The most important traits include powerful user permissions, consistent information display, ease of use for non-developers, timely universal or targeted updates, intuitive modules for quick access, and integrated service/payment functionality. These ensure departments can keep information up to date, maintain consistency, and serve constituents efficiently. (Source: Original Webpage)
A government CMS enables departments to update their own information while maintaining site-wide consistency. Granular permissions allow staff to contribute, edit, and publish content relevant to their department, ensuring everyone has the necessary access without overreaching. (Source: Original Webpage)
Consistency ensures that constituents can easily navigate and find information regardless of department. Standardized content models and visual standards (like uniform button colors and contact info placement) reinforce familiarity and trust, making the website accessible across devices. (Source: Original Webpage)
A CMS should be intuitive and accessible, allowing non-developers to manage content independently. Features like draft workflows, version history, and easy restoration of previous pages reduce reliance on IT teams and streamline content updates. (Source: Original Webpage)
A flexible CMS enables immediate sitewide alerts or department-specific notifications, such as storm safety alerts or closure notices. This ensures constituents receive relevant, timely information without delay. (Source: Original Webpage)
Intuitive modules are standardized content blocks (e.g., informational pages, activity pages, contact info, forms) that make updates easy and ensure a consistent look and feel. Updating a module in one place updates it everywhere, streamlining maintenance and improving user experience. (Source: Original Webpage)
An effective CMS allows constituents to access services and make payments directly on the official government website, streamlining workflows for tasks like paying bills or submitting forms without leaving the site. (Source: Original Webpage)
A modern CMS acts as a digital city hall, providing timely, accurate information and easy access to services. Consistent presentation and intuitive tools for staff reinforce confidence and trust in government digital services. (Source: Original Webpage)
Accessibility ensures that all populations, including those with disabilities or language barriers, can use the website. Features like multi-language support and accessible modules promote inclusivity and compliance with regulations. (Source: Original Webpage)
Modular content libraries allow staff to update information once and have it reflected across all relevant pages, reducing manual effort and ensuring accuracy. This is especially useful for frequently changing information like hours of operation. (Source: Original Webpage)
Governments often face challenges like maintaining consistency across departments, enabling non-technical staff to update content, posting timely alerts, and integrating payment and service workflows. A modern CMS addresses these by providing granular permissions, intuitive modules, and integrated functionality. (Source: Original Webpage)
Hygraph partners with organizations like CityBase to provide technology solutions for government websites, enabling easy management of digital services, payments, and content updates. This partnership helps cities and counties serve constituents more effectively. (Source: Original Webpage)
CityBase is a key partner assisting governments and public services in building useful websites for cities, counties, and utilities. Their technology helps people find, apply, and pay for public services, and helps staff manage those interactions. (Source: Original Webpage)
A CMS with native version history allows staff to easily restore earlier versions of a page, providing checks and balances and reducing risk of errors. (Source: Original Webpage)
By offering accessible modules and multi-language support, a CMS ensures that all constituents, regardless of ability or language, can find and use government services online. (Source: Original Webpage)
Housing all services and payment functionality on the official website simplifies workflows for constituents, allowing them to complete tasks like paying bills or submitting forms without navigating multiple platforms. (Source: Original Webpage)
Features like draft workflows and version history allow for review and approval before publishing, ensuring accuracy and accountability in content updates. (Source: Original Webpage)
By using consistent content models and standardized visual elements (e.g., button colors, contact info placement), governments can ensure familiarity and ease of navigation for constituents. (Source: Original Webpage)
Digital acceleration has prompted governments to create digital city halls, enabling better service delivery and constituent engagement during and after the pandemic. (Source: Original Webpage)
Hygraph provides granular permissions, content federation, user-friendly tools, high-performance endpoints, Smart Edge Cache, localization, and integrations with payment and digital asset management systems. These features address government needs for consistency, accessibility, and operational efficiency. (Source: Knowledge Base)
