Broward County Uses Artificial Intelligence to Help Small Team Modernize Outdated County Website
Broward County's four-person web development team is using generative AI to manage a comprehensive rebuild of the county's digital presence, migrating more than 10,000 pages from a 15-year-old SharePoint system to the Sitecore platform. Rather than automating the development process, the team is using Claude AI as a learning tool to interpret code, troubleshoot problems, and extend their existing technical skills. The modernization effort aims to simplify how residents access county services and information across hundreds of agency websites.
Broward County faced a significant digital infrastructure challenge when leadership determined that its 15-year-old SharePoint system no longer met residents' needs. The modernization initiative required transitioning content across numerous agency platforms while simultaneously equipping hundreds of municipal staff members with new technical competencies. The compressed timeline—a six-month development window—meant the four-person core team could not afford prolonged learning curves or traditional implementation delays.
The team's strategic approach involved starting with simplified agency websites containing essential services and documents rather than attempting a wholesale transfer of all existing pages. This phased methodology allowed developers to master the new Sitecore platform incrementally while building functional sites for public use. The transition also temporarily reduced active web administrators from 250 to zero as the central team rebuilt infrastructure and prepared colleagues for platform training.
The adoption of AI as an interpretive tool rather than an automation replacement may influence how other under-resourced municipal departments approach technology upgrades. If similar scaling approaches prove sustainable, local governments facing legacy system obsolescence could benefit from reduced project timelines and costs. However, the long-term effectiveness depends on whether the training and workflow improvements persist beyond the implementation phase and whether comparable results are achievable across jurisdictions with different technical infrastructure and staffing constraints.