"Reduce and Reuse” an Environmental Website

Site	"Reduce and Reuse” an Environmental Website
Industry	Environmental, Government
Location	United States
Case study written by	Enfold Systems
Contact	info@enfoldsystems.com

After migrating to Plone from a CMS that was no longer supported, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality's public website now utilizes the user-friendly Plone CMS, supported by over 300 solution providers in 57 countries. That, combined with more than 200 core developers of the software, will help ensure the long term viability and evolution of the system.

About the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality:
The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) is the environmental agency for the state of Texas. The TCEQ has approximately 2,980 employees and 16 regional offices.  Its mission is to protect the state's human and natural resources consistent with sustainable economic development. The goal is clean air, clean water, and the safe management of waste.

The Challenge:
The TCEQ needed to replace a slow and aging content management system (CMS) that was no longer supported.  The system was utilized for the TCEQ’s public website by approximately 80 authors, along with 160 reviewers and approvers. 

The site consisted of more than 7,500 HTML pages and 210,000 binary files, such as PDFs, Word and images. The HTML pages were stored in Oracle 9i using the Byline CMS (formerly known as Red Hat CMS 6.1) and the files were stored on the file system using Red Hat Linux.

Migration - Reduce & Reuse:
Enfold Systems conducted a thorough analysis of the website, followed by a gap-analysis between the legacy Byline/Red Hat CMS and the Plone CMS.  Plone was then installed, configured and optimized with common features including calendars, surveys, and automated forms. 

Focused effort was given to reuse and optimize existing content management workflows, and web page design templates, to minimize transition costs away from the legacy system.  In addition, an automated data migration was performed between the legacy Oracle database and the Plone CMS utilizing Amazon’s EC2 cloud computing services.  This approach significantly reduced the staff resources, and hardware investment, necessary for the migration effort. 

After providing training on the use, installation and maintenance of Plone, Enfold Systems worked with the “Team for Texas”, an IT group for state agencies, to securely deploy the Plone CMS to the production environment.

The Solution:
The open source Plone Content Management System was chosen for its rich workflow capabilities and its out-of-the-box award-winning user interface. In addition, a robust and efficient caching strategy was implemented to ensure reliable performance under heavy traffic conditions.

The Benefits:
During the migration, the TCEQ was able to reduce costs by reusing its legacy CMS content and website design elements.  Long-term cost savings will result through the elimination of software license fees.  In addition, the Plone CMS enabled the continued use of complex approval workflows and the addition of features not previously available to TCEQ staff; such as an agency-wide calendar, RSS feeds, and “print this page” and “send this page” options.