Roadmap

• Analysis - Completed

  November 2023

  Throughout the month of November the Architecture, Web and Programme team met several times to review each of the websites on our migration list and classify the site into one of eight categories. The categories and number of sites (in parenthesis) were:

  • migrate stand-alone (25)
  • reintegrate with Leeds.gov.uk (16)
  • reintegrate with whatson.leeds.gov.uk (7)
  • decommission (25)
  • migrate as-is / leave as-is and do not convert to Drupal (10)
  • review business case (5)
  • third party application or portal – not managed by Leeds (49)

  Based on this analysis we were able to create a high level plan and prioritised grouping of which sites should be migrated into Drupal first.

• Presentation to Digital Board - Completed

  November 2023

  At the end of November 2023 a presentation of the high level planning and strategy for web migration went to both the Customer Transformation Board and the Digital Board (a forum of Chief Operating Officers and leaders across the authority) for feedback on the high level prioritised groupings.  At both boards the plan was given go-ahead & clarifications provided to any questions that came up.

  

  The sites included in Prioritised Group 1 are currently hosted on a SharePoint Content Management platform that is scheduled to be decommissioned. The biggest site within this group is the Leeds.gov.uk website consisting of 1400 pages. Our aim is to develop a tool that is capable of extracting pages of content directly from the SharePoint websites, transforming the content into a format that can be imported directly to Drupal, tested, edited where needed and refined before publishing and going live. The process we are using is Agile and Iterative meaning that we aim to repeat the process of extracting content, transforming, testing and refinement on two weekly cycles until the end result is sufficiently close in appearance to the existing site that we are happy to go-live.

  This will be followed by Group 2 which are existing Drupal sites commissioned with third party design agencies, hosted by a variety of providers that will be consolidated into the Leeds Web Estate hosted on AWS in order to create efficiencies and savings as well as allowing us to make design decisions in future that might involve syndicating content or consolidating sites and / or content to create further efficiencies through scale. 

  The last two groups consist of migrating existing websites developed in a range of technologies or content management systems into Drupal.

  In the case of Group 1, 3 and 4 our intent is to use the automated tooling we have built to accelerate the migration of content from existing into new.

  We want to use our tools to move content from old websites to Drupal. Then, we will work with users and service areas to improve the site design, content, and features like personalisation, search, chatbots, and agents. We aim to make it easier for people to find what they need on fewer websites and save money.

  Primary outcome of this programme of work is to simplify the overall Leeds Web Estate, reduce the number of sites and in turn, reduce cost and realise efficiencies and savings.

• Proof of concept - Automation tooling - Completed

  December 2023

  A small number of Developers on the Web Migration team came together with Architecture and Technical Leads to conduct a small proof of concept over the course of the first three weeks of December 2023.  This involved developing a tool that would extract a small area of the website containing around 30 pages of content, transforming that content into a simplified format which could be imported into Drupal.   At the same time, we assessed the benefits of using a framework called LocalGovDrupal which is a prebuilt set of content types and components specifically designed for Local Government organisations to use when building their websites.  The Proof of Concept was successful.

• Project kick off - Completed

  January 2024

  The project kicked off in early January 2024 with a team of around 20 technologists, including front-end and back-end developers, architect, content designers, user experience designers and python developers. The team took the assets created during the proof of concept as a starting point to migrate a larger chunk of content and reformat it to make the most of the LocalGovDrupal framework. The project is being run as an agile project with two-week sprints, targeting working software with potential to release to live at the end of each sprint.

• Libraries go-live - Completed

  January 2024

  The first LocalGovDrupal website went live in January, showcasing the benefits of the Web Migration project. This was the result of a collaborative effort between the Web Migration team and the Libraries staff.  The website is a ‘Lighthouse’ implementation highlighting the benefits of business and technical collaboration, the Drupal platform and the LocalGovDrupal framework.

  

  The new website is user-friendly, accessible, and responsive, and allows the Libraries staff to manage their own content easily. A user researcher helped us design the website with end users in mind, ensuring a high-quality experience for visitors.

• Prototype Leeds.gov.uk website - Completed

  April 2024

  We will migrate all 1,400 content pages from our old website to this new prototype site, which will run on the Drupal platform. This platform will be more secure and stable that our previous one, and it will allow us to offer you better services and features in the future. One of the main advantages of the new platform is the ability for the business to manage their own content.

  At this stage of the migration project, we have intentionally preserved the look and feel of our old website as much as possible, so you can still find the information and resources you need without any hassle and we minimise the impact on service users. We will use automated visual regression testing tools to compare the old website against the new website for consistency, and we will fix any issues or errors that we find.

  However, we will still need your help to make sure everything will work as expected before we go-live. We will invite you to test the site and sign-off on your areas. Please use the feedback form at the bottom of each page to let us know what you think of the new site, and if you encounter any problems or have any suggestions.

  Please note that this will be a prototype site and not the final version. We do not expect to have modernized the content or design at this stage, as the purpose of the migration is to adopt the new platform. We plan to work on improving the content and design in the next phase of the project, after we have received your feedback and approval.

• User acceptance testing and go-live - Completed

  October 2024 - February 2025

  User acceptance testing on the prototype site will start from October with expected go-live in February. The website has many pages, so testing will involve a number of service areas and stakeholders. Getting approval from all business areas will enable us to advance to the next phase of the programme.

• Building upon the migration - Not started

  March 2025

  We will continue to migrate the remaining SharePoint sites to Drupal, the new content management system, which will allow us to fully decommission SharePoint and reduce the complexity and cost of maintaining multiple platforms.

  We will create a migration path for third party hosted WordPress sites onto our Cloud environment, where they can benefit from improved reliability and performance whilst reducing spend on third party organisations managing and maintaining our websites for us and create the opportunity to syndicate content between sites reducing the administrative burden of maintaining the same content in multiple places.

  In parallel, we will start to develop a plan to merge content from existing externally hosted websites into the Leeds web estate, provide a consistent and coherent user experience across all our online channels. In some cases, these websites will remain stand-alone sites and in other cases, they will be integrated into the Leeds website and given their own subsite branding and identity, as well as potentially retaining their own web address. This will depend on the nature and purpose of each website and the needs and preferences of the site owners and users.

• Transform phase - Not started

  March 2025 and beyond

  By March we will move into the transform and evolve stage of the programme.   

  We will initially collaborate with content owners and start user research so that we can understand user needs.

  This will then inform interaction design to ensure the website is intuitive and user-friendly and content design which will make our content easy to read and understand.

  We will maintain open communication with content owners throughout the process and involve them in decision making, ensuring that the final product meets their expectations whilst fulfilling user needs.

  A UX roadmap is currently being developed and will be added to this website once finalised.