Minnesota Court of Administrative Hearings - Public Comment Portal
The Minnesota Court of Administrative Hearings (CAH), working with Minnesota IT Services (MNIT), needed an experienced technology partner to design, develop, and support a new Public Comment Portal for Minnesota rulemaking. CAH selected Nighthawk because of our experience in Drupal CMS development, public sector website design / digital services, user experience planning, accessibility, responsive design, Acquia hosting, information architecture, secure web applications, and long-term website maintenance.
Minnesota Public Comment Portal
The Public Comment Portal was created to support the collection, organization, display, search, and export of electronic public comments on proposed agency rules. The portal serves state agencies, CAH staff, internal state users, legislative members, organizations, businesses, and members of the public with varying levels of experience in the rulemaking process.
The Need
CAH’s previous eComments system was purchased in 2015 to collect electronic public comments on proposed agency rules. However, agencies across the executive branch, legislators, and the public agreed that the system no longer met the State of Minnesota’s shared needs. Stakeholders found the system too informal for a public government process, difficult to navigate, and limited in how agency users could use the data to meet their business needs.
The State needed a standalone public comment portal that could support the rulemaking process, allow agencies to create comment periods, allow members of the public to submit comments, display and organize submitted comments, support advanced search and filtering, manage internal user roles, provide reporting and analytics, and meet State of Minnesota security and accessibility standards.
The Solution
Nighthawk worked with CAH and MNIT to support the discovery, planning, design, development, implementation, and ongoing maintenance of a Drupal-based Public Comment Portal. The project began with requirements review and confirmation, followed by system architecture planning, software design documentation, a functional portal prototype, and development of the implemented software system.
The portal was built to support both public-facing and internal administrative workflows. Public users can find active and closed comment periods, search for rulemaking information, and submit comments through web-based forms. Agency and CAH users can create and manage comment periods, configure rulemaking information, review submitted comments, manage users and roles, access dashboards, and export data and reports.
The system was planned around Drupal’s flexibility, including content types, views, taxonomy, role-based permissions, webforms, media handling, search functionality, reporting views, and configurable administrative tools. The portal also supports test and production environments, user documentation, training materials, accessibility compliance documentation, security documentation, and long-term support.
