Architecting the Geospatial Program Office Site
The Geospatial Program Office within Washington State’s OCIO is moving ahead with efforts to consolidate and economize the State’s three main geoportals into one. Currently, users searching for spatial data from the State of Washington are either directed to [geography.wa.gov] or [geo.wa.gov]. Both sites provide very different data with uneven discoverability. So far, the project has passed through two major phases.
The first required assessing all the information across the geoportals. This includes not only the spacial data, but the administrative and infrastructure-related data as well. When possible, all non-spatial data was transferred directly to the OCIO site and archived internally. Articles and tables previously linked in word document format were updated and reformatted for consistency and accessibility. The actual data catalog is still in the process of being “cleaned up” and reformatted. The present data catalog document, despite its thoroughness, is dense and ripe with jargon that may present barriers to the amateur data-seeker.
After the link transfers, the OCIO Geospatial Program Office site was congested and often redundant. The overwhelming amount of options made the site difficult to navigate. Since the site is used as a vital resource within the geospatial community both within the government and amongst citizenry, it is important that it is the site does not serve as an increased transactional cost for Washington’s open data. To best unpack and rebuild the site, I turned to Information Architecture fundamentals. I created a sitemap (using Slickplan), making note of links that were broken, redundant, and outdated. With the links organized before me, I built a robust taxonomy. After much experimentation and hundreds of sticky-notes, a recommended sitemap informed by the taxonomy was crafted and implemented. The final site design is intended to break up functionality and promote usability. No item on the site should be more than two clicks away for a new user. Within the next two weeks I will be testing the interface on new users, making changes, and preparing for “full implementation,” which means redirecting all traffic from [geography.wa.gov] to the Geospatial Program Office site.
