Building and managing government websites comes with a lot of responsibility. Governments require platforms that are secure, scalable and fully compliant to handle sensitive data and serve the public effectively. Drupal is known as a powerful and flexible choice for many government websites. It is used in government and intergovernmental agencies across more than 150 countries.

But the real secret to a successful Drupal implementation isn’t just the CMS but the platform behind it. Pantheon offers reliable, high-performance hosting that ensures government sites are secure, fast and future-ready. 

Why government agencies choose Drupal

Government agencies need a secure, scalable and customizable CMS. Here’s why Drupal is a popular choice:

• Flexibility: Government websites serve a wide array of public services with different needs and requirements. Drupal offers huge customization and integration options, making it the ideal solution.
• Scalability: Websites need to grow and adapt easily and quickly as new services are required.
• Security: Drupal offers built-in security features to meet stringent government requirements, including fine-tuned permission settings to ensure sensitive data is well protected.
• Cost-effectiveness: An open-source platform reduces long-term costs.
• Compliance: Drupal easily integrates with Section 508 and FISMA-compliant features for regulatory adherence.

Because Drupal is so flexible, it allowed us to broaden editorial capabilities to a wider group of content producers outside of technical staff.” 

– Jim Alberque, GIS and Emerging Technology Manager at The City of Raleigh

Along with these features, Drupal’s extensive ecosystem – including government-focused distributions like LocalGov Drupal – offers pre-configured solutions tailored to public sector needs. This helps agencies save time on development, speeding up deployment and reducing costs.

How Drupal meets stringent security and compliance requirements

Government websites must meet rigorous security, accessibility and compliance standards, and Drupal is engineered to address these needs effectively. With its modular structure, Drupal enables agencies to implement only the necessary features, minimizing the attack surface while meeting specific regulatory requirements.

Security & compliance

Drupal’s granular permission system supports the principle of least privilege, ensuring users only have access to the data and tools they need, in line with federal security guidelines. The platform integrates with government identity providers, including PIV/CAC card authentication for federal environments, simplifying secure user access management. 

Additionally, Drupal offers comprehensive logging and auditing features to track user activity and system changes, promoting accountability and transparency. Its open-source nature ensures that security vulnerabilities are quickly identified and patched by the global community, with continuous security monitoring.

Pantheon is a website operations platform for Drupal and WordPress sites. The platform supports agencies in meeting many of the security and scalability needs outlined by FedRAMP and NIST standards. Pantheon’s enterprise-grade security, including HTTPS encryption, 24/7 monitoring and global CDN, ensures government sites remain secure and available, even during traffic surges. Pantheon also supports NIST 800-53 security requirements by enabling agencies to implement role-based access controls, data encryption continuous monitoring.

Accessibility standards

Section 508 compliance is essential for government websites to ensure they are accessible to all users, including those with disabilities. Drupal’s core features, such as semantic HTML and ARIA landmarks, help make websites accessible. 

Together, Drupal and Pantheon deliver a comprehensive solution that helps government agencies meet security, compliance and accessibility standards, ensuring that their websites are secure, scalable and accessible to all users.

Moving to Drupal has given us a great opportunity to leverage additional tools to consistently move the needle on providing better accessibility services.” 

– Jim Alberque, GIS and Emerging Technology Manager at the City of Raleigh

Why Drupal’s flexibility and customization are ideal for government sites

Drupal’s modular architecture offers government agencies flexibility to build websites tailored to their unique needs. With thousands of available modules and themes, governments can easily extend functionality without altering core code, ensuring stability and security. Custom content types, workflows and integrations can be created to support complex regulatory requirements, public service directories and multi-departmental sites. 

This adaptability, combined with solid role-based permissions, enables agencies to maintain strict control over sensitive information while allowing diverse teams to manage content efficiently. Drupal’s open-source nature also offers continuous community-driven improvements, helping government websites stay secure, compliant and future-proof.

Drupal Multisite vs Pantheon Upstreams: What's best for government sites?

For government agencies managing multiple sites, Drupal Multisite was once a go-to option. By running several websites from a single Drupal codebase, it promised centralized control and potential cost savings. But in practice, Multisite often leads to complexity, risk and technical debt.

Drupal Multisite architecture works well for identical sites with minimal customization. But that’s rarely the reality in government. As site requirements evolve, customizations to code or configuration create “snowflake sites” that are difficult to maintain. Because all sites share the same codebase, even a single bug can impact every property. Testing changes becomes a bottleneck and deployments carry more risk. Additionally, local teams often lack the flexibility to update or extend their sites independently, placing the burden solely on central IT.

