The eServices Platform (ESP) is made up of several different technology components. It is intended to provide a desirable alternative to RedDot and the development of standalone web applications and websites.
Our objective is to create a common platform that would enable government digital services to, by default be accessible, mobile-friendly, bilingual, private, secure, interoperable, stable, well-documented and professionally supported.
The current version is ESP v.1. It consists of the following.
- Drupal content management system, built on top of the Drupal WxT distribution, utilizing as many out-of-the-box Drupal modules and plug-ins as possible.
- A series of standard website templates, made to look like the existing Government of Yukon website but developed to be more accessible and mobile-friendly.
- Internal secure code version control system, called GitLab, in which any new code is stored, reviewed and managed by our internal team and third-party strategic partners.
- Secure reporting web application so that internal users can log in and get access to the data that is submitted through digital services.
- Server monitoring software that constantly analyzes the performance of ESP and alerts if a problem arises.
- Load balancers and other back-up mechanisms in place to ensure ESP is stable and available.
Development of ESP v.1 started in October 2015. We have used ESP v.1 to build new or improved "pilot project" versions of:
- Department of Tourism and Culture website
- Renew a vehicle registration digital service
- Pay a government invoice digital service
- ATIPP request for access to government public body records digital services
As we developed these pilot project services and the website, we discovered that simply using standard Drupal modules and plug-ins wouldn't be enough; we needed to add some new features and tools of our own in order to meet our goals. As such, all of these services and websites on ESP v.1 also have access to:
- A search engine that also indexes non-HTML documents (such as PDFs) and enables more advanced searching using meta-data from the files.
- Events module with filters for different types of event categories as well as a RSVP function and optional email notification alerts.
- User feedback web form that captures feedback from the page it was submitted on and alerts website administrators.
Although these projects are not yet live and ready for public use, we took what we learned from our experiences and worked with our strategic partners to plan out what is going to be called ESP v.2.
ESP v.2 takes all of what's included in ESP v.1 and adds:
- Improved bilingual translation publishing workflow.
- Enhancements to the visual design and user experience of small details throughout the templates.
- Improvements to accessibility features and techniques based on user research.
- Apache Solr search engine that makes it possible for search results to be honed by department, date, title, document type and a variety of other filters. Apache Solr also enables easily bookmarkable search results and enterprise-level document storage (and searches against).
- Much more granular controls when it comes to setting user permissions and content publishing roles.
- Taxonomy tool that will make it possible for our government website content and services to be organized by topic and/or task and not just by department.
- A new technical architecture that will enable eligible Government of Yukon crown corporations to manage and store the information from their websites and services on ESP, but have their own distinct series of website visual templates and URLs.
- Improved reliability of and tools for centrally monitoring, applying and managing core Drupal updates
- Bug fixes.