Maryland’s digital revamp aims for an online presence that’s cohesive, secure, accessible

Maryland’s state government is on track to completely revamp its main website by the end of the year, completing a nearly two-year process that Marcy Jacobs, the state’s chief digital experience officer, said will make online interactions with the state cohesive, secure and more accessible for residents.

When Jacobs was named as the state’s first chief digital experience officer in 2023, she told StateScoop that one of her first tasks was to assess the state’s websites, which had accumulated a lot of “rot,” redundant, outdated or trivial content. She led her team at the state’s Office of Digital Experience to address the web rot and other issues by evaluating the relevance and necessity of web content, and also the tech powering it and its accessibility.

“I look at these websites kind of as an archeological dig. A new administration comes in, or a new leader comes in, and they add things on top of what was there. But, there aren’t people who I think have historically looked at, ‘Well, what do we have?'” Jacobs said. “So we’re in a giant spring cleaning effort to really go through content and say, ‘Does this serve a purpose? Is this legislatively required?’ Then yes, absolutely, we need to keep it. But when we look at our content, it’s really taking a look at things and saying, ‘Does this align with what a user is looking for? Whose question does this answer, and does it answer it in a way that is understandable?”

Jacobs said her office over the last two years has worked with each agency individually to ensure that the content on their websites was also up to par.

To help make the state’s web presence feel cohesive, Jacobs’ team has been working to build the Maryland Web Design System, which she described as an open source library of components that are accessible and consistent. This has made it easier and faster, she said, for agencies and vendor partners to develop and maintain websites that have a consistent “Maryland brand,” with accessibility built in. The system was built using elements from the federal government’s U.S. Web Design System, and will be ever-evolving, she said.

Working with each agency, Jacobs said, began with evaluating how residents used each agency’s site by focusing on the “outside-in” experience, which Jacobs said entails learning more about how people are coming to visit the state’s websites, and what they’re coming to the sites for.

“We’re asking, ‘How do we shift the content to be more targeted to the questions that people have, the tasks that they’re trying to accomplish, the benefits and services that they are looking for?'” she said. “And we’ve been just forming wonderful partnerships with agencies to work with them on on their content improvements, to look at accessibility of documents, web pages and PDFs, and really trying to take a huge step forward with websites, which are really the front door to digital government — and we have a lot of them, so there’s a lot of work to do.”

While a conversation around digital accessibility has been ongoing in Maryland, and has proved to be a priority for both Gov. Wes Moore and Information Technology Secretary Katie Savage, there are also federal requirements coming soon. The U.S. Department of Justice has issued new rules for web accessibility of government websites, which will aim to ensure digital services offered by governments with populations of at least 50,000 residents are fully compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act by April 2026. Smaller governments get an additional year.

Along with Jacobs, who was hired in 2023, the state also hired Andrew Drummond to be the director of accessibility and work within the state’s Department of Information Technology to head up this effort. Jacobs said there are now accessibility officers at every agency, too, creating a team of web leaders who are anticipating accessibility issues and ensuring compliance with the upcoming DOJ rules.

“We’ve built this coalition across the state of people who are thinking about this. They’re thinking about it with regard to procurement,” Jacobs continued. “They’re thinking about it with regard to publishing — it has to be an everybody effort, because content is everywhere. So the more people we have who are well versed, who understand the requirements, who are thinking about this, the better chances we have of really making a dent in the problem we’re trying to solve.”

Another team that has been critical to the website revamp, Jacobs said, is the state’s Office of Security Management within DoIT, which has helped ensure that the state’s website platforms are secure. Jacobs added that even if the state’s content is of high quality and accessible, security vulnerabilities could erase their work.

But even if there is a finish line in sight, Jacobs said the process is never really done. Instead, she’s hoping state agency leaders shift into a mindset of continual improvement, pointing to examples in the private sector, like Amazon, which continually revises and updates its website based on user feedback.

“I think that the way a lot of state and federal agencies have approached technology in the past is like, do the thing, whether it’s a website or an application or a system, and then you’re ‘done.’ And we’re really trying to change that narrative,” Jacobs said. “Technology is not done — it should be part of how an agency delivers their mission, whatever that is. Whether it’s services for veterans or its professional licenses or its critical benefits, your website is going to be part of how people learn about and find all the things that they need.”