Pantheon doesn’t recommend Drupal Multisite. Instead, we encourage users to try Upstreams, a modern approach that delivers the benefits of centralized management without the risks of shared codebases. With Pantheon’s Upstreams, agencies get:

• Independent deployments: Each site runs on its own isolated container, eliminating single points of failure.
• Centralized control with local flexibility: You can manage common elements via an upstream Git repository, while still allowing site-specific configuration and feature changes.
• Faster, safer updates: Apply security patches and feature upgrades across your portfolio without affecting sites that aren’t ready.
• Reduced complexity and lower risk: No more maintenance headaches from one-size-fits-all setups. 

Experienced Drupalists can attest that the Multisite approach has been fraught with issues. We opted instead to harness Pantheon’s Upstream workflow, which allowed us to unify all sites with a common codebase while also customizing each site with each school’s own configuration.” 

–  Brooke Heaton, Senior Developer, Forum One

Agencies often manage dozens (or hundreds!) of sites across departments. Pantheon’s Upstreams approach makes it possible to keep those sites compliant, secure and up-to-date without compromising local control. It's a scalable system designed for real-world government complexity, not theoretical efficiency.

Migrating from legacy systems to Drupal

Migrating from a legacy CMS to a modern Drupal site can feel daunting, especially in the public sector, where downtime and compliance gaps aren't an option. For government agencies, a successful migration hinges on a structured approach that reduces risk, minimizes downtime and ensures long-term stability.

Drupal’s architecture supports this with flexibility and robust tooling. Using modules like Drupal Migrate and Drush, agencies can automate content, user data and configuration transfers, thereby accelerating the process and reducing manual overhead. This helps teams stay on schedule and within budget while modernizing effectively.

Pantheon takes this a step further. We’ve developed a reliable migration process that ensures zero downtime and a seamless transition, backed by hands-on support and automation tools like Terminus and Quicksilver. These provide command-line control and workflow automation to streamline the entire process.

What sets Pantheon apart is our focus on future-proofing. While other platforms lock you into rigid architectures or bloated DXPs, Pantheon gives you:

• Lower total cost of ownership: No unnecessary license or maintenance fees.
• Simplified multi-site management: Built for scale, without the complexity.
• Faster performance and higher uptime: Thanks to our container-based architecture and global CDN.

Optimizing Drupal government sites with Pantheon

For government agencies, reliable infrastructure is only part of the equation. Just as critical is a platform that supports efficient collaboration and streamlined workflows, especially across departments with different roles and technical expertise.

Pantheon is built to make this easy. With Dev, Test, Live environments for every site, plus Multidev for testing new features, teams can safely develop, review and launch updates without disrupting production. Whether it’s developers building new functionality or non-technical stakeholders reviewing content, everyone has a space to work confidently.

Tools like Content Publisher further simplify content workflows, making it easy for editors to publish updates, collaborate with others and stay compliant with approval processes.

Combined with Pantheon’s secure, scalable infrastructure and automated backups, this workflow-driven approach ensures government websites remain high-performing, agile and user-friendly for internal teams.

Macomb County's successful migration

A great example of a government agency successfully migrating to Pantheon is Macomb County, Michigan. The county needed to redesign its website to meet new accessibility standards and enhance user experience. By using Pantheon’s platform, they achieved significant improvements, including a boost in SEO performance and mobile responsiveness, while streamlining their content workflows and ensuring compliance with federal accessibility standards. Pantheon’s Multidev environment and Dev, Test, Live workflows were key to their success, enabling them to test and deploy features with confidence.

On the new site, we saw large gains in search engine optimization, especially on mobile. We were no longer trailing industry benchmarks for a government website.” 

– Anthony June, Application Manager at Macomb County

Pantheon’s modern cloud-based platform helps future-proof your web strategy, integrating with best-of-breed tools and ensuring you avoid being locked into a failing DXP model. This approach guarantees lower total cost of ownership, simplified multi-site management and faster performance, ensuring your web infrastructure remains reliable and scalable as your agency grows.

See how Drupal on Pantheon can optimize your government site today! 

Migrating to Drupal or upgrading your government website doesn’t have to be complicated. Pantheon can help government agencies successfully implement and manage Drupal sites that meet the highest standards of security, compliance and performance.

With our experience in both Drupal and government-specific requirements, Pantheon ensures that your migration is smooth, efficient and future-ready. We provide the tools and support needed to build and maintain secure, reliable government websites.

Our Drupal experts are here to guide you through every step of the process, whether you're migrating from a legacy system, consolidating multiple sites or enhancing your platform’s performance. We’ll help you navigate the technical and regulatory challenges, ensuring a transition that minimizes downtime and maximizes efficiency.

Want to see how Pantheon can transform your government site? Watch our demo now!