Sector(s)

Project Team

d-NRW, Ministry for Schools and Education of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia

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Organizations Involved

Community contributions

nrwGOV as the country's CMS coincides in layers 1 “Basis” and 2 “Formung” with the Drupal distribution deGov published on drupal.org (https://www.drupal.org/project/degov), ie all developments that arise in the context of nrwGOV projects - if possible - flow back into the Drupal community. The only exceptions are functions from layer 3 “State Level North Rhine-Westphalia”, as these are functions that are particularly worthy of protection (e.g. fonts protected by licensing).

In order to create a uniform internet presence for all state departments in North Rhine-Westphalia, we have taken over the relaunch and migration of the website of the Ministry of Schools and Education of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia from NPS Fiona to nrwGOV. The foundation was the state content management system (CMS) based on Drupal 8, which publicplan GmbH developed with commission from the Ministry for Economics, Innovation, Digitization and Energy of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia (MWIDE), the CIO of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia. Westphalia and the d-NRW AöR. It can be used by all state authorities in North Rhine-Westphalia as a basic CMS for various presence - departmental presence, topic portals and the intranet - free of charge. We also integrated the state design, which is provided by the state government and can be used free of charge by the departments as part of website relaunches.

About the project

As a CMS, our Drupal Distribution nrwGOV is geared towards the requirements of public administration.

The CIO of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) had it developed in order to guarantee a visually uniform presence for all state authorities. Developed for the first time on the basis of Drupal 8, it was then made available for free use by the authorities in North Rhine-Westphalia. The aim behind this was to be able to display various presences, such as departmental presence, topic portals or intranet, in a uniform design in order to be able to guarantee recognition and orientation for the citizens.

For the Ministry of School and Education in North Rhine-Westphalia, this state CMS offered an easier way to relaunch their website. In this case, the ministry did not have to worry about the actual design, which simplified the course of the project.

At the same time, the project benefited from the previous nrwGOV projects. If a customer wants extended functions, these are developed once and then become part of the basic framework of nrwGOV.

Furthermore, a state design is provided by the state government, which was used by the departments as part of the website relaunch. The joint state CMS and state design are intended to help make the individual websites easier to recognize and to create a uniform presence for all state departments on the Internet.

As part of the approved concept for the Ministry of Schools and Education, department-specific stipulations for the configuration of nrwGOV were decided. These concerned, among other things, the sitemap, menu navigation, content types, content areas and user roles. These department-specific configurations were developed once and passed on installed on the migration server.

A very complex navigation structure had to be migrated and mapped in Drupal. The solution for this was the development of a navigation structure based on a hierarchical taxonomy.

Despite the large amount of content that had to be migrated from the old website of the Ministry of Schools and Education, nrwGOV was able to create a very clear contact point for all target groups of the Ministry - such as students and teachers.

The project included the provision and configuration of nrwGOV, the development of department-specific additional modules and the migration of the existing education portal https://www.schulministerium.nrw.de/.

In detail, the following services were provided as part of the project:

  • Installation of nrwGOV

  • Adaptation of the standard installation nrwGOV to the department-specific requirements

  • Implementation and installation of department-specific functionalities

  • Accompanying the acceptance for service items 2 and 3

  • Migration

  • Project support

  • Editorial training

The aim of the project was to convert the education portal https://www.schulministerium.nrw.de/ from the content management system (CMS) NPS-Fiona 6.10.2 to the Drupal-8-based state CMS nrwGOV.

The large amounts of data and the extensive information that should be presented on the portal have posed challenges, particularly in the following areas:

  • Usability

  • Performance

  • Migration

  • Menu navigation

With the project completion in early 2020, the Ministry of Education already had a fast, direct and transparent communication platform available to its target groups of teachers, students, parents and the press at the beginning of the corona pandemic.

Why Drupal was chosen

As a CMS, our Drupal Distribution nrwGOV is geared towards the requirements of public administration.

Technical Specifications

Drupal version: