(from left to right): Andrew Hoppin (CEO, NuCivic), Scott Burns (CEO, GovDelivery), Sheldon Rampton (CTO, NuCivic)
I have met some amazing people during my years serving government. One that really stands out is Andrew Hoppin. In 2010, when Andrew was CIO of the NY State Senate, another Andrew I greatly admire, Andrew Rasiej (founder of the Personal Democracy Forum), encouraged me to meet Andrew Hoppin.
Andrew H. (got to keep the Andrew’s straight) impressed me in a number of ways. He was thoughtful about the challenges facing his organization, he saw technology as a solution to major problems, and he could see benefits of opening government that went way beyond the buzzword of “transparency” back then. In a one hour meeting, Andrew shared his strategies for saving money, for keeping vendor partners honest, for building a great team, and for using transparency to build trust and to improve service to the citizen. I left with great energy and optimism for government transformation that reminded me of why I wanted to serve governments in the first place.
After that meeting, I told a colleague that Andrew Hoppin was one of a handful of people I’d met that I would go out of my way to work with someday. Andrew left the NY State Senate the next year and went on to start a great company that GovDelivery has had a chance to work with called NuCivic (see our initial work here). NuCivic is leading the way in bringing compelling information management solutions built on the Drupal platform to government. These solutions are enterprise-class and cloud-hosted.
Today, GovDelivery announced that we have acquired NuCivic and that Andrew and his extraordinary and mission-driven colleagues have joined our team. It is a big day for our clients, for GovDelivery, for the public sector Drupal community, and for NuCivic.
GovDelivery clients on the Drupal platform (and those who are not) gain access to a broader range of capabilities with increasingly strong integrations to the GovDelivery Communications Cloud.
GovDelivery gets an opportunity to drive more impact. We are helping government connect with more people than we ever thought possible (70 million total and 30,000 more every day). Working with NuCivic allows us to bring more solutions to our clients so that we can continue to hone our ability to drive the public to engage with government and take meaningful actions whether accessing open data sites, collaborating with colleagues, or participating in a hackathon.
We are also pleased to further strengthen our commitment to the Drupal platform as one of the most important and fastest growing technology platforms used by the public sector. We have great respect for the Drupal community and all it has accomplished.
The public sector Drupal community will be able to benefit from even more innovations from NuCivic making Drupal a more powerful platform than ever for government.
Finally, the NuCivic team… well, I’ll let Andrew speak for them, which he has done here. We are glad to have them on board and know that they share our passion for serving government clients and the public.
