What Should You Know Before Building a Government or Municipal Website?

A government or municipal website is a public-service platform, not a marketing site. Before you build or redesign one, plan for four things that rarely appear on a business site: accessibility compliance, public-records and transparency obligations, a document-heavy content model (agendas, minutes, permits, ordinances), and procurement rules that shape who can bid and how the project is managed. If your project is a small town site with a handful of pages, the same four apply — just at a smaller scale. The sections below cover what each one changes in practice, plus how to choose a CMS and run the redesign.

How a municipal site differs from a business site

The practical consequence: decisions that are cosmetic on a business site — URL structure, document naming, who can publish — become governance questions on a municipal site.

Core features a city or local government site needs

• Meeting agendas and minutes, posted on a predictable schedule and archived by date, with the meeting body (council, planning commission, board) clearly labeled.
• Public documents: ordinances, resolutions, budgets, bids/RFPs, and forms — ideally in a searchable document library rather than scattered PDFs.
• Permits and licenses: what's required, how to apply, fees, and status where the process allows it.
• Staff and department directories: who to contact, for what, and how — with roles that survive staff turnover.
• News, alerts, and notices: emergency notices, road closures, public hearings.
• Payments and service requests where the jurisdiction supports them (utility bills, taxes, reporting a problem).
• Calendar consolidating public meetings and community events.
• Search that works on documents, not just pages — residents usually arrive looking for a specific form or record.

Choosing a CMS: municipal-specific vs general-purpose

There is no single correct answer; it depends on your publishing volume, IT capacity, and procurement constraints.

A CMS built for municipalities tends to fit when:

• You need agenda/minutes workflows and document archiving out of the box.
• Many non-technical staff across departments will publish.
• You want accessibility features and compliance tooling built into the authoring experience rather than bolted on.
• You prefer a vendor who already understands government procurement and records practices.

A general-purpose CMS can work when:

• You have in-house developers or a strong IT department to configure and maintain it.
• Your content model is simple and your publishing team is small.
• You need tight integration with systems you already run and are prepared to build the government-specific pieces yourself.

Evaluate both against the same criteria: accessibility conformance, document management, multi-department permissions, search quality, hosting and security, migration support, and total cost over the contract term. Ask each vendor to demonstrate a real agenda-to-archive workflow, not a slide.

Accessibility and compliance considerations

Accessibility is the requirement most likely to change your design and content decisions, so treat it as a constraint from day one rather than a cleanup task.

• Target a recognized standard (commonly WCAG 2.x at the level your jurisdiction or funder requires) and state it in the RFP so vendors respond to the same bar.
• Plan for accessible documents, not just accessible pages. A scanned, untagged PDF of a meeting packet is a common failure point; build a process for producing tagged, readable documents.
• Budget for ongoing testing and remediation — every new page and uploaded file can introduce a new issue.
• Consider captioning and transcripts for public meeting video, and plain-language alternatives for complex notices.
• Keep an accessible way to contact the government for anyone who cannot use the site.

Accessibility also interacts with procurement: if conformance is a contract requirement with defined acceptance testing, you have recourse when deliverables fall short.

Typical steps and stakeholders in a municipal redesign

1. Define the project and the decision-makers. Identify an executive sponsor (often the city manager or an equivalent), a project lead, and a working group with representatives from IT, communications, the clerk's office, and major departments.
2. Inventory content and documents. You will find duplicates, outdated PDFs, and orphaned pages. Decide what is migrated, rewritten, or retired — this is usually the largest hidden cost.
3. Write requirements, including accessibility and records. Specify the CMS capabilities, document workflows, integrations, hosting, security, training, and support you need.
4. Run procurement. Follow your jurisdiction's rules for RFPs, evaluation criteria, and vendor selection; publish the timeline.
5. Design with residents, not just staff. Test navigation and search with realistic tasks ("find the permit for a fence," "read last month's council minutes").
6. Migrate and redirect. Preserve URLs where possible and set up redirects so public links and citations don't break.
7. Train publishers across departments and document who owns which section.
8. Launch, then maintain. Schedule content reviews, accessibility audits, and a plan for the next refresh.

Common pitfalls to plan around

• Underestimating document migration. Meeting archives and permit forms are often the bulk of the work.
• Treating accessibility as a final QA step instead of a design and authoring requirement.
• No content ownership after launch, so pages go stale and residents lose trust in the site.
• Broken public links from a redesign that changes URL structure without redirects.
• Assuming a new CMS fixes content problems — it doesn't; the content model and governance do.

If you are early in the process, the highest-value first step is a content and document inventory plus a written accessibility target. Those two artifacts shape your requirements, your budget, and your vendor questions more than any feature list.