I’ve been waiting a long time to tell you something.

Several months ago, Treehouse was signed on by (Top 100 Federal Prime Contractor) Energy Enterpise Solutions as the development partner for Energy.gov’s massive, eleven-site Drupal relaunch.

Today, I am ecstatic to announce that the platform is live!

The Energy.gov relaunch represents a huge step in the ongoing progression of major government agencies moving to Drupal; these agencies have included the US House of Representatives, The White House, and the Department of Commerce, among others. As with other federal and state projects, the Department of Energy has proven to be an enthusiastic supporter of the Drupal community, with the project yielding numerous patches and even a new module or two to be contributed back to the community.

The project was executed by an all-star team that included not only Treehouse but also the design and usability gurus at  HUGE and Drupal support mavens at Acquia, all brought together by Energy Enterprise Solutions. Cloud-based hosting is provided by BlackMesh.

Running on Drupal 7, the multisite platform gives the Department of Energy the tools they need to both provide a more engaging, enjoyable user experience and realize operational efficiencies.

Highlights of the project include:

• Easy sharing of content between sites on the platform. Editors can now write content that is easily deployed to multiple sites, rather than each site having its own completely distinct resources.

• Data visualizations and mapping. Our devs cooked up some very cool things in rendering data visualizations and maps (using the super-slick MapBox). You’ll see more on this in the next week or so as they put together blog content about the technology implemented.

• Major editor empowerment. Along with creating content that can be applied anywhere within the platform’s network, it is now actually possible for editors to create new sites without relying on the development team.

• Drupal breakthroughs. Innovations in using Drupal include sophisticated workflows using a state machine, and the new Bean module (currently available as an alpha release). As with the data renderings, you’ll hear more about these innovations in the coming weeks.

• Independence. The Department of Energy now owns their site platform; its open source code means that they will no longer have to rely on a single vendor for support or site updates.

Finally, a big thank you and congratulations to Cammie Croft and Liz Meckes at the Department of Energy. It has truly been a pleasure working with the DOE team on this project.

As the CEO of Treehouse, I couldn’t be more proud of our team, nor more awestruck by what they have achieved. This project is as much of a milestone for us as I hope it is for the Department of Energy, and I am very hopeful that it will lead to more such projects with our public agencies in the future.