Public Web Modernization: Key Strategies & Insights

Web modernization has become a vital topic within the public sector. We expect that the websites we interact with to be well-designed, easy to use, authoritative and reliable – and for growing numbers of public sector organizations, meeting these expectations is a federal requirement. Still, keeping pace with modernization isn’t always straightforward. In 2022, 31% of the U.S. Health and Human Services agencies reported that their sites weren’t consistent in appearance and adhering to user experience best practices.

What does a successful web modernization process look like?

A successful web modernization process involves balancing many factors: selecting modern software solutions, while ensuring easy upgrading in the future; ensuring comprehensive accessibility and privacy compliance, from infrastructure to visual design; and making sure users’ needs are established and taken into account throughout the project. This guide will walk you through some of the key strategies and considerations for web modernization in the public sector, ensuring your modernization process covers all bases and keeps pace with the latest technology, design principles and accessibility guidelines.

Each modernization project will look different, depending on your compliance regulations, your existing technology stack, and — crucially — which services you supply to the public. At Palantir, we specialize in delivering bespoke innovative web solutions and user-focused design that organizations can rely on today and tomorrow — find out more about our services. 

Design principles for web modernization

Good design forms the backbone of web modernization projects. It also improves navigation and functionality, enhances user experience, and inspires trust. When it comes to web modernization, good design isn’t just about selecting colors and fonts — it’s about following design principles to ensure that user experience is at the core of all of your modernization efforts. 

User-centered design

On the broadest level, user-centered design (UCD) places a deep emphasis on understanding users’ needs. It does this by gathering feedback and research data on users’ requirements and behaviors, and infusing this understanding into each phase of the design process. According to the Handbook of Usability Testing, there are three key principles to UCD:

• Early focus on users and tasks, by prioritizing structured information-gathering at the planning stage
• Empirical measurement and testing of product usage, and testing prototypes with actual users
• Iterative design, and modifying products regularly based on research and feedback

Content architecture

Your website’s content is only useful if visitors can actually locate it. For public sector institutions, making sure citizens can find answers to their questions is particularly important. A web modernization project is a good time to test and refresh your content architecture.

A widely used approach to testing information architecture is card sorting: a method for discovering how users would organize content on your site. It involves users clustering “cards” (pieces of content) into concept or category groups. These groups can either be pre-designated by you, or decided by your users. This exercise will help you understand how visitors expect content to be structured on your site, and helps identify patterns in user behavior. Card sorting can be achieved with pen and paper, but there are also a range of online tools at your disposal — we use OptimalSort.

Another key consideration for content modernization is URL structures. It’s important that URLs on your site all follow a consistent naming convention. This is good practice for SEO, and also clearly identifies each page’s context and location within your site architecture.

Our main advice for URL naming conventions is: choose something simple, and stick to it at all costs. More in-depth recommendations for URL structures can be found in our ultimate guide to digital governance. 

Ensuring accessibility and compliance

Ensuring that sites are accessible to as many visitors as possible is an important principle for all organizations — but for many public institutions, it’s also legally mandated. U.S. state and local governments must comply with the accessibility guidelines contained in the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). U.S. federal agencies and entities who receive federal funding are subject to the accessibility requirements of Section 508.

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) form the basis of both ADA and Section 508, as well as accessibility legislation in over 40 countries. WCAG includes guidelines on making content accessible to screen readers, offering alt text and captions for images and video, using high color contrast in design, and plain language.

To address the challenges of full accessibility compliance for public sector entities, the GSA developed the U.S. Web Design System (USWDS): a set of standards and building blocks for developing government websites that ensure accessibility compliance as standard. The USWDS provides a great foundation of building accessible, modern websites — but it still needs to be implemented and customized thoughtfully to meet accessibility regulations. If you’re interested in learning more about the design system, take a look at our guide to working with USWDS. 

Choosing modern tools

Modernization needs to be built on a strong technological foundation. Many public sector organizations are working with a technology stack they’ve used for years. This in itself isn’t a problem, but you want to make sure the tools you’re using are setting you up for success in terms of site speed, maintenance, and being able to easily implement accessibility measures.

When it comes to selecting the right tools for your public sector organizations, the GSA’s U.S. Digital Services Playbook offers some key recommendations. These include:

• Choose popular software frameworks, and tools that are frequently used by private sector organizations building similar services
• Use open source solutions wherever possible
• Use solutions with thorough documentation and ensure clear instructions for setting a local develop environment, so new team members can begin to contribute quickly
• Deploy a flexible hosting environment where resources are provisioned in real time, to respond to fluctuating site traffic
• Select software frameworks that comply with the relevant privacy and security regulations, and are “pre-certified” by FedRAMP

At Palantir, we build in Drupal: an open source CMS used by governments in over 150 countries worldwide. Drupal places a high level of importance on privacy and security, and includes modules for complying with many of the most widely applied security measures, including GDPR and COPPA. Drupal also provides a solid foundation for accessibility compliance, as its core software is WCAG 2.0 compliant as standard.

Takeaways: Key strategies for public web modernization

Building modern, accessible, and user-friendly sites is not a guessing game — there’s already a wealth of knowledge at your disposal. Use established research and testing methods to ascertain what visitors need and expect from your site, and pair this with public-sector specific guidelines like the U.S. Digital Services Playbook. 

At Palantir, we’ve helped dozens of public sector agencies manage comprehensive modernization projects, helping them to update their technology stack and implement user-centered design systems, all while ensuring seamless delivery of their web services. Learn more about how we can help public sector agencies deliver web experiences that citizens love.