Web Design Requirements and Standards

Though standardization of Web design across an entire Web site (regardless of internal divisions of an entity) is found across the thousands of Web sites of private sector entities, governmental entities are notoriously bad at securing executive support and reaching consensus on a standard design. This was certainly true for the state of Indiana, which once had more than 75 different agencies with different looking Web sites. As a result, sites were agency-focused, not customerfocused; confusing due to lack of consistency; presented the same types of information and functions (e.g., navigation and search) differently; usually had a stale design and illogical structure; with pages often out of date. All this, despite the fact that external customers demand an easy-to-use Web site and do not care whether the Web site is supported by the private or public sector.

To meet the expectations of its external customers, the governor’s office and the IN.gov Program took on the bold initiative to become the first state in the nation to implement a common set of design requirements and standards. These requirements and standards are derived from the work of a multi-agency task force that was established in 2007 to create a standard “look and feel” for state agency Web sites.