By Bianca Frank, Creative Director · Bianca Frank Design, Anchorage
Originally published February 2025. Rewritten and updated October 2026.
People don’t browse a government website. They arrive with a problem, often on the worst day they’ve had in a while: a crime victim looking for help with medical bills, someone leaving a dangerous home at midnight, a family with a housing application due Friday, a provider trying to get reimbursed. A public agency site has one measure of success: did that person get what they came for, quickly, without having to understand how the agency is organized.
We’ve built and rebuilt public-facing sites for Alaska state boards, a state council and a regional housing authority, including the Violent Crimes Compensation Board, the Council on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault and its statewide resource site Not Alone AK, and the Interior Regional Housing Authority. Here is what that work has taught us, for the communications officer, program manager or administrator who’s been told the site needs to be redone.
In short:
- Structure the site around who the visitor is and what they need to do, not around divisions and programs.
- Most public sites serve two very different audiences at once, the public and the providers or grantees, and the home page has to send each one the right way in one click.
- Victim-services sites need safety features most designers never think about.
- Language access and accessibility are legal requirements for public entities, with a federal web accessibility deadline now on the calendar.
- Forms and documents are the real content. Treat the document library as the product, not an attachment.
- Inside a state agency the hard part is approvals, brand standards and hosting, so settle those before design starts.
Start from the person, not the org chart
Agency websites grow the way agencies do: a page per program, a section per division, a menu that mirrors the staff directory. The person arriving at 11 pm doesn’t know which division handles their problem and shouldn’t have to.
The fix is role-based navigation: the home page asks, in plain words, who you are or what you need, and takes you straight there. On the Violent Crimes Compensation Board site, the audiences are victims, medical providers, law enforcement and attorneys, and each has a different first question (how do I apply; how do I get paid; where do I send the report; what does the statute say). The rebuilt home page puts the board’s upcoming meetings at the top, because public notice is a legal duty, and then offers those four doors, so each visitor is one click from their own path. “File a claim” replaced “Victim Compensation Division.”
Two practical tests before you approve a navigation: can a first-time visitor reach any form in two clicks, and does every top-level label make sense to someone who has never heard of the agency. Five to seven top-level items is the ceiling.
The two-audience problem
Most public agency sites serve the public and also the organizations the agency funds, licenses or regulates. The Council on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault is a clear case: a person in crisis needs a hotline number and the nearest shelter; a grantee needs reporting forms, funding notices and data. Those two visitors should never see each other’s content.
On the new CDVSA site the split is explicit: resources for crime victims and legal services on one side, grantee support on the other, with the statewide statistics dashboard and annual reports where the public, the legislature and the press can find them. Each audience gets its own path from the home page and its own vocabulary. The grantee side can use agency terms; the public side can’t.
If your agency has this split and the current site mixes the two, that alone is reason to redesign.
Victim-services sites have requirements of their own
A site for people experiencing domestic violence or sexual assault is used by people who may be watched. Not Alone AK, the statewide resource site run by CDVSA, is built for that visitor: a visible path to 911 and the 988 Careline at the top, hotline and text options, a map and search for confidential local providers, and separate sections for teens, for Tribal services, for adults supporting youth and for people who want to change their own harmful behavior.
The three State of Alaska sites we’ve worked on in this space, VCCB, CDVSA and Not Alone AK, all carry a quick-exit control, because the people they serve may be watched. A housing authority or a tribal government site doesn’t need one; a victim-services site can’t go without it. For any site like this, plan for: a quick-exit control that leaves the site instantly and clears the page, a warning that browser history can be seen, no required sign-up to reach help, phone numbers that dial on tap, and pages that load fast on a phone with a weak signal. These are design decisions, and they have to be in the scope from the start, not added after launch.
Language access
A state agency serves everyone in the state, and in Alaska that includes a lot of people whose first language isn’t English. Not Alone AK offers its content in Simplified Chinese, Korean, Russian, Spanish, Samoan, Yugtun, Hmong and Tagalog as well as English, with a greeting in Deg Xinag in the header. That’s a language-access decision made early and built into the structure, not a translate button bolted on later.
If your agency has a language access plan, the website is where it’s most visible. Decide which languages, who translates (machine translation is not a plan for legal or safety content), and how translated pages are kept current when the English changes.
