Pandemic Response Accountability Committee

Goal: Mobomo was tasked with creating a robust website and Content Management System (CMS) using Drupal, deployed on Microsoft Azure, to support the CARES Act with data management and analytic services. The website needed to comply with US Web Design Standards (USWDS) and the IDEA Act for mobile-responsive design, ensuring ease of usability for viewers. Additionally, it was essential for the site to display interactive graphics showcasing the distribution of funds and reports of fraudulent instances. The primary challenge was to achieve a successful deployment within PRAC's aggressive timeframe of five weeks.

Requirements: Key requirements for the successful development of the pandemic oversight website included making data on fund expenditure available and downloadable for findings reports and audits, searchable at a granular level with trackable identification numbers, and offering data visualization and reporting capabilities to enhance user comprehension and augment reporting features. The website needed to comply with US Web Design Standards (USWDS) and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) for mobile-responsive design, supporting interactive graphics for showcasing coronavirus relief funding and various government reports on the pandemic response, including instances of waste, fraud, and abuse of relief funding.

Mobomo, in consultation with its program partners, leveraged an Agile Scrum management approach for designing and developing the website to meet the demanding timeframe of just five weeks. Mobomo managed three different work streams—UI/UX Design, Drupal Development, and Azure Websites PaaS integration—in parallel to ensure the delivery of critical site functionality on time and within the program budget. It was required to launch the new website within the Microsoft Azure cloud. In collaboration with infrastructure partners Smartronix, the team decided to leverage the Azure Websites platform-as-a-service (PaaS) hosting solution, as it met FedRAMP requirements for IT security. The Mobomo and Smartronix teams worked together to architect the environment to support a zero-downtime, blue-green deployment structure, allowing for seamless promotion of new code to the public-facing environment.

To manage website performance under increased traffic, the team implemented the Azure Frontdoor application delivery network (ADN) and load balancers, effectively managing callbacks to the origin and providing a high-performing user experience.

Outcome: Mobomo performed the redesign, development, and deployment of a new website for the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee (PRAC), built using a Drupal Content Management System (CMS) and deployed on Microsoft Azure. Mobomo managed three work streams—UI/UX Design, Drupal Development, and Azure Websites PaaS integration—in parallel to ensure delivery of critical site functionality on time and within the program budget, meeting the demanding timeframe of five weeks.

The design of the site included the creation of a new website logo, modern branding elements, and a highly mobile-responsive theme to enable mobile users to fully engage with the website’s interactive data charts and graphs. Normally a process that can take weeks or even months to complete, the Mobomo UI/UX team worked daily in the early stages of the engagement to rapidly design the new style guide and core branding elements to assist the PRAC in redefining their image. Additionally, Mobomo used the USWDS theme as its base and built a custom sub-theme to incorporate newer, modern design features while remaining compliant with core USWDS best practices. This simplified the design process and helped ensure adherence to all necessary deadlines.

The project for redesigning, developing, and launching the new PRAC website officially began on August 3, 2020. The new Drupal 9, Azure-hosted website was launched publicly on September 10, 2020. Within the first couple of weeks, the site had already received thousands of visitors exploring who, where, and how coronavirus relief spending was being utilized. The project has since won two awards: the 2020 Arcturus Winner in the Government Website category from Vega Digital Awards and the 2021 Gold Winner in the COVID category from Muse Creative Awards.