Public Access Portal

The Challenge

The Washington Public Disclosure Commission plays a critical role in government transparency — maintaining the public record of campaign finance filings, lobbying activity, and disclosure requirements that allow citizens, journalists, and watchdog organizations to hold elected officials and candidates accountable. The Commission’s existing web presence was built on a proprietary CMS that limited flexibility, and its information architecture didn’t make it easy for citizens to quickly find the disclosure data and compliance information they were looking for.

Our Approach

GovWebworks led the redesign and migration from the proprietary CMS to Drupal, treating the public disclosure mission as the organizing principle for the redesign. The new information architecture was activity-focused — organized around what citizens came to the site to do (research a candidate’s funders, understand lobbying filings, find compliance requirements) rather than around the Commission’s internal organizational structure. Color-coding helped users navigate between the major activity areas. Solr-powered search made the Commission’s extensive data holdings genuinely searchable. External data source integrations ensured that disclosure data from campaign finance systems was surfaced through the portal in real time. ADA/508 compliance was built in throughout.

The Result

The redesigned PDC portal launched in April 2016, giving Washington citizens a clearer, more navigable interface for accessing the campaign finance and lobbying transparency data that the Commission maintains. The migration from the proprietary CMS to Drupal gave the Commission a more maintainable, extensible platform for its ongoing operations. The activity-focused architecture, robust search, and external data integration made the Commission’s disclosure data more accessible than it had been on the previous platform — strengthening the Commission’s ability to serve its transparency mission.