Inner West Council serves one of Sydney’s largest and most diverse communities. As part of its broader Digital Experience Platform roadmap, Council engaged Digital Garden to transform its public website and establish a scalable digital foundation for future services.
Digital Garden initially led discovery, information architecture and UX/UI design before being awarded the subsequent development tender to implement the platform in Drupal 10.
The result is an accessible, component-based Drupal platform combining structured content, stronger editorial governance and integrated digital service tools.
About the project
Inner West Council sought to rebuild its website as part of a broader Digital Experience Platform roadmap. The objective was not simply to modernise the interface, but to establish a sustainable digital foundation centred on community needs, accessibility and long-term governance.
Digital Garden began with research, stakeholder workshops, information architecture and tree testing. The existing site had developed into a large and complex digital estate, with navigation often reflecting organisational structures rather than the tasks residents were trying to complete.
The resulting information architecture was validated with users before development began, reducing risk and establishing a clear foundation for the Drupal implementation.
The site was rebuilt in Drupal 10 using structured content models and a reusable, component-based design system. Editorial workflows and governance were incorporated to support a large publishing environment, while accessibility was embedded throughout the design and development process with alignment to WCAG 2.2 AA.
Thousands of pages and documents were migrated from the legacy CMS. Rather than treating migration as a simple transfer exercise, content structures and metadata were improved to create a cleaner and more maintainable Drupal content model. Redirects were implemented to preserve existing URLs and SEO equity.
Drupal also provides the foundation for a growing range of digital service tools.
Location-aware event discovery uses browser geolocation and suburb selection to surface relevant community events. An address-based bin collection tool enables residents to quickly find collection days and service information, while a verge mowing lookup provides address-specific scheduled mowing dates.
These integrations turn complex Council information and underlying data into simple, task-focused experiences for residents.
The result is a secure, scalable and accessible Drupal platform with clearer navigation, stronger editorial governance and a foundation capable of supporting future integrations and digital services.
Why Drupal was chosen
Drupal was selected to provide the flexibility, scalability and governance required for a large local government digital platform.
Council manages a substantial volume of public information across multiple service areas and editorial teams. Drupal’s structured content architecture, taxonomy, permissions and editorial workflow capabilities provided a strong foundation for managing this complexity while maintaining consistency.
A component-based implementation enables editors to create and maintain content within an established design system, while Drupal’s extensibility supports integration with Council data and the development of task-focused digital services such as address lookups, waste collection information and location-aware event discovery.
Drupal also provided an appropriate foundation for Council’s accessibility, security and long-term maintainability requirements and enables the platform to continue evolving as new services and integrations are introduced.
Technical Specifications
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