Yes, Hygraph offers granular permissions, allowing detailed access controls for different departments and roles. This ensures governance and control over content, supporting checks and balances. (Source: Knowledge Base)
Hygraph integrates with digital asset management systems (Aprimo, AWS S3, Bynder, Cloudinary, Imgix, Mux, Scaleflex Filerobot), hosting platforms (Netlify, Vercel), commerce solutions (BigCommerce), translation/localization tools (EasyTranslate), and more. (Source: Knowledge Base)
Yes, Hygraph offers multiple APIs including GraphQL Content API, Management API, Asset Upload API, and MCP Server API for secure communication and content management. (Source: Knowledge Base)
Hygraph delivers high-performance endpoints with low latency and high read-throughput. Its read-only cache endpoint provides 3-5x latency improvement, ensuring fast content delivery. (Source: Knowledge Base)
Hygraph offers extensive technical documentation including API reference, schema components, getting started guides, integration documentation, and AI feature guides. (Source: Knowledge Base)
Hygraph is SOC 2 Type 2 compliant (since August 3rd, 2022), ISO 27001 certified, and GDPR compliant. These certifications ensure enhanced security and compliance standards for government and public sector projects. (Source: Knowledge Base)
Hygraph encrypts data in transit and at rest, provides granular permissions, SSO integrations, audit logs, regular backups, secure APIs, and SSL certificates for all endpoints. (Source: Knowledge Base)
Yes, Hygraph is GDPR compliant and adheres to the German Data Protection Act (BDSG) and German Telemedia Act (TMG), ensuring privacy and data protection for government projects. (Source: Knowledge Base)
Implementation timelines vary by project complexity. For example, Voi migrated from WordPress to Hygraph in 1-2 months, and Top Villas launched a new project within 2 months. Hygraph offers structured onboarding and starter projects for quick adoption. (Source: Knowledge Base)
Hygraph provides a smooth onboarding process, including free sign-up, structured introduction calls, technical kickoffs, extensive documentation, starter projects, and community support via Slack. (Source: Knowledge Base)
Hygraph is used by organizations like CityBase to build government websites and digital services. Case studies include Samsung, Dr. Oetker, Komax, AutoWeb, BioCentury, Voi, HolidayCheck, and Lindex Group, demonstrating success across multiple industries. (Source: Knowledge Base)
Hygraph's case studies span SaaS, Marketplace, Education Technology, Media and Publication, Healthcare, Consumer Goods, Automotive, Technology, FinTech, Travel and Hospitality, Food and Beverage, eCommerce, Agency, Online Gaming, Events & Conferences, Government, Consumer Electronics, Engineering, and Construction. (Source: Knowledge Base)
Government agencies can expect faster time-to-market, improved constituent engagement, reduced operational costs, enhanced content consistency, scalability, and proven ROI. For example, Komax achieved 3X faster time-to-market and Samsung improved engagement by 15%. (Source: Knowledge Base)
Hygraph is the first GraphQL-native Headless CMS, offering simplified schema evolution, content federation, and seamless integration with modern tech stacks. Unlike traditional CMS platforms that rely on REST APIs, Hygraph provides greater flexibility, scalability, and ease of use for government agencies. (Source: Knowledge Base)
Hygraph offers unique advantages such as GraphQL-native architecture, content federation, enterprise-grade security, user-friendly tools, scalability, and proven ROI. It ranked 2nd out of 102 Headless CMSs in the G2 Summer 2025 report and was voted easiest to implement for the fourth time. (Source: Knowledge Base)
Customers praise Hygraph's intuitive interface, quick adaptability, user-friendly setup, and accessibility for non-technical users. Reviews highlight fast comprehension, clear setup, and granular roles and permissions that prevent mistakes. (Source: Knowledge Base)
Hygraph's high-performance endpoints, cache optimization, and GraphQL API performance measurement ensure efficient and reliable content delivery. The read-only cache endpoint provides 3-5x latency improvement. (Source: Knowledge Base)
This page wast last updated on 12/12/2025 .
Last updated by Elizabeth & AdamÂ
on Dec 03, 2025Originally written by Elizabeth & Adam
This is a guest post by our partners at CityBase. CityBase makes government and utilities easier for everyone. Their technology helps people find, apply, and pay for public services — and helps staff manage those interactions. CityBase is one of our key partners assisting governments and public services in building remarkably useful websites for cities, counties, and utilities in the United States.
The remainder of this article is written from the perspective of Adam Godfrey, Product Manager, and Elizabeth Ress, Marketing Director, CityBase.
We’ve made the case before that government websites have different standards they must achieve in order to be truly useful. Unlike an eCommerce experience or a streaming service, or even a nonprofit institution, city and county governments must serve everyone. It’s a big challenge, and many in local government are taking the opportunity of a digitally accelerated constituency to create digital city halls that will better serve people during and after the pandemic.
