#diwd New York State Senate: New Regime, New Web Mandate

By Dee-Ann LeBlanc (@deele) Dec 10, 2009

The New York State Senate was in the hands of the same political party for 44 years. In 2009 that finally changed. With the new administration came new ways, including hiring the state senate's first CIO, Andrew Hoppin. Within months, their web presence would completely change.

A Mess

As Hoppin surveyed how people were doing things in the NY state Senate, he was a little horrified at the waste. For example, there was a small army of people hand-clipping articles they thought the Senators would like. The clippers would then scan in the articles, print out copies for all interested parties and mail or deliver them. All in a huge waste of time and taxpayer money.

In addition to their processes, their CMS was a command-line mess, their website was essentially just a small brochure and their email was set up such that people couldn't work from home. You had to be within the Senate's network to access it.

A New Mandate

His new mandate was made clear. The previous majority leader was under charges for corruption. Those now in power wanted to achieve the following:

Transparency: Create a more transparent legislature
Efficiency: Enable Members to serve constituents in a more effective and efficient manner, at a lower cost to taxpayers
Participation: Provide New Yorkers with the means to take a more participatory role in their state government
Model: To model "best technology practices" for legislative bodies throughout the US

The Goals

How would he accomplish this? With four key goals:

Organize and share data internally
Improve internal communications
Organize and share data externally
Improve external communications

In their previous website, it was difficult to even find out who your Senator was, let alone have any idea what they were doing or when. It was even hard to find the site if you didn't know to look for it at the domain senate.state.ny.us. You also either couldn't look at a lot of the legislation, or you had to pay to do so.

Since Hoppin had no staff for building a site, he engaged a consulting firm to build out the first version of the NY state Senate's new online home. By his own admission the site was built hastily, yet it's astounding what they've accomplished in less than a year.

The Results

First, he got them a much simpler URL: http://www.nysenate.gov/. There was a definite method to Hoppin's madness when he chose a .gov domain. Any site with a .gov extension is governed by strict rules on what's allowed to appear on there or not. Slinging partisan mud or going into campaign mode simply isn't allowed. And using the handle "nysenate" everywhere makes it easier to search for user references throughout Twitter and elsewhere on the web.

Today the site consists of over 100 sub-sites. There are 62 mini sites for Senators, 40 mini sites for committees, mini sites for issues and initiatives and sections for legislation, the open Senate initiative, photos and videos and a news room.

People can use a simple search feature to find out who their Senator is. Then they can go to their Senator's mini site, read the Senator's blog, write their Senator or the whole Senate and sign up for updates. If they're interested in reading legislation (and, uh, who isn't?) they can search all of the state legislation for free, sort the results and access permalinks. Users can even comment on legislation. Hoppin thinks they're the first legislative body in North America to enable that.