DrupalCon Baltimore 2017: Strategy and Redesign for the U.S. Commission on Security

https://www.csce.gov/

The U.S. Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, also known as the Helsinki Commission, is a U.S. Congressional Commission that promotes human rights, military security, and economic cooperation in 57 countries in Europe, Eurasia, and North America. Nine Commissioners are members of the Senate, nine are members of the House of Representatives, and three are executive branch officials.

Members of the U.S. Congress created the Helsinki Commission in solidarity with activists in the Soviet Union and the countries of Eastern Europe who saw the Helsinki Final Act as a new opportunity to press governments to improve their human rights records and allow, despite Europe’s division, expanded contacts between people.

Why Drupal was chosen: 
Drupal was chosen for its modular architecture and inherent ability to render dynamically multi-relational content for a diversely interested global audience. New Target’s strategists and designers created an experience in Drupal for users to be able to search easily and parse that content depending on their needs — allowing each visitor to access themes or country-specific information that is relevant to them. Drupal gave us content and sub-content types along with a great deal of flexibility and ease in creating multiple complex fields within each content type. We were then able to create dynamic displays of content that can aggregate information in various appealing ways, giving each user a personal choice and experience to interact on their own terms. We used the taxonomy module to create state and topics issues with terms and sub-terms that enable visitors to filter and further drill down to information that is based on relevance and interests. The Commission needed a platform that was more than just sharing information through a newsfeed or blog, and Drupal provided our creative team with a platform that provided a content-rich site where users can explore the site in a way that they choose. Additionally, we were able to extend the Drupal platform with only the modules we needed, so it’s not a heavy performing site. This is beneficial not only in performance but also in the ability to extend the website to make the system even more dynamic and add integrations into other content-rich databases.

Drupal is a registered trademark of Dries Buytaert.