DrupalCampWIJuly 23rd and 24th, 2010, Madison, WI

Last year's announcement that the White House website had moved to Drupal is only one example of the growing influence of open-source software in government. With the goal of promoting greater transparency, efficiency and accountability, the New York State Senate also chose Drupal as the platform with which to relaunch its website. Launched in May 2009, NYSenate.gov has been heralded as a leading example of the use of "Web 2.0" technologies by a legislature, inviting citizens to become creators of content on the site as well as consumers of content, and including interactive sections for every Senator and every Committee of the Senate.

Using a combination of 132 Drupal contributed modules and 24 modules custom-coded for specific Senate needs, NYSenate.gov illustrates how social publishing can help provide greater government transparency. Each State Senator can have a blog, Twitter integration and more. Live streaming video is available for each committee meeting, session or other event at which official Senate business is conducted, and the NYSenate.gov also provides archived video that is cross-posted to YouTube, Blip TV and Vimeo. The site also integrates with the Senate's OpenLegislation search portal, enable people to view and comment on all pieces of legislation currently under consideration.

Sheldon Rampton, who works as the Senate's senior web developer under Chief Information Officer Andrew Hoppin,, will explain some of the design choices and challenges involved in building NYSenate.gov. The Office of the CIO has released its custom modules as open source projects on Drupal.org and is looking for opportunities to share code with other institutions with similar needs. Is it possible to make Drupal the platform of choice for government institutions at multiple levels -- municipalities, legislatures, executive and government agencies?

Session slides and an NYSS tarball (including all site code and a MySQL dump) are available here.