Centralised implementation & relaunch of the Rhineland-Palatinate State Government website
As a framework contract partner of the Rhineland-Palatinate State Agency for Data and Information (LDI), we create and maintain the website of the Rhineland-Palatinate state government and many of its institutions, agencies and ministries.
Requirement:
The Rhineland-Palatinate state government’s website, which had previously been heavily news-oriented, was to be comprehensively overhauled as part of a relaunch and adapted to the changing usage habits of its visitors (keyword: optimisation for mobile devices). It was also necessary to give the website a stronger thematic focus.
Solution:
Based on the client’s specifications and requirements, the website underwent a fundamental overhaul during an extended design phase. Great emphasis was placed on readability, accessibility and mobile usability. The integration of various thematic sections highlights the informative nature of the website and enables visitors to explore the state government’s key policy areas.
The responsive relaunch of the website was implemented using the TYPO3 CMS, with Foundation serving as the basis for the HTML development. In addition to user data, around 20,000 news items and just over 10,000 newsletter subscribers were migrated.
The websites of the ministries and other state authorities were gradually migrated to a central installation and now also feature the new design.
Scope of services
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The technology behind it
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Reality check?
Gladly.
Responsive Multi-Level-Navigation
‘Kunst und Bau’
The ‘Kunst und Bau’ satellite installation brings together works of art created over more than 50 years as part of the ‘Kunst-am-Bau’ funding scheme in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate, as well as those yet to be created. It also serves as a platform for announcing competitions, featuring contributions from artists, sharing the experiences of building owners and users, and showcasing ideas from architects and artists.
As the site does not differ from the main website in terms of design or technology, it offers high brand recognition whilst requiring minimal technical and financial investment.
Data Protection & Freedom of Information
The most noticeable change from the basic installation is the new colour scheme, which, unlike the red tones of the central installation, consists of blue and purple content elements and accents. The new two-colour scheme is used to visually distinguish between the two main topics – data protection and freedom of information – thereby directly guiding visitors to the topics that are important to them. In addition to the new colours, a number of buttons have also been redesigned to support the website’s intended reading and navigation experience, which is deliberately different from that of the central installation.
Alongside the visual changes, the project involved the transfer of legacy data and the migration of press releases from the previous website.
Relaunch of the State Parliament website
The Rhineland-Palatinate State Parliament is the institution responsible for the running of the State Parliament. It is the parliament of the federal state of Rhineland-Palatinate.
A relaunch to TYPO3 7.6 was carried out, and the central website of the Rhineland-Palatinate State Parliament was implemented based on the RLP standard setup with design customisations. The Rhineland-Palatinate State Parliament’s website provides information (among other things) on sessions and events, Members of the State Parliament, parliamentary groups and the workings of the State Parliament.
Technically, the website is based on the RLP central installation. In terms of its feature set, the State Parliament is the largest RLP satellite site. At the heart of the website are the features relating to Members of the State Parliament, which are intricately interconnected via the Members’ database.
These features include, amongst others:
MPs’ section: search, list, details page, specialist committees, constituency map, seating plan, live stream integration, plenary archive and OPAL integration (the State Parliament’s Open Parliamentary Information System).
The State Parliament’s OPAL information system provides details of parliamentary materials. The OPAL integration was implemented in TYPO3 via the SOLR index.
Relaunch of the Police Website
As dkd is already responsible for the Rhineland-Palatinate state government’s websites, the task now was to provide a satellite system for the relaunch of the Rhineland-Palatinate police website, based on the RLP central installation. Furthermore, an extension to the news module was requested; this was supplemented with a contact form and now serves to display wanted person records externally. In addition, a request was made to integrate a TYPO3 extension that also enables the embedding of videos on the web pages as part of the wanted person records. A future adaptation of the general contact form is intended to cater to the specific needs of the police by, on the one hand, avoiding any temporary storage of server-related data and, on the other hand, eliminating mandatory fields in the form.
Thanks to the technical infrastructure of the RLP central installation, the majority of the development work for a relaunch had already been completed and could therefore be utilised directly. The new satellite system was inherently responsive and utilised page templates, content elements and extensions already established within the RLP environment. The implementation could therefore focus on specific extensions and special requirements of the police.
Prior to the implementation of the technical project, a workshop was also held with the editors and those responsible for the police website, during which the website’s information architecture was assessed and restructured with a user-centred approach.
Wireframing, design phase
We can manage without TYPO3
Transparency Platform
The Transparency Platform has undergone a further technical revamp to enable the presentation of the information required under the State Transparency Act (LTranspG). The Transparency Platform provides citizens with easy access to data and information held by the administration. The administration itself is given the option to make its data available for publication via various channels.
CKAN – an open-source software platform for cataloguing and publishing data – forms the technical basis for this. The CKAN interface was customised for the project to ensure it complies with all the state’s key corporate design guidelines. In addition, we provided training and advice to the various suppliers on integrating their systems. This was a significant part of the project.
OpenData platform
Also built on the CKAN platform, the Rhineland-Palatinate OpenData Platform provides centralised access to administrative data and information from the state and its local authorities. The portal is being continuously expanded and now includes a growing number of documents (starting with 2,300) from 33 ministries, agencies, districts, local authorities and associations.
In this project, dkd is responsible for the technical support and further development of the OpenData Platform. The layout is due to be revamped shortly.
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