The official website of the State of Hawaii, including its online portal, has been redesigned, emphasizing the latest COVID-19 health, business and travel information, in addition to other relevant content curated for residents, business owners and visitors.
The upgrade to Hawaii.gov and portal.ehawaii.gov was announced by the state’s Office of Enterprise Technology Services and its private-sector partner, NIC Hawaii.
“Our goal is to make sure citizens can access the information they need quickly and intuitively, especially in today’s rapidly evolving environment,” said Burt Ramos, NIC Hawaii General Manager. “For this redesign, we worked hand-in-hand with the state to analyze needs and make sure the most pertinent information is easy to find and readily available.”
With more than 1.5 million visitors in 2020 alone, the primary focus of the redesign was to improve the user experience. All site information and navigation was updated based on what people searched for and used most often.
The sites continue to use responsive features that adapt to the visitor’s device, whether it’s a smartphone, tablet or personal computer, and it meets accessibility guidelines to ensure information is available to all.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the importance of giving our residents the option of doing business online,” said state Chief Information Officer Douglas Murdock. “The redesign makes it easier for our residents to navigate and provides information for conducting business with the state and county agencies right at their fingertips.”
The most popular page, a listing of more than 120 online services across all state, city and county offices, helps users conduct business online without having to visit a government office. Moreover, an alerts page provides county-specific information on COVID-19, severe weather, vog, volcanic activity, beach safety, traffic updates and more.
Additional features include a comprehensive government directory of all departments and agencies, a social media page with links to more than 340 government accounts and a news feed that aggregates current events from most agencies. A Flickr photo pool allows citizens to share photos with the chance to have them featured on the site. Finally, the background design will change throughout the year to keep the site looking fresh.
The last redesign of Hawaii.gov in 2014 was the recipient of 17 awards including the notable Best of the Web – Best State Website and Web Marketing Association Best Government Website awards in 2014.
The Hawaii.gov website was created in partnership with NIC Hawaii, the official internet portal manager of eHawaii.gov. NIC Hawaii is a subsidiary of NIC Inc., a leading digital government solutions and payments company serving more than 6,000 federal, state and local government agencies across the nation
About the Office of Enterprise Technology Services (ETS)
ETS provides governance for the State of Hawaii’s executive branch IT projects and seeks to identify, prioritize and advance innovative initiatives with the greatest potential to increase efficiency, reduce waste and improve transparency and accountability in state government. ETS also supports the management and operation of all state agencies by providing effective, efficient, coordinated and cost-beneficial computer and telecommunication services such that state program objectives may be achieved. For more information, visit ets.hawaii.gov.
About NIC Hawaii
NIC Hawaii is a subsidiary of NIC Inc. This site was launched as part of the eHawaii.gov state portal program. Pursuant to chapter 27G, Hawaii Revised Statutes, the portal program is overseen by the Access Hawaii Committee, which collaborates with provider NIC Hawaii (formerly Hawaii Information Consortium (HIC)), along with state and county agencies to continually identify new online services to be added to the portal. For more information, visit nichawaii.egov.com.