I have been carrying out personal research into CMS (content management systems) used by local authorities in the UK and Ireland for over 5 years. This research started out of interest, but also out of frustration as nothing similar existed to help to understand the local authority CMS landscape.

In past reviews I checked each website individually, but this can be very labour intensive and liable to error. I use WhatCMS to do the heavy lifting and fill in the gaps with a manual review or contacting councils.

There hasn’t been a great deal of change in content management systems used by councils over the last year. Drupal now leads the pack and there is now a clear gap between Drupal and Jadu. This is due mainly to the growing popularity of LocalGov Drupal, which now boasts 40 live council sites. The other changes in CMS are largely due to local government reorganisation over the last year or so.

The top CMS used in local government are presented below. You can view the full list of CMS by selecting the Extensions option on the Airtable presented below.

CMS usage by platform

This year I carried out this research as a consultant for Digital Health Check, not as a local government officer. If you spot any errors or want to report any changes please do get in contact.

LocalGov CMS Directory

The LocalGov CMS Directory can be accessed via the button below. You can also find CMS usage maps by country on this page.