The Client
Part of eGovernment firm NIC’s family of companies, Colorado Interactive makes government easy by helping Colorado citizens and businesses interact with state and local government online and helping the government seamlessly manage those transactions. Partners can choose to web-enable their services using its ready-made apps, websites, event registration and payment processing solutions, or the company can build a custom solution from scratch.
The organization’s unique funding models mean that the state doesn’t have to spend a dime to get first-class services and support. The company’s team manages Colorado.gov, the official website of the State of Colorado.
The Situation
When the COVID-19 pandemic began, Americans quickly found themselves stunned, humbled, vulnerable and afraid, right along with the rest of the world. Citizens found themselves subjected to guidelines, mandates and closings designed to keep communities safe. With news outlets reporting a multitude of opinions, Americans increasingly turned to state and local government websites like Colorado.gov for accurate, timely information.
The Challenge
Before the pandemic, the NIC Colorado team had begun a redesign of the Colorado.gov site. But when the pandemic arrived, the team realized they needed to focus the redesign on responding to citizens’ immediate need for digital access to government information and services. The site required much more than a refreshed look and feel or some upgraded hardware — it needed to offer people straightforward, easy-to-find information, solutions and assistance.
The Solution
NIC Colorado’s website design goal was to enhance the user experience, expediting visitors’ paths to government resources. Specifically, the team wanted to make the site’s search functionality more prominent, focusing on surfacing and presenting relevant results that included content from sites other than Colorado.gov. Using Solr, the team improved the search results, enabling search across multiple sites and gaining greater control over the way information was displayed.
In addition to making significant improvements to the site’s look, feel and navigation, the NIC team also improved the content authoring experience for state and local content administrators. Multisite capabilities allowed NIC Colorado to migrate 370+ state agency and local government partner websites from a single organic group architecture into separate databases, allowing for a single codebase and separate database for entity websites.
The Results
The new Colorado.gov is the trusted and official source of government information in Colorado. Its efficient, effective platform ensures users have a seamless, familiar experience across hundreds of Colorado governmental sites.