Sector(s)

Team Members

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Project Team

  • BCT Partners Engineering Team – Responsible for developing and deploying the Drupal CMS platform on AWS.

  • Prime Contractor (HHS lead vendor) – Oversaw delivery of the AHEAD.HIV.gov project under the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services.

  • DevPanel DevOps Team – Provisioned secure AWS environments, automated CI/CD, delivered compliance-ready infrastructure, and provided ongoing DevOps support

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Organizations Involved

Community contributions

This project illustrates how DevPanel strengthens Drupal’s role in high-impact government and nonprofit initiatives:

  • Proof of Drupal in Federal Use Cases: By powering AHEAD.HIV.gov, Drupal demonstrates its ability to meet stringent U.S. federal security, compliance, and scalability standards.

  • Accelerated Adoption: DevPanel’s automation removed DevOps barriers that might have slowed or derailed a Drupal implementation, making it easier for BCT’s team to succeed.

  • Reusable Best Practices: The infrastructure-as-code, CI/CD pipelines, and compliance-ready templates established for this project can be replicated by other Drupal teams facing similar requirements.

  • Event & Knowledge Sharing: DevPanel shares case studies, sponsors Drupal events, and provides training environments that make it easier for community developers to gain hands-on experience with modern cloud workflows

BCT Partners, a mission-driven consulting firm, was subcontracted on the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services’ AHEAD.HIV.gov project—a Drupal-based public health dashboard. Their task was to set up secure Dev, Stage, and Production environments on AWS with automated CI/CD pipelines and compliance-ready security. After months of manual effort, two engineers struggled to get the system running reliably.

During a 17-minute demo, DevPanel provisioned the full stack—complete with pre-hardened security templates, Git-integrated CI/CD, and automated deployments. BCT immediately adopted DevPanel, cutting deployment timelines by 95%, reducing risk, and gaining on-demand DevOps support. What had been a mission-critical bottleneck became a repeatable, secure, and efficient workflow

About the project

Goals
The U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) needed a public health dashboard—AHEAD.HIV.gov—to provide policymakers and professionals with real-time insights into the fight against HIV. BCT Partners, as a subcontractor, was tasked with:

  • Building and deploying a Drupal-based CMS into AWS.

  • Creating secure Dev and Staging environments.

  • Automating CI/CD pipelines for faster iteration.

  • Ensuring compliance with federal security standards.

  • Delivering a reliable and repeatable promotion process from Stage to Production.

Requirements
To succeed, the project required:

  • Secure AWS infrastructure pre-hardened for compliance.

  • Automated CI/CD pipelines connected to Git repositories.

  • Infrastructure-as-code for consistency and repeatability.

  • DevOps expertise to fill gaps in BCT’s small engineering team.

Outcome
After months of stalled manual effort, BCT turned to DevPanel. In a single 17-minute demo, DevPanel provisioned fully configured Dev, Stage, and Production environments with pre-built CI/CD pipelines and hardened security. Deployment time was reduced by 95%, compliance was built-in from day one, and releases became repeatable and low-risk.

BCT’s developers could now focus on building features rather than troubleshooting infrastructure, while DevPanel acted as an extension of their DevOps team—delivering guidance, incident support, and production readiness checks

Why Drupal was chosen

Drupal was selected for the AHEAD.HIV.gov project because it is a proven, government-grade CMS with the flexibility, security, and scalability required for federal health initiatives. Its open-source foundation allowed BCT Partners and HHS to avoid vendor lock-in while benefiting from a large ecosystem of community-tested modules.

Key reasons included:

  • Security & Compliance: Drupal has a strong track record of meeting strict federal security requirements.

  • Scalability: It can handle large volumes of sensitive health data and high user traffic.

  • Flexibility: The module ecosystem supports dashboards, APIs, and data visualization tools critical for public health reporting.

  • Community Support: Drupal’s open-source community ensures ongoing innovation, updates, and security coverage.

In short, Drupal provided the reliability of an enterprise CMS while allowing the project to meet compliance and performance goals on AWS

Technical Specifications

Drupal version: