The Office of the County Clerk-Recorder and Elections’ main goal is to transform service delivery and customer experience. County staff partnered with Granicus, Inc. to revamp the department’s website, making it dual-language, mobile-friendly, and fully accessible for people with disabilities.
The new website design is driven by citizen behavior and inclusive to people of all demographics.
Also, the new website design includes easy information delivery and task completion that is mobile-friendly, responsive, and accessible. The website has advanced features to view informed data that meets the citizen-driven design criteria and elements that will lead to higher citizen satisfaction and engagement.
“The top reason that people land on our website is to complete a transaction. So, our website design was built with the customers’ journey in mind and the understanding of different experiences by every device,” said Francisco Diaz, County Clerk-Recorder/Registrar of Voters.
“If someone is looking up fictitious business names from a mobile device, they are likely searching for details such as the address or business name, so ensuring that such information is prominently displayed is key,” adds Diaz.
Over 60% of traffic on the former website was on mobile devices – and as more citizens demand on-the-go access to government services, this number is expected to rise sharply. Knowing this, the new website was designed around a mobile-friendly platform, which means that the site adapts to a mobile screen, is accessible and readable, and provides easy-to-follow navigation.
In addition, the new website transitions to a .gov domain to help the public quickly identify the website as a trusted government source. This is different from other well-known Top-Level Domains (TLD), where anyone can register for a fee.
“The adoption of the .gov domain is one of the simplest steps that we can take to strengthen our cybersecurity posture while sending a message to the user that the domain is legitimate, secure, and trusted,” said Diaz.
“With rampant misinformation and disinformation campaigns ranging in topic, it is important that residents receive accurate and trusted information from their local elections office,” continues Diaz.
The .gov domain is more secure and helps make it more difficult for malicious actors and scammers to co-opt government websites.
Acquiring a .gov website domain requires that submitters provide evidence to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), a division of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, to ensure they truly are requesting these names on behalf of legitimate local, county, or state government entities. The lack of .gov in a website domain means that a controlling government authority has not validated that the website in question is legitimate.
The Office of the County Clerk-Recorder/Registrar of Voters thanks its community partners and members of the public who participated in the design and content creation of the website. Over 40 nonprofits, civic organizations and community members participated in the design and implementation of the website.
To view the new website, go to: www.sanbenitocounty-ca-cre.gov.
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