The U.S. Commerce Department today launched its redesigned website, which features a new look and feel, modern blogging tools and a commenting feature that runs throughout the site. The site can be found here: http://www.commerce.gov.
“Our new website is another example of the Commerce Department fulfilling President Obama’s pledge to create an unprecedented level of openness in government,” Locke said. “It makes us more transparent, forward-looking and focused on meeting the needs of American businesses and the general public as we work to rebuild the American economy.” In addition to a new appearance, the site also includes elements that fulfill key goals of the Commerce Department’s recently-released Open Government Plan. The site’s blogging and commenting tools, for example, allow Commerce officials to engage the public in a two-way dialogue about the actions of the department. The new site also features direct links to the department’s growing social media presence.
Built using Drupal, an open source content-management system that runs Whitehouse.gov and a number of other new government websites, the new Commerce.gov also modernizes the Commerce Department’s web presence and makes it easier for department technology staff to build off advances made within government and the broader Drupal community.
“The new website means short- and long-term savings for the department,” Commerce’s Director of New Media T. Neil Sroka said. “By building the site internally and using open-source technology that doesn’t require expensive software licenses, we now have a site that looks and performs better than our previous site, and we have developed resources that will help us efficiently build other visually-modern, technologically-advanced websites in the months and years to come.”
Source: U.S. Department of Commerce
