workforce (GBHCW) serves communities in the state with a focus on medically underserved areas. The agency provides data reports on the physician, physician assistant, and nurse workforce and funds loan repayment programs to recruit healthcare workers to underserved parts of the state. However, healthcare workforce planners were having trouble estimating and meeting demand for practitioners across counties --especially as the COVID-19 pandemic drew many of them out of Georgia and into various hotspot states. Additionally, without publicly-available data on healthcare workers, GBHCW struggled to inform medical facilities with potential funding and staffing needs."

The agency saw an opportunity to leverage the DKAN open data platform where they were already hosting their data, combined with custom data services from our team. We worked with GBHCW to create data visualizations and tools that make it easy for staff, medical practitioners, and the public to access the information needed to build a resilient and responsive state healthcare workforce.

Client goal

We were tasked with crafting detailed, easy-to-read visualizations for data provided by the Georgia Composite Medical Board and the Georgia Board of Nursing. We also built robust, multifunctional dashboards that allow data to be searched across physicians, physician assistants, and nurses. The dashboards needed to:

• Host and display data resources with user needs in mind
• Show the number of licensed healthcare practitioners in a given area
• Display data in a clear, user-friendly, and accessible way
• Be easily adaptable and sustainable with the constant influx of new data
• Reflect diverse intersections within the data (gender, race, qualifications, etc.)
• Help legislators make data-based decisions to improve the healthcare field

Our approach

Because other state agencies were already using the open source Drupal framework to publish and manage government content, GBHCW chose the Drupal-based open data platform DKAN for their data dashboards. The agency also saved time and money by utilizing an existing contract with us, adding new digital products to pre-built infrastructure.

As the core maintainers of DKAN, we provided research-based recommendations and custom data design and development services to make sure the dashboards solved the right problems for agency staff and stakeholders. The project was so successful that the client reached out to us with the intent to create more dashboards to display patient care and underserved areas data.

Build for real user needs

We brought a human-centered approach to the data dashboards, and used the React.js library to build intuitive visualizations. We listened carefully to the desired outcomes, researched user needs, then made suggestions for how people could best learn about the demographic makeup and overall distribution of physicians, physician assistants, and nurses throughout the state.

Deliver early and often

For the redesign of the data dashboards, we used agile sprint cycles with daily stand-up meetings to develop and implement small chunks of working software quickly. We used test data provided by GBHCW to create proofs-of-concept, with graphs and charts that made sense of the various elements we knew the client wanted to showcase.

Align and adapt

Meeting regularly with project leaders at the agency ensured that the vision and work remained in alignment. Together we reviewed work that had been done, checked if adjustments were needed, and responded quickly to evolving requests or new data. Staying in close communication ensured there were no surprises and the client goals were met.

The challenge

The Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) manages the world’s largest public transit system, helping over 11 million passengers get around New York City every day. The data universe is complex and constantly changing, representing a massive network of trains, tracks, and stations — which need to display reliably and in real time to keep riders informed. Acquia and CivicActions worked with MTA to extend the agency’s existing Drupal content management system (CMS) to a network of devices using Amazon’s Internet of Things (IoT). We helped MTA set the modern standard for using digital signage to communicate train arrival times, weather info, and service updates — making it easier for riders to plan their routes and get there on time.

Client goal

Riders rely on station signs and the MTA’s website for travel information to help them know when their train will arrive. To better inform riders in real time, MTA needed a way to display information from their website on digital signs in subway stations and platforms.

• Improve travel experience for subway riders by providing up-to-date info
• Empower MTA administrators to easily manage data on a familiar platform
• Provide real time data to help modernize public transportation
• Implement a flexible system to accommodate future growth

Our approach

To better serve their customers and set their employees up for success, the MTA needed a single administrative site that could manage a lot of data from a variety of external feeds. Drupal 8 was a natural choice for the CMS because it can seamlessly integrate data from all these sources.

Then we connected over 3,000 MTA digital screens as unique devices on a private and secure “Internet of Things” within Amazon Web Services — allowing Drupal to push location-specific data to each individual screen. Read a technical deep-dive on this work from our partner.

Decoupled approach for flexibility

The MTA needed to display data reliably regardless of the device or front-end design. We created a custom decoupled (headless) Drupal theme built in React.js to adapt to different screen sizes and mobile platforms. The decoupled backend continually evaluates and pushes data from a variety of web service APIs, while compensating for incomplete or outdated information, so users only see data that’s relevant to them.

ontent modeling for data management

To help MTA staff manage the flow of data, we created a digital representation — a content model — of the routes, stations, platforms, tracks, and signs throughout the system. This helped us break large data sets into smaller, actionable components so the right information can be served up in the right context.

Open source for cost savings

By using open source technology instead of expensive proprietary software, we helped the MTA lower costs and avoid vendor lock-in. Open source software like Drupal also offers a more flexible web-publishing approach than complex legacy solutions. Additionally, an open source approach can help agencies ensure better web accessibility for the long term.