Pennsylvania’s website redesign looks to open ‘no wrong door’
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro speaks during a previous event. Shapiro's executive order was the catalyst for a complete overhaul of PA.gov, which accelerated last year. Alex Kent via Getty Images
By
Chris Teale
Gov. Josh Shapiro mandated better online services in 2023, and since then a massive effort has been underway to revamp the commonwealth’s website around life events, not agency functions.
In April 2023, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro signed an executive order mandating that the state government provide better, more user-friendly online services to residents.
The order, which also created the Commonwealth Office of Digital Experience, known as CODE PA, mandated that online services be streamlined so it would be easier for residents to carry out all manner of activities, whether it be renewing a license, accessing benefits or making reservations for campgrounds.
At the time, Shapiro said in a statement “there should be no wrong door for Pennsylvanians looking to access government services.” And the effort already appears to have borne fruit. In April, CODE PA announced it has saved more than $8 million through its team of in-house digital professionals that have taken on numerous projects to improve Pennsylvania’s digital offerings.
One of the biggest is the project to transform PA.gov, the commonwealth’s main website, into a single place for accessing online services and information. It’s a lot of work, as more than 30,000 pages from more than 60 agency websites would need to be migrated into one platform. But it makes residents’ lives easier, especially as services are now sorted by life event, rather than by agency function.
“We design around life events and needs, not agency structures,” Sara Hall, senior product manager for PA.gov at CODE PA, said during a panel discussion at the Code for America Summit in Washington, D.C., last week. “Residents can find services faster and more intuitively, with our goal being a unified experience across agencies, building consistent, constant strategy research and feedback from new users. This shift really ensures that residents don't have to understand government to interact with it and reinforces that no wrong door approach.”
The initiative started in earnest late last year as employees and contractors built out the new website’s template and various components. Launch came in May 2024, then every month, between five and eight agencies were released with their pages on the unified domain. Many of those pages have needed to be refined, combined or otherwise rationalized to make for an easier user experience.
It's needed a lot of collaboration with various state agencies, who beforehand had their own domains, their own standards for web content and little incentive to work closely with other departments, even if their services were related. For example, Hall said a content strategist for CODE PA found that around 10 agencies had content related to Naloxone, the life-saving medication used to reverse opioid overdoses. Now, that information is in fewer, less disparate places online.
“Sometimes when folks work in agencies, they think about their siloed agency,” Hall said. “They're not always thinking about the bigger picture of how this fits in with the other agency content on PA.gov. This has been a really great opportunity for CODE PA to step in and help bridge those gaps.”
The recent REAL ID enforcement deadline from the Transportation Security Administration also served as an incentive for PA.gov to get up to snuff. The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation had 15 pages related to REAL ID in the state, and, in addition to a content audit, digital strategies from CODE PA reviewed the 334 responses the state received in its feedback form from those pages.
Taylor Farnsworth, content director at CODE PA, called those responses “foundational,” and said they highlighted sometimes inconsistent or wrong information, especially as 43% of respondents said they did not find the information helpful.
“It really helped us understand, where are the gaps in context?” she said during the Code for America session.
The impact has already been noticeable. The PA.gov website has seen a 20% increase in traffic, Hall said, while the bounce rate of people leaving without finding the information they are looking for has dropped from 19% to 6%. Other states are looking to take a similar “no wrong door” approach, especially in complex areas like benefits administration, to allow applicants for one program to see what else they might be eligible for.
“Our ultimate goal here is to build trust, both internally for agency staff and externally, with those who are using our services every day,” Farnsworth said. “We can't do this without the investment of the people, tools and processes to make this happen. We're not just reprinting content here. We're really helping agencies build the capacity to do it well and keep it that way.”
And there is more to come as CODE PA looks to further refine the content on PA.gov and streamline how residents interact with government services. That can be tricky for agencies’ digital directors, Farnsworth said, as they “wear many hats” and may not have as much time to think about website content in addition to social media, communications and other duties.
But the plan is to help agencies better understand “what good looks like” when it comes to content, Farnsworth said, especially in areas like accessibility and being mobile-friendly. Eventually, the aim is for CODE PA to “teach [agencies] to fish” themselves, she added.