What is CivicTheme?
CivicTheme is a government-grade Drupal 9 design system with a theme and component library to provide a consistent, high quality digital experience out-of-the-box.
Created for government agencies to build Drupal 9 websites faster and at a reduced cost, CivicTheme lets you build web pages from a suite of existing components such as hero banners, navigation cards and body content.
CivicTheme is an open source project designed, built and maintained by Salsa Digital. It employs the same design system principles and priority on accessibility standards and security as the former Australian Government Design System (AGDS) initiated by the Digital Transformation Agency (DTA).
Built with WCAG 2.1 AA compliance in mind
Dark and light colour themes tested against compliance guidelines.
Responsive with a focus on mobile
Great appreciation for gestures, swiping and reachability.
Built for GovCMS
CivicTheme 1.0 templates work with GovCMS D9 out-of-the-box content structures.
Built for content authors
Designed for government agencies and built for content managers, CivicTheme is for Government agencies who want to manage their content without the need for coding or developers (you'll just need developers to initially install the Drupal 9 and CivicTheme code base).
Once set up, pages can be simply managed by anyone from content author role and above. Create unique page layouts or change existing ones, add new components from the available library, and modify individual components to suit different pages all within the usual page management area.
Deeper and more complex adjustments can also be made to components or visual styling via the Drupal administrative configuration features without coding.
What you get out-of-the-box
Out-of-the-box you get:
- A highly mature and comprehensive set of components — Assemble your pages quickly and easily in the Drupal content admin area
- Site building with no coding — Just update your logo, fonts and colours to suit your branding
- Flexibility — Adapt or customise the components without any coding, via simple content administration or configuration
Ready to theme right out-of-the-box
Flexible to accomodate your branding
Simple enough to maintain yourself
High quality and visually engaging
Low cost and speed to market
Inclusive, accessible and compliant
Implement as-is, or fully customise it
Choose how to apply CivicTheme to your next project, with three options available.
An open source design system
CivicTheme users will benefit from a growing online community and the ability to use designs and components built by other community members.
Co-create for a better citizen experience with open source. With no license fees, open source accelerates innovation by enabling government to co-create great websites with industry and across government departments.
While Salsa maintains the open source project, any government agency can use the solution for their Drupal 9 website project.
Quality baseline
Start with a good base that’s user tested and proven.
Adapt at low cost
Make tweaks/improvements at significantly lower cost.
Engage with community
Leverage, exchange, participate and contribute to the community.
Getting started with CivicTheme
Open source and publicly available, you choose how to implement CivicTheme for your project.
Do it yourself — The DIY approach
Take the open source designs (available in Figma) and component library and adopt, adapt or customise.
Use your own developers — Get your developers or a vendor to adopt it
Get your preferred design vendor to adopt, adapt or customise on your behalf.
Get Salsa to build it
Salsa Digital can adopt, adapt or customise on your behalf.
CivicTheme resources
Access open source materials to help your CivicTheme project.