A Modernization Guide for Government Organizations
For state and local government organizations that rely on the website as their primary public-information channel, an outdated content management system (CMS) can slow your team down at critical moments.
However, with a clear plan in place, modernizing your CMS can make your website more secure, accessible, easier to manage, and more responsive to the people you serve.
Here’s how to move forward with confidence.
Why Do Organizations Outgrow Their CMS?
Government websites are uniquely complex. They serve large, diverse audiences, must meet strict accessibility and security standards, and often manage thousands of pages created over the course of years, if not decades.
When an older CMS stops meeting those needs, the symptoms are hard to ignore. Here are a few tell-tale signs your CMS is reaching its end of life.
Even Basic Updates Slow Down Your Team: If editors can’t publish urgent public updates without calling in IT, your CMS is working against you, not for you. Many legacy systems used within government were never intended for modern communications workflows. They lack flexible content types, drag-and-drop tools, reusable components, and intuitive page editing–limitations cost time and increase operational costs.
Non-Technical Staff Struggle To Manage Content: Comms teams shouldn’t need specialized technical skills to perform routine updates. If your team can’t reliably manage landing page layouts, insert media, or reuse components across the site, the CMS is preventing you from keeping your site current, accessible, and user-friendly.
PDFs Replace Proper Webpages: Why do government agencies so often turn to PDFs? Usually, it’s because their CMS makes digital publishing too difficult. But PDF-heavy sites create major accessibility barriers, frustrate mobile users, and bury information that should be searchable. When your CMS can’t support structured content, content sprawl and compliance issues follow.
Developer Reliance Inflates Costs: When every layout tweak or content adjustment requires web development hours, budgets take a hit. More importantly, comms responsiveness slows, impacting how quickly citizens receive information.
Your CMS Is No Longer Supported: Using unsupported software is more than a risk—it’s a compliance issue. Without security patches, your website becomes a potential entry point for attackers. This applies to both proprietary and open-source platforms. For example, organizations still on Drupal 7 face increasing risk because the version has reached end-of-life and no longer receives updates. If you’ve reached this stage, upgrading is no longer optional.
How To Choose the Right CMS for Your Government Website
If any of the above apply to your organization’s CMS, it’s time to consider your next move. However, selecting a new CMS is not simply a software choice. Determining the right platform is a long-term digital infrastructure decision. It should support sustainable publishing, accessibility compliance, and citizen-centered service delivery.
Here’s what matters most when it comes to selecting a new CMS.
Stability and Longevity: Choose a platform with a proven track record, a large user base, and long-term community or vendor investment. This ensures durability, extensibility, and predictable support—critical for multi-year state website lifecycles.
Strong Development and Support Community: For open-source platforms like Drupal, community strength directly impacts security, feature evolution, and longevity. A large, active community also makes it easier to find trusted development partners with the expertise government projects require. (Read more on How to Migrate Your Government Site to Drupal)
First-Class Accessibility Support: State agencies must meet WCAG standards—and not every CMS makes that easy. Prioritize platforms with:
- Accessibility-ready components
- Structured content tools
- Templates designed for compliance
- A demonstrated history of commitment to accessibility
- Guardrails that help non-technical editors publish accessibly
- This reduces both legal risk and editorial burden.
Security You Can Trust: Your CMS should offer regular security updates, a transparent patching process, and documented response protocols—especially important for state agencies managing sensitive or high-traffic citizen content.
Support for Large, Complex Migrations: Government content ecosystems are sprawling. When migrating from an outdated system, you’ll need:
- Automated scripts for bulk content
- Manual support for complex content types
- Structured cleanup for accessibility and SEO
- Redesign of outdated information architecture
- Remediation of potentially thousands of PDFs
A CMS alone won’t solve this. You need an implementation partner with government-specific experience.
Comms teams shouldn’t need specialized technical skills to perform routine updates
A Structured CMS Migration Approach for .gov
A CMS upgrade is most successful when approached as a phased modernization project. Use the following checklist to guide your CMS migration decision-making and preparations.
Step 1. Audit and Restructure Existing Content
Most government websites have content sprawl. This is the time to realign content around citizen needs. Conduct a content audit to surface
- Outdated or redundant information
- Accessibility issues
- Low performing content
- Use of PDFs and other media
- Overlapping pages across divisions
- Navigation challenges
Step 2. Define Clear Requirements
Both IT and Comms must participate here—your CMS needs to satisfy both groups. Requirements for government agencies typically include:
- Accessibility by default
- Secure infrastructure
- Compliance with federal, state, and local standards
- Scalable architecture for future needs
- Editor-friendly tools
- Integration with internal systems (CRMs, data feeds, scheduling tools)
Step 3: Evaluate CMS Options Through a Government Lens
Remember to avoid consumer-grade tools that don’t meet security or accessibility requirements. Your platform must support:
- WCAG accessibility
- Strong role-based permissions
- Clear audit logs and versioning, mandatory retention policies
- Built-in content workflows
- Multilingual support
- Scalable, reliable uptime
Step 4: Select an Implementation Partner With Government Expertise
The migration partner you choose matters as much as the CMS itself. Look for a development partner who has:
- Experience with government website migrations
- Proven accessibility and security track records
- Familiarity with government procurement processes
- Strong case studies of government work
- Experience replacing PDF-heavy content with structured pages.
Why Government Organizations Choose Electric Citizen
Electric Citizen builds secure, accessible, and impactful websites for state and local organizations. If your CMS has reached end-of-life, or if you’re seeing the warning signs, we can help you determine the best next step, from CMS evaluation to full migration planning.
Ready to explore what a modern, accessible CMS could look like for your organization? Reach out to start the conversation.
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