Kids calendar, website redesign win awards from National Association of Government Communicators

The kids calendar from ITD’s Office of Highway Safety won an Award of Excellence from the National Association of Government Communicators June 20, while the department’s website redesign won a first place award from the same group.

The calendar is part of an overall ITD strategy to improve safety on the state’s highways and interstates. The kids are not given parameters on what they can draw, other than the sideboards that it must address a highway safety topic area – distracted driving, aggressive driving, impaired driving, and seatbelt use.

The hope s that because the artists featured in the calendar are young kids from first through eighth grade, the work they completed and the messages they helped craft will stick with them as they grow and become young drivers.

“We also know that peers play a large role in developing opinions and habits, so by engaging these groups at an early stage, we can make safe driving a life-long pursuit. Family members will also be reached,” explained OHS Manager John Tomlinson. “It may be years down the road before we see the effectiveness of the calendar. It is part of an ongoing process of creating awareness and changing habits.”

Margaret Goertz, who spearheaded the kids calendar for many years, retired partway though 2017.

“Getting so many Idaho schools to participate in the calendar competition took a real concerted effort, and judging and selecting the finalists to appear on the pages of the calendar was an incredibly difficult task,” Tomlinson said. “Arriving at the final product was very labor-intensive, but also very rewarding. Our appreciation to Margaret for her efforts.”

The old ITD web site was based on the agency’s organizational chart, making it difficult for customers to understand and challenged web users to learn the department’s structure and jargon. Click after click, customers became frustrated wading through 20,000 web pages. External customers and staff were dependent on direct links to have any chance of locating what they need.

The top destinations within the old site, customer needs, and departmental priorities were catalogued and are readily apparent in the new design. Along the way, thousands of pages were combined or removed. As a result, almost all content is directly connected to the Home page, only one click away.

The new site focused heavily on usability, with the goal to create an interface both intuitive and easy to use. The results indicate that it was accomplished.

Published 07-06-18