Inside Los Angeles’ move to Drupal with Acquia’s Todd Akers

The city of Los Angeles became the latest public sector organization to announce it is moving a number of its public-facing websites to the Drupal enterprise web content management system.

Todd Akers, the vice president of public sector for Acquia, the Massachusetts-based company that will build, manage and govern the Los Angeles Web pages using its Cloud Site Factory, joined StateScoop Radio to discuss the project and how more and more state and local governments are going to open source platforms like Drupal.

Akers also discussed the federal government’s recently released Digital Services Playbook, which offers 13 steps or “plays” that the government can take to increase digital services and will also likely be adopted – on some scale – by state and local organizations going forward as well.

As for the Los Angeles project, Akers said the city plans to migrate more than 20 separate websites to Drupal, the leading enterprise web content management system. Through Acquia’s Enablement Program, the city’s Information Technology Agency is working closely with the company during the initial migration of three of the its most visited sites: lacity.org, lacityview.org and ladot.lacity.org, helping ITA develop its Drupal expertise to lead the remaining migrations. The city joins the Los Angeles Public Library, the LA Philharmonic, Discover Los Angeles and thousands more that rely on Drupal.

“Digital innovation is transforming everything, from commerce to customer service, employee engagement to civic involvement, effectively driving every government to become digital-first,” Akers said. “The City of LA is unlocking the power of digital government and making it simpler for the City to spin up additional sites depending on the needs of its citizens. The City of LA’s innovation and leadership has simplified access to services for its citizens, essentially helping the entire City run more efficiently.”