Revamped CSIS site to Improve Analysis and Decision Making

With help from Forum One, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a bipartisan, nonprofit, international public policy institution, recently launched a newly-improved and expanded web site at www.csis.org.

Forum One helped CSIS, plan, design, and develop the new site.

Since 1962, CSIS has grown into one of the world's most preeminent international policy institutions with over 220 full-time staff and scholars focused on solving some of the most perplexing problems related to defense, regional stability, climate change, and global development.

The old CSIS site was described as a "tsunami of information," housing over 9,000 pages (including 4,000 publications, 1,200 event announcements, and audio, video and blog content). Navigation of this deep information was hampered by confusing page layouts and overly-complicated information architecture. Visitors who were unfamiliar with the organization's work and internal organizational structure found it difficult to locate critical resources.

With Forum One's help, CSIS transformed the site into a clean, compelling web space with simple navigation, an engaging user interface, and an intuitive content breakdown. The new site effectively works in concert with CSIS's mission -- to inform, shape, and disseminate policy -- by shining a spotlight on its research and allowing decision makers to quickly view the latest news, commentary, and reports related to the issues or regions that concern them.

Among the site's major improvements is a content model that improves the organization, accessibility, and management of CSIS data. Forum One performed an extensive content migration from the organization's legacy Joomla platform to a much more scalable, flexible, and interoperable Drupal content management system. The migration involved extensive automated content mapping and data transformation.

The end result is a content model that is more useful for staff and visitors alike. Staff can add or manipulate content with greater speed and less hassle, while users can focus their attention on absorbing information rather than finding it.

Visitors can now filter CSIS's huge library of resources -- which represents decades of research, reports, publications, and viewpoints from some of the most prominent experts in the discipline -- by topic or region as opposed to simply CSIS program area.

Additionally, the site offers greater multimedia options. Users can access CSIS podcasts on iTunesU. Also, they can view streaming audio and video presentations, roundtable discussions, interviews, and briefings.

CSIS hopes that its new site will serve in compliment to its offline efforts by catching the attention of legislators and ultimately fueling policy debate and progress.

The new site has already received extensive praise for its easy-to-use interface and attractive design. Forum One will help CSIS build on its initial gains with more improvements scheduled for later this year.

Forum One Communications is a web strategy and development firm based in Alexandria, Va. Since 1996, Forum One has helped hundreds of organizations use internet technology to solve the world's most pressing problems. For more information, visit www.forumone.com.