Adopting Drupal as the Core Platform For Local Government Online Communication & Content Distribution

Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council is the local authority for Dun Laoghaire Rathdown county, which has a population of just over 200,000 people and 35 named towns, villages and suburbs. The County Council’s staff and representatives are responsible for delivering high quality services and infrastructure for its population including local parks, sports and leisure services, housing, libraries, arts and cultural activities, planning, economic development, local tourism, environment and waste management. 

The Problem

The existing dlr website was built around the County Council Departments rather than citizens, and used internal jargon that the residents were not familiarised with. The Council used several different platforms for online content creation and distribution, and was dependant on only a few internal staff from the IT department to edit and update online content.

The Solution

Making a strategic decision to move away from the large number of disparate web platforms that had been developed by both the internal team and a mix of external providers, the dlr IT team selected Drupal as their platform on which to build the next generation of DLR websites and internal intranet/extranet sites. The goal was set to build a user-centred and easily managed, responsive, public service website to better showcase and promote the wide range of services and activities offered to DLR residents, visitors and businesses, and to establish a SSO framework and architecture for future distributed content publishing. 

The session will be presented by Stephen Kenealy, co-founder of Monsoon Consulting - one of the leading Drupal Agencies in Dublin, and Stephen Brady, Head of the IT Department in dlr County Council. The presentation will revolve around the following topics:

 • Start small, aim high: Drupal as the core platform for online communication & content publishing
 • On-boarding stakeholders: Getting everyone on the same page 
 • Agile Drupal: Managing risk and change
 • Migration, Integration & Training
 • Standard-setting for government online presence

The session is addressed to:
 • Government bodies that are looking to adopt Drupal as their core online platform
 • Agencies looking to understand best practices in implementing Enterprise level Drupal websites
 • Drupal developers working with Agile development methodology

About the presenters
Stephen Kenealy is CMO and Co-Founder of Monsoon Consulting. He is responsible for new business development, client on-boarding and plays a consulting role in the development of the strategic direction of client projects and on-going account management. Stephen has over 15 years’ experience managing and advising on digital development projects and providing digital marketing and commerce consulting, and has spoken at different conferences, events & meetups in Ireland and UK.