Ministry of Science and Innovation shows innovation on the web

When the Ministry of Science and Innovation (MSI) is looking for a web presence, it has to be something extraordinary. MSI is a new government agency driving science and innovation to increase New Zealand's economic, environmental and social performance. It does this through its strategic leadership and by partnering with the science and innovation sector and through the networks it builds across government, research organisations, business and industry.

In saying that, it seemed almost a natural step that MSI would use world wide celebrated, local, open source CMS SilverStripe to build their website. Our team at SilverStripe Ltd., the company behind the open source suite, built the site and found the collaboration with MSI to be a good match in terms of culture and philosophy.

MSI has a goal to connect all players in the science and innovation ecosystem. It also provides research and development funding to grow export focused companies who can compete globally. Accordingly, the goal of the website was to explain in an easy to understand way what MSI is about, and how people can access funding.

The NZ government is generally very open about what they spend tax payers money on and is proud of the results of its investments. Based on this philosophy, the MSI website was also created to provide information on who received what, how much funding was provided from MSI and to showcase the results through case studies.

With this in mind, there was a lot of content to go into one website; 273 pages and sub pages, and thousands of pages with funding records. SilverStripe then faced the challenge of presenting all of this information in a user friendly and helpful way.

The solution is a clean and fresh design that is focused on clear communication and usability. Different sections for different audiences create a well sorted and easy to navigate content overview, and an advanced and customised search function makes it easy to search the funding database.

Simple and easy to follow HTML5 info graphics illustrate the New Zealand science and innovation landscape and provide an engaging and fun way to learn new things. The info graphics are editable in the back-end and even work on an iPad.

The promotional tiles that structure the content can be updated entirely on the fly, with photos and text linking to any page on the site. If the user wants to share the content, they can click on any of the provided Twitter or Facebook icons and share the content via their accounts.

The project wasn’t all smooth sailing, as SilverStripe faced a few challenges along the way. Julian Meadow, Project Manager at SilverStripe explains the biggest challenge: “The info graphics needed to be created in HTML5 in order to support the iPad. But a lot of desktop users visit the site with IE7, which doesn’t support HTML5. It was a challenge to find a work around for this issue, but in the end we mastered it.”

In terms of design, SilverStripe partnered with MSI design agency Ocean Design, who delivered the MSI basic brand rules and elements. Based on these guidelines, our Creative Director Felipe Skorski created the website framework and design.

The new website msi.govt.nz is a beautiful and very informative website that demonstrates that government work is anything but boring.

We are proud of the work we did. What do you think? Check it out and share your thoughts with us. We are looking forward to hearing from you.