The Client
The City of Rochester is the third largest city in New York State. Due to its renowned annual lilac festival, Rochester is also known as “The Flower City” and offers attractions from parks and historic sites to world-class museums and galleries. The City of Rochester attracts residents and visitors with its blend of urban amenities and small-town charm.
The Situation
The City of Rochester, New York serves residents, businesses, and visitors with a broad spectrum of digital services that include paying bills and finding public meetings to accessing parks, permits, and property information. As usage grew, the city’s legacy content management system (CMS) and on-premise hosting struggled to keep pace.
The City of Rochester faced a fragmented, outdated website running on Ektron 9.2 with looming end-of-support, high licensing and maintenance costs, and poor usability and accessibility.
The Challenge
Rochester’s existing website, running on Ektron 9.2, presented critical risks and daily friction for both users and staff that included:
Outdated, end-of-life platform and on-premise risk
- Ektron 9.2 was going to lose vendor support, creating security and continuity risks.
- Annual license fees of $16,000 excluded additional in-house infrastructure and maintenance costs.
- The city wanted to avoid on-premise infrastructure and major platform upkeep going forward.
Troublesome content creation and governance
- Clunky editing interface and buggy formatting and limited components.
- Few templates and difficult page organization hindered consistency and speed.
- No role-based workflows, content review, or audit trails.
- No automated checks for dead links, typos, or outdated content.
Poor user experience and fragmented messaging
- Departments worked in silos, resulting in inconsistent content and navigation.
- Residents reported difficulty finding critical information.
- The overall experience didn’t reflect a modern, welcoming city brand.
Accessibility and multilingual gaps
- Lack of built-in screen reader support and accessibility audits (WCAG compliance was not assured).
- The site needed to support ADA compliance, multilingual content, and responsive experiences across devices.
Limited integrations and analytics
- Integrations with essential city systems (Dynamics 365, Azure AD, ArcGIS, Tyler MUNIS, Zoom, Constant Contact, etc.) were constrained by the legacy stack.
- SEO and insights capabilities were insufficient to guide continuous improvement.
The Solution
Acquia partner, Promet Source, designed and implemented a future-ready digital foundation centered on Drupal and Provus®Gov, hosted on Acquia Cloud Platform.
After evaluating various open source and proprietary CMS options, the city opted for Drupal due to its robust security features, flexibility, and strong track record in the public sector, being used by over 50% of U.S. federal government sites. The implementation of Provus®Gov offered a low-code, component-based design system that accelerated the build process and ensured design consistency. By hosting on Acquia Cloud Platform, the city benefited from managed DevOps, enhanced security, and strong performance, all upheld by a 99.95% uptime SLA, automated backups, CI/CD, and 24/7 monitoring.
Discovery workshops, stakeholder interviews, and usability testing were conducted to uncover resident needs and task flows. The information architecture was reorganized to simplify navigation and improve content findability. Promet’s ProvusGOV allowed non-technical authors to easily edit with drag-and-drop layouts and reusable templates. Sustainable governance was established through role-based access control, configurable approval workflows, audit logs, and automated content quality checks.
Accessibility was a key focus, with WCAG 2.1 AA compliance built into the platform and dual testing conducted. Features such as screen reader compatibility, alt-text practices, clear focus states, and accessible navigation patterns were incorporated. Comprehensive training and documentation equipped teams to maintain long-term compliance.
Technical SEO was enhanced through the implementation of canonical tags, breadcrumb management, clean URL aliasing, and structured content organization. The integration with Google Analytics, Tag Manager, Search Console, and Data Studio allowed for monitoring of user behavior outcomes. Heatmaps and click tracking were employed to support ongoing UX optimization efforts.
The platform enabled secure single sign-on via Azure Active Directory and provided seamless connectivity with
- ArcGIS for mapping
- Tyler MUNIS for ERP data
- Constant Contact for communications
- Zoom/YouTube for public meetings
- SharePoint/OneDrive for document management
- Accessibility tooling included Acquia Optimize, Axe, and Siteimprove
The project was executed using two-week sprints, with regular demos, quality assurance, and stakeholder feedback to ensure alignment and progress. GitHub-based code management, along with Acquia pipelines, facilitated automated deployments and security patching, ensuring an agile and secure development process.
The Results
The City of Rochester transformed a fragmented, end-of-life website into a resilient, accessible, data-driven digital platform. By pairing Drupal and Provus®Gov with Acquia Cloud Platform, the city reduced cost and complexity to elevate the experience for every visitor.
Rochester’s redesign demonstrates how a modern and open platform can strengthen engagement, improve accessibility, and deliver lasting operational value.
Digital accessibility
- 100% WCAG 2.2 AA compliance, positioning Rochester as a leader in inclusive civic experiences.
Reliability and performance
- 99.9% uptime achieved, ensuring residents can access services when they need them.
Search engine readiness
- 92% SEO score through technical and content optimizations that support discoverability
Cost and operational efficiency
- Eliminated ~$16,000/year in CMS license fees.
- Reduced internal IT overhead by moving to Acquia Cloud Platform with automated updates and monitoring.
- Open source flexibility lowers total cost of ownership and minimizes vendor lock-in over time.
Content velocity and governance
- Non-technical authors build pages with low-code components and templates, accelerating publishing while maintaining brand consistency.
- Role-based workflows, audit logs, and automated link/quality checks improve accountability.
- Bulk actions and structured IA simplify large-scale content operations.
Resident experience
- Reorganized navigation and enhanced search help users complete tasks faster and find key services easily.
- Accessible, responsible design ensures equitable experiences across devices and abilities.
- A modern visual system balances Rochester’s heritage with a forward-looking aesthetic.