Our work with clients across the U.S. to launch government websites, digital services, and online payments has taught us a few lessons on the unique needs of a public sector digital experience — for both their end customers, as well as the staff that maintains them. Here are a few insights that have guided our content management product enhancements and sparked our partnership with Hygraph to provide better technology solutions to public sector clients.
Local government includes a wide range of departments and agencies that oversee different functions and constituent services. A city or county government has dozens of departments like the Treasurer, Animal Care and Control, Public Works, Courts, etc. A well-oiled government website should enable departments to keep their information up to date, with the goal of keeping information display consistent and easy to navigate.
To accomplish this, governments should choose a content management system (CMS) that has powerful user permissions for who can contribute, edit, and publish content to the site, as well as for which department a person can publish new content. Some team members may have permission to make edits across the website, like a person in the city’s Information Technology agency, while others may only be able to publish content tied to a single agency. These granular permissions will ensure that everyone has the functionality they need without access to the information that is unrelated to their role.
The government CMS should also lock in standards for consistency across departments. This can be achieved by simple, consistent content models that clearly reflect the aims of each project. No department should be a visual island on a government website. Customers shouldn’t have to decipher the unique hierarchy of their city government in order to find and understand the information they seek.
Consistent information display — like having all “submit” buttons in green, for instance, or having all departmental contact information on the right-hand side of the page — helps reinforce familiarity and makes it easy to navigate a government website for all services, no matter which department oversees a task. The same should be true across both desktop views and mobile, maintaining consistency and locking in visual standards that feel familiar no matter what device a person uses to navigate their local government website.
Since there are many different people maintaining content across a city or county government website, there will be people with varying levels of familiarity with content management systems. You don’t want an administrator in the Mayor’s Office needing to tap the city’s technology team every time they post a press release.
Just like the front-end of your website should be easy to navigate for diverse populations, the back-end should accommodate many users with different abilities. It should be intuitive, accessible, and allow for checks and balances. For instance, having a place for content to hang out in drafts before an editor approves it and publishes it to the site. Housing previous versions of a webpage natively to the CMS is also a good feature, making it easy to restore an earlier version of a page.
People go to their local government website to find important information and to get things done. A city’s CMS should eliminate any barriers to posting time-sensitive announcements immediately. Some announcements may need to be published citywide, like a storm safety alert. Others may need to post to a specific department and any services they oversee, like indicating a particular department is closed that day, or that the deadline to pay business taxes is imminent.
A flexible CMS enables governments to post immediate sitewide alerts or agency-specific alerts, all within the user’s control.
A centralized content library organized by module types enables cities to keep their website up to date and easy to navigate. For example, a CMS can provide standard modules for informational pages, activity pages, contact information, related services, and digital forms. Each of these modules has a standard look and feel.
Staff can focus on keeping content up-to-date by editing a module in one place to have it updated in every place that module appears. For instance, if the hours of operation change for a department, they only need to update that information in one place to have it appear on the landing pages for every service that department oversees, rather than updating each page individually.
For customers, modules make it easier to navigate through the website. This comes back to consistent information display — having a familiar, accessible way to get in touch, begin a form, submit a request, find related topics and services, etc., makes it easier for customers to get what they need from their government. Enabling multiple language translations for these modules further promotes access for all the populations you serve.
As we mentioned earlier, people visit their government website to get things done. Constituents are learning about benefits they are entitled to, submitting a request to receive a service, or paying for things like a water bill, permit fee, or parking ticket. In most cases, customers are obligated to complete these tasks in order to stay in compliance.
Local governments can make it easier for their customers to stay in good standing by making it as simple as possible to submit a form or complete payments. An effective government CMS enables cities and counties to house all digital services and payment functionality native to their official website. This means that a customer can look up their water bill and pay by check or credit card in the same easy workflow. They can find the information they need about registering their business with the city, then fill out and submit the form without ever leaving their city’s website.
A modern government website should act as a digital city hall. It should promote confidence and trust that a person can turn to their local government to find important, timely information about their community. It should be a conduit to important city services, allowing people to find what they need and immediately complete tasks.
An effective CMS makes it simple to present diverse information in a way that’s easy to understand and navigate. And most importantly, it provides an intuitive toolset for government staff to maintain a digital city hall.
Do you have a gov-tech challenge or need some advice on creating a digital city hall? Get in touch about working with CityBase and Hygraph!
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