Government should be accessible and municipal services should be easy to understand.
That’s exactly why Philadelphia has a new digital home for its municipal government at phila.gov.
The process
You might find the new site familiar if you’ve already been looking at information from certain departments, like the Mayor’s Office and the Department of Revenue.
Since 2014, the City’s Office of Open Data and Digital Transformation (ODDT) has worked with residents, experimented with new tools and layouts, and collaborated with City departments on the redesign.
Through iteration and continuous improvement, ODDT migrated sites and content onto the new platform. By 2016, visits to the beta website accounted for nearly half of all City web traffic.
During the beta phase, several major departments were fully transitioned to the new platform, including the Department of Parks & Recreation and the Department of Revenue.
Now, the former beta site has become the official City site on phila.gov.
The features
The new site is simple and easy to read, focusing on City services, events, and information rather than on City departments. The modern, user-centered site is designed around the needs of residents and other users who interact with it.
Features include:
- Simple, accessible language.
- Services and programs available from a global menu without having to dig into specific department pages.
- Departmental calendars that show upcoming events, including commission meetings.
- News and events, including spotlight events.
- Blog functionality.
The new site also equips municipal government with the resources and capacity to deal with 21st-century challenges, like dramatic increases in web traffic, facing all governments at every level.
Next steps
While phila.gov now directs visitors to the redesigned site, some departments still have content on the old legacy site.
Over time, these departments will fully transitioned to the new site.
