ONEMasssachusetts is a recently launched project of the Public Policy Institute. It is “a network in formation of people and organizations sharing a common vision: to rebuild public confidence in our capacity to work together, through our government, to expand economic opportunity and improve the quality of life in Massachusetts.” This advocacy initiative focuses on supporting community activists with information on timely budget and tax policy issues and training them to participate in the public debate.
Public Policy Institute Director Judy Meredith sought to develop an online presence to complement the face-to-face trainings the organization was doing across the state. ONEMassachusetts decided to have their website built using the Drupal content management system because it is ideally suited to support social networking projects and has many easily implemented modules to further these goals.
With a modest budget, a limited number of staff hours available for maintaining the website, and uneven familiarity of staff with web 2.0 technology tools, ONEMasssachusetts decided to focus its energies on implementing four key features.
First on the list was a news blog, allowing OneMassachusetts staff to highlight selected news items and for the public to comment. This fit the level of staff time available for the site, their various technical skill levels, and the strong interest from a statewide constituency.
Second, we set up a news aggregator to automatically collect articles on budget and tax policy from designated media outlets in the state. DBDES integrated two Drupal modules to allow ONEMassachusetts staff to refine the results of the automatically aggregated articles to insure relevance and quality. People can visit the site to access the news, or subscribe to the ONEMassachusetts news feed.
Third, a simple tool was created to allow visitors to find specific information on how to submit “Letters to the Editor” and Op Ed pieces to their local/regional media outlets.
Finally, the rudiments of an intranet for organizations part of the ONEMassachusetts network were set up. As the network grows and develops, Drupal can easily be expanded to facilitate communication and collaboration among network members.
