Converge SE is the conference for those who want to build a beautiful web.
-ConvergeSE Homepage
Created to promote the vision of a united and thriving creative web design community, the ConvergeSE Conference will take place in Columbia, SC on April 13-15. The speakers are leaders, adventurers, and storytellers who want every web designer and developer they work with to experience more and do better.
One of those speakers is Atlantic BT’s Tera Simon. As our Director of Client Engagement, Tera led the largest digital transformation the State of North Carolina has ever undertaken—creating the new web presence for NC.gov and 12 different state government agencies. On Friday, April 15th, Tera will reveal how the ingredients of this dramatic change came together to create a unified portal for the citizens of North Carolina. Here’s a sneak preview of Tera’s “State of the State” presentation:
The Meaning of a Digital Transformation and How It Differs from a Website Redesign
The (current) wikipedia definition for digital transformation is: “changes associated with the application of digital technology in all aspects of human society.” That definition perfectly describes the unification of the NC.Gov’s 12 different agencies as part of the Digital Commons project. Some might mistakenly refer to this project as a website redesign, but a redesign typically focuses on only one brand and one website.
What Atlantic BT’s team faced with the NC.Gov project was a landscape of multiple brands, multiple websites, and the views of multiple stakeholders for each agency. The NC.Gov website had become such a maze that the public was opting out of using any of its online resources at all. The state of North Carolina understood it needed a unified approach from perspectives of branding, governance, content, and navigation. They also needed help to determine the best platform to accommodate their multiple site administrators and contributors.
This kind of Digital Transformation goes beyond a new website design. It goes to the heart of the connection between people and technology. It’s the story of a state government following its mandate to serve the needs of every citizen, non-profit, and business in North Carolina.
The Team Behind the Execution of a Digital Transformation Project
It’s not hard to imagine how NC.gov’s transformation could take a small army to accomplish. Atlantic BT’s lean team works in our Raleigh headquarters and delivers all their projects using an Agile methodology. Our work on the NC.Gov project focused on Marketing and UX, but it also brought together in-house teams of experts across over a half-dozen disciplines:
- Web Architecture
- Business Analysis
- User Experience
- Graphic Design
- Quality Assurance
- Front-End Development
- Project Management
Our team’s collaboration produced results far greater than the sum of their parts; for NC.Gov, this meant the organization of over 75,000 state agency websites into an intuitive user experience.
Atlantic BT’s Most Important Contribution to the Digital Commons Initiative
Beyond the daily advancements toward milestones and the innovative contributions of each individual on the project team, Atlantic BT coordinated the work of two other companies working on the project. NC’s state government brought on one company to complete the branding and the other to provide the development services. By setting up these vendors for success, Atlantic BT helped ensure that each deliverable in the overall project fit well together.
Our vision for this joint project was that the work produced could be understood and be easily accessible by everyone who will have to utilize it. From ensuring that third-parties understand the functionality, to making designs accessible, to orchestrating content migration, to verifying quality assurance and the integrity of the finished product, Tera and her team were there to pull it all together.
