The sos.ca.gov website was experiencing performance issues on the self-hosted platform within AWS. The government infrastructure website for the California Secretary of State's office was experiencing inconsistent performance and cyber attacks, negatively impacting citizen engagement with the electoral process, and potentially disenfranchising voters.

They reached out to PortlandLabs in the midst of an outage during the 2020 Democratic primaries requesting urgent assistance with their antiquated version of Concrete CMS. After experiencing the support that the founders of Concrete CMS could provide, the State of California eagerly engaged with PortlandLabs to help manage their web presence.

The state required a more reliable and secure platform that could handle spikes of millions of page views per hour while remaining accessible to visitors. With the US election system being a target of constant foreign cyber attacks, there was a concern that without proper upgrades and management, the website could become a vulnerability.

Before the project, the government infrastructure website's inconsistent performance caused slow page load times and frustration for California citizens, leading to high bounce rates and making it difficult for them to access essential information. During peak traffic, the website was almost inaccessible, which negatively impacted citizen engagement with the electoral process, potentially disenfranchising voters. It was crucial to create a more reliable and secure platform to ensure that California citizens could access the information they needed, contributing to their trust in the State's ability to safeguard the electoral process.

Solution

The PortlandLabs team upgraded the website to the latest version of Concrete CMS, completely redesigning it to be mobile-friendly, introducing a high-availability architecture, and implementing security and AWS best practices.

The high-availability architecture was designed using AWS services, which included multiple web servers and cloud-based edge caching to handle spikes in traffic during high-risk election periods. 

Results

The website's performance was dramatically improved, with fast page load times and 100% uptime since relaunch, making it far more reliable and accessible for visitors. 

In addition to improved performance and security, the website was redesigned to retain the positive aspects of the existing information architecture while introducing a more modern and mobile-friendly design. 

With dozens of content contributors and several developers at the state's office now actively maintaining the website, it has become an efficient and effective platform for communication with the public. The results of the project have ensured the public's trust in the state's election system.

PortlandLabs brought the expertise needed to improve the performance, security, and accessibility of the California Secretary of State's website, resulting in 100% uptime, faster page load times, and better citizen engagement during high-risk election seasons.