Launching FCC.GOV
Our latest project has been designing and building a new website for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), powered by Drupal. A year ago, the FCC began a process to gather feedback from the public on its website, originally built in the 1990s, to understand how people would like the FCC's web presence to look and operate. At the same time, the FCC worked internally to identify improvements to the agency's web publishing workflow that would allow it to be more responsive and take advantage of emerging technologies and internet trends. Both of these efforts have come together in the new FCC.gov — the goal: to redefine the FCC's web presence, and more importantly, to provide an example to the public of what an excellent .gov experience can be.
Built for Consumers
The new FCC.gov is focused on the user experience of everyday consumers. The site provides a great search experience and clearly organized content in a number of formats, including video.
Powered by Drupal
The FCC chose Drupal because it is open source, proven to be scalable in the enterprise environment, and highly customizable. The site utilizes over 30 contributed modules, and we created 10 brand new modules to power the unique features of the website.
Topic-based Browsing
Rather than structure the website around the structure of the agency, the FCC website is architected to focus on content. All content is organized by general and specific topic areas, which makes browsing much easier — you only need to know what you're looking for, not which Bureau or Office it comes from. The topic model also allows FCC to provide related information for almost every page on the website, showing users content they might be interested but didn't know existed.
Emphasis on APIs and Data Publishing
The new website seeks to make every piece of content available to anyone through a set of rich, RESTful APIs. The goal is to ensure every citizen has access to the content and work of the agency when and where they need it. The FCC.gov website is just one part of the agency's online presence, and the API layer makes building new, non-HTML products easier, quicker and cheaper.