Brian Sweeting

The redesigned Utah.gov portal has recently been launched. I must say this is a major improvement, especially in terms of usability. The old portal home page suffered from information overload and the new home page is much more concise. I especially like the live 24/7 help that allows you to chat with a live person and ask questions. I didn’t try it out, but if the right resources are behind it, I can see it being a very useful tool.

I’d like to see the state agencies incorporate their own websites into the look and feel of the portal rather than just use the global navigation bar across the top of their sites. This would project a more unified identity. I understand they are currently using (or are looking into using) Interwoven’s Teamsite as their content management system, which would facilitate such a gigantic task.

I checked the 508 compliance of the home page and it appears that there are only a couple minor fixes that would need to be made and the site would be compliant with the US Government Section 508 Guidelines.

All in all I think the new portal looks and works great. Congratulations to the team behind it.