arik Savage

National Association of State Boards of Education (NASBE) State Policy Database

https://statepolicies.nasbe.org/

Role: Lead Developer

Published: Jun 2022

Screenshot of the home page of https://statepolicies.nasbe.org taken on December 15th 2024. Overview of the School Health Policy Database, including a map of categorized states based on their policies. Screenshot of the By Categories page of https://statepolicies.nasbe.org taken on December 15th 2024. A listing of policy categories, and their sub-categories. Screenshot of the Chronic Conditions Category page of https://statepolicies.nasbe.org taken on December 15th 2024. Lists states by whether or not they have relevant policies. Screenshot of the By State page of https://statepolicies.nasbe.org taken on December 15th 2024. A listing of US states and categories, with a number indicating how many policies in each. Screenshot of the Illinois page of https://statepolicies.nasbe.org taken on December 15th 2024. Lists all categories and sub-categories of policies in Illinois. Screenshot of the Illinois - Chronic Conditions Category page of https://statepolicies.nasbe.org taken on December 15th 2024. Displays a detailed list of policies for the category and state.

The NASBE State Policy Database was an exercise in data architecture. The policy database contained over 18,000 individual policies / statutes, across across 201 categories and 53 states / territories. By utilizing Drupal taxonomoies and tagging, only pages for {state}, {category}, and {state}/{category} had to be created; avoiding the potential thousands of permutations.

Data Architecture

Once the architecture was established, a custom feeds setup had to be created to import the raw data from client-provided CSVs. Each row of the input was parsed and mapped into the Drupal CMS. Each row had to be assigned a specific policy, category, and state.

After the data import was complete, the web of relationships revealed itself. The page for an individual state displayed all of the categories for which the state had one or more policy. Clicking on the state's category displayed all of the policies for that category in the state, as well as other states that also addressed the category. Alternatively, viewing a particular category revealed all of the states that had policies for the category, as well as other related categories.

All of this made both using and maintaining the site much easier for all users. As a visitor to the site, a user can find the information they're looking for via state, category, or by searching. As an administrator, individual policies can be added or removed one-by-one or en masse, without having to worry about the display or organization on any of the other pages that would be affected.

Since this site was purely utilitarian, the overall presentation was very simple and clear. However, in an ideal world, I would have added SVG maps, or other more visually engaging elements

Reception

This site was sunset by NASBE in January of 2025, but remained functional for the 4 years that it was online, with no major changes to the overall architecture. Time and research spent in the early phases of this project lead to a stable site that stood the test of time.

All work conducted on this project was done in the employ of Sandstorm Design.