The city and county of San Francisco launched a redesigned official website at sf.gov that is designed to improve users’ experience, make searching for content easier, and create a “welcoming digital home,” according to a press release from the city.
The city’s Digital and Data Services team created the updated site to make it more efficient and visually appealing and transition its content management system, known as CMS, to one that is open source and runs on a programming language called Python.
The team’s leader, Cyd Harrell, said in an open letter posted on the site that he believed using the CMS system, which is called Wagtail and uses Python as its code, will help open potential positions with the team to local talent.
The new site will have a backend interface that is easier to use, allows changes to be made fast, and provides more flexibility to administrators and developers, according to Harrell’s letter.
Making changes faster will also help the team improve the site’s accessibility.
The team named its custom CMS built through Wagtail’s program Karl, after a viral social media account that gave the city’s iconic fog that moniker in 2010.
The design system that will be used by the roughly 300 editors that post content for city departments and agencies was named Maya, after poet Maya Angelou.
Sf.gov was first launched in 2019 as a site that hosted limited department services and later provided information about the COVID-19 pandemic. It grew to host more than 200 city departments, divisions, boards, and commissions, along with city services and data, according to Harrell.
The update was 18 months in the making. The entire site was migrated over the past weekend without losing any functionality, he said.
“As technology advances, there are many valuable things – maps, forms, data, AI tools — that San Franciscans will be able to find and use here,” Harrell wrote.
“This change is very much a beginning rather than an end, and we look forward to making it easier and easier to work with SF government from the comfort of your home or phone, for many years to come,” he wrote.