Office of Financial Management

Rearchitecting and redesigning the digital home for one of Washington state’s largest agencies

/ Branding / Content Strategy / Custom WordPress Development / Information Architecture / Website Design

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Intro

The Office of Financial Management is one of Washington state’s largest agencies, supporting nine government divisions and thousands of pages of policy information, reports, data, and mandated resources.

Over time, the site had grown into a sprawling ecosystem of content. Each division largely owned its section of the website, creating deep silos and inconsistent navigation. For users — from journalists and policymakers to researchers and Washington residents — finding need-to-know information often required knowing exactly which division produced it.

OFM needed a digital experience that worked differently: one organized around how people actually search for information, while remaining easy for internal teams to manage and maintain.

Designing for a site with thousands of pages

With more than 9,000 URLs spanning budgets, demographic data, policy guidance, reports, and legislative resources, scale was at the core of every decision.

Our work began by examining how the site’s information was structured. The existing navigation reflected the organization’s internal structure — not the mental models of the people using it. Our goal was to transform a division-based website into a user-centered information system.

Working closely across OFM’s divisions, we conducted content audits, group workshops, and user research to understand how audiences actually navigate and search for information.

From there, we developed a new topic- and task-based information architecture designed to intuitively surface information regardless of which division produced it.

To validate the structure, we ran multiple rounds of tree testing with real users, including members of the general public, existing OFM audiences, and internal stakeholders. These iterative tests helped refine navigation labels, groupings, and pathways until users could consistently locate information quickly and with confidence.

To aid content discovery, we also enhanced on-site search, helping users quickly shift between pages and documents, as well as surfacing the most popular resources across the site as quick links.

Migrating and restructuring more than 9,000 URLs (and even more documents)

A new information architecture meant thousands of pages needed to move, consolidate, or be restructured. A detailed content migration and redirect strategy covering more than 9,000 URLs was our first workstream, which helped ensure existing bookmarks, external links, and search visibility remained intact throughout the transition.

Content and a massive library of documents from the legacy Drupal platform was migrated into a new WordPress environment designed for flexibility and long-term maintainability. Along the way, content was mapped to the new taxonomy and page models so that the reorganized structure worked seamlessly within the CMS.

A design system built for a content-heavy government site

OFM’s website is fundamentally content-driven. Many pages contain dense information, reports, or datasets that need to be discoverable and accessible. To support this, we developed a responsive, modular WordPress design system capable of handling everything from simple informational pages to more complex, data-driven experiences.

The system includes more than 30 accessible page templates and components, each designed to maintain WCAG AA compliance while giving editors flexible tools to present information clearly. Even simple pages benefit from thoughtful typography, spacing, and component design — ensuring that long–form content remains readable and approachable.

The design system also creates long-term consistency across the site while empowering content teams to build new pages without design or development support.

Supporting dynamic data and API integrations

In addition to thousands of static content pages, the OFM website includes a range of dynamic content experiences, such as budget data displays and mandated reporting required by the state.

We worked closely with OFM’s technical teams to integrate existing APIs and external data sources into the WordPress platform, allowing these experiences to remain dynamic while fitting seamlessly into the new design system and ensuring critical information remains accurate, up-to-date, and publicly available.