site speed and performance
The Client
Tulare County is a local government organization located in California's Central Valley, serving a population of more than 480,000 residents across a diverse range of public services and departments. As one of California's largest agricultural counties, Tulare County oversees everything from public health and social services to transportation and land use, operating a complex network of departments and agencies that serve residents across its nearly 4,800 square miles.
The Situation
Tulare County wanted to modernize its content operations at scale, allowing 400 authors across departments to safely create, manage, and publish content without technical support. Additionally, the County wanted to:
- Reduce operational costs by consolidating 50+ sites onto a single platform and code base.
- Establish clear content workflows, permissions, and approval paths to eliminate bottlenecks.
- Improve accessibility, performance, and usability for residents and visitors.
- Create a scalable system that could support new departments, services, and authors without rework.
The Challenge
The County faced numerous business and technology challenges. Hundreds of authors with varying skill levels required access to the platform without compromising control, while departments needed the flexibility to manage their own content without sacrificing county-wide standards. Legacy workflows compounded these issues, slowing publishing and increasing risk across the organization.
On the technology side, the team needed to consolidate 50+ sites without disrupting critical public services, while designing asset management that supported shared libraries without enabling misuse. Building workflows that could scale across hundreds of users and multiple approval layers added further complexity, as did the need to dramatically improve performance and accessibility across all properties.
The Solution
Working with Acquia partner, Hounder, the team kicked off the project with journey mapping workshops that aligned county stakeholders around real user and author needs. These sessions revealed where content workflows broke down and where authors struggled to manage assets efficiently.=
Hounder then designed a unified multisite architecture on Acquia that centralized asset management while supporting department-level autonomy. By using structured content models, reusable components, and role-based permissions, Hounder ensured that the County’s nearly 400 authors could work independently within clearly defined workflows.
The architecture delivered several key capabilities that balanced department-level autonomy with county-wide consistency:
- Centralized, governed asset libraries for county-wide reuse
- Scalable workflows supporting draft, review, approval, and publishing
- Role-based access aligned to departmental responsibilities
- Reusable components and themes to maintain consistency at scale
- A single code base supporting 50+ sites, reducing maintenance, technical debt, and operational costs
Together, these capabilities enabled Tulare County to operate a content ecosystem built for real-world government scale and designed for long-term sustainability.
The Results
The transformation delivered measurable results across performance, productivity, and cost. Tulare County consolidated more than 50 websites onto a single Acquia platform and codebase, cutting maintenance overhead and operational costs while building a foundation that can scale without rework. Nearly 400 authors gained structured workflows and permissions, freeing them from dependence on technical teams for routine content updates. Site speed and performance jumped 85%.
The impact goes beyond the numbers. Tulare County now runs a digital platform that supports hundreds of voices without chaos, empowering authors across departments to publish faster, stay on brand, and serve residents more effectively, delivering faster, clearer, and more reliable information to the community.