Accessibility is now a dated legal requirement
Accessibility has always been part of public trust and of federal law. It now has a specific technical standard and a deadline. Under the Department of Justice’s ADA Title II web rule, state and local government websites and apps must meet WCAG 2.1 Level AA. After the April 2026 interim rule that pushed the dates back, entities serving a population of 50,000 or more, which includes every State of Alaska agency, must comply by April 26, 2027; smaller entities and special districts by April 26, 2028. The DOJ’s summary is the place to read the details.
For a redesign that means WCAG 2.1 AA is a requirement in the scope, tested before launch and documented, including the PDFs. How to make a website accessible covers the practical side; the point here is that for a public agency it is no longer optional or vague.
The document library is the product
Most of what a public agency actually provides online is documents: applications, regulations, reports, meeting notices, rate sheets, forms. A redesign that makes the home page beautiful and leaves the documents as an unsorted list has fixed the wrong thing.
What works: documents grouped by the task they serve, not by file type; a visible date and version on every file; a search that returns documents with a one-line description; FAQs split by audience (“for applicants,” “for providers”); and the five most-requested forms linked from the home page. If you don’t know which five, pull the phone log or ask the front desk. Whatever people call about most belongs one click from the home page.
For a housing authority the documents are the service. The Interior Regional Housing Authority serves applicants, tenants and contractors across Interior villages, and each group’s documents (applications and eligibility, tenant notices and maintenance requests, bid packets and vendor forms) have to live on their own path with their own dates.
Working inside the agency
The design is usually the easy part. The parts that stall public projects are these; settle them in writing before anything is drawn.
- Approvals. Who signs off: a communications office, a director, a board, the department’s legal review? What has to go to the board at a scheduled meeting? Build the timeline around those dates.
- Brand standards. State seals, department logos and color systems have rules. Get the standards document first; it decides more of the look than the designer will.
- Hosting and domains. Some content must live on the department’s own domain and infrastructure; a public campaign site may belong on its own domain, as Not Alone AK does. Decide which, who administers it, and what the IT and security requirements are, including who holds the admin accounts when staff change.
- Procurement. If it’s a competitive solicitation, the scope you write determines the proposals you get. The checklist below helps.
- Analytics and privacy. What you may track on a public site, and what you must say about it, is a policy decision the agency makes, not the designer.
What to put in the scope
- Who the audiences are, by role, and the one thing each needs most.
- The current site’s content inventory and which documents are still valid.
- The accessibility standard (WCAG 2.1 AA) and how conformance will be tested and documented.
- Language access requirements and who provides translations.
- Safety requirements, if the site serves people at risk.
- Brand standards and approval chain, with meeting dates.
- Hosting, domain and security requirements, and account ownership.
- Who will maintain the site and the training they need.
- Budget range and the fiscal or grant deadline.
Frequently asked questions
What should a government agency website focus on? The tasks the public comes to do: find help, file, apply, pay, report, read the rule. Organize navigation by visitor role, put the most-requested forms one click from the home page, and keep agency vocabulary off the public-facing pages.
Do state and local government websites have to meet WCAG? Yes. The ADA Title II web rule requires WCAG 2.1 Level AA, with compliance due April 26, 2027 for entities serving 50,000 or more people (including state agencies) and April 26, 2028 for smaller entities and special districts.
What is role-based navigation? A home page that routes visitors by who they are or what they need (victim, provider, applicant, contractor) instead of by department. Each role gets its own path and its own plain-language labels.
What safety features should a domestic violence resource website have? A quick-exit control, a browser-history warning, help reachable without signing up, tap-to-call numbers, and fast loading on a weak connection.
How is a public agency website redesign different from a business website? The approval chain, brand standards, hosting and procurement rules are set by the agency; the audiences are broader and more varied; accessibility and language access are legal requirements; and the documents are the main content.
If you’re planning a public site
Write down the roles your site serves and the one thing each needs most. That page is the start of a good scope. If you’d like a second opinion on it, or on a site you already have, send it to us with your deadline. Our website design work for public agencies and tribal organizations follows the approach above.
Bianca Frank is the founder and Creative Director of Bianca Frank Design, an Anchorage agency that has designed brands and websites for Alaska businesses since 2007. She holds a BFA in Graphic Design and leads a small in-house team covering branding, web design, SEO and content strategy, with recent work for clients including Nalaquq LLC, the Native Village of Barrow, Solstice Psychiatry and Alaska Geographic. BFD was named one of Anchorage’s best web designers by Three Best Rated (2025) and received UpCity’s Local Excellence and Best of Alaska awards (2022, 2023).
