Challenge:
Solution:
Outcome:
Government agencies serve the public by providing essential services, promoting public welfare and enforcing laws and regulations. To achieve this, it’s important for an agency to have continuity – a clear and consistent approach to policies, procedures and communication.
Without continuity, especially when communicating with the public, an agency risks confusion that can erode public confidence in the agency’s work. Inconsistent messaging can also make it difficult for the public to find reliable and efficient services to help them solve their problems.
Despite its positive reputation for providing critical services in the state, this agency suffered from a continuity issue with its web presence. Each of its 12 divisions had built and was managing its own website.
Opportunity:
When a government agency has separate divisions, each with its own website, it can lead to a lack of continuity in information and messaging. Each division had its own way of presenting information, which created confusion for users trying to find specific answers to their questions.
Without a centralized system for updating content, outdated or conflicting information existed across the various websites as well. This lack of consistency can erode trust in an agency and make it more difficult for users to engage with its services.
The agency sought the help of G2O to lead a paradigm shift to a human-centered design approach focusing on two questions that would become the driving force behind the solution:
- What does each division do and offer visitors?
- What does the visitor need to make their experience with this agency a positive one?
Solution:
Putting the user at the center of the design process, G2O’s technology and experience experts worked together, along with the agency, to create a single website that assisted the public with accessing important information and resources. Through multiple stakeholder interviews informing the desired citizen journey across all 12 divisions, the comprehensive site structure needed to ensure seamless navigation for citizens between divisions and allow for easy access to citizen-friendly content.
Outcome:
With over 500 pages of easy-to-use content, this website is the most extensive and all-inclusive website to be released on the InnovateOhio platform so far.
The 2021 GovX Awards recognized this agency in the “State Government Experience” category for its new website. This category showcases best practices and achievements of states, cities and counties that are innovatively improving experiences and redefining how citizen services are delivered.
The website redesign also impacted the agency internally as well. The new site streamlines ODNR’s asset management, resulting in a more robust and cohesive brand narrative, and has provided teams with an opportunity to begin working across divisions to make a better internal experience for employees.