About One Franklin County
Simple, intuitive, and welcoming
These words guided our decisions throughout the website redesign project that we call One Franklin County that launched on May 14th, 2025. We want to take some of the burden off of navigating government services for you. So we started by consolidating over 25 websites into one. Now, you don't have to know which agencies can help you with what services and then find their websites. You can come here and find what you need.
We are working on expanding to include more offices and agencies in the county, but we are proud of this start.
Tell us what you need
This is your website, not ours. And it will always be a work in progress. It's important to us to get it right, so we decided to publish pages on this site that need improvements or are even blank. We want to hear what will help you the most on the site.
We've added a feedback form on every page and can’t wait to hear from you. What did we miss? How can we make this website work better for you? What else is important to you?
We will be updating the site based on the feedback you give us. You can check this page every month for a summary of what you’ve told us, and the changes we’re making.
For this first iteration, we want to highlight some of the goals we had in designing this site.
Our Goals
Make it easier to find what you need
We organized the pages by the services you're looking for, not just which agency provides them. This way, you can find information on similar types of services across many agencies. For example, you can adopt a dog from the Franklin County Dog Shelter, but you need to license your new furry friend through the Auditor. We also have a centralized search function. Since this site has content from 25 different websites, you're able to find results from across the county.
Keep accessibility at the forefront
We partnered with Granicus, which specializes in digital tools for governments. Their website platform, OpenCities, has accessibility built into its code. We prioritized tools that make it easier to use the site with assistive technology. But in case we missed anything, we've added an accessibility widget called UserWay that you can personalize based on your needs.
Write content that is easy to understand
Government policy is hard to understand and uses a lot of confusing jargon. We simplified where we can, and added some helpful tools. Writing in plain language makes our translation tool easier to use. We also added features like a Glossary on pages with complicated legal terms. You just hover your mouse over an underlined word, and you'll see the definition. You can see it in action on the Support Order Termination page.
Digital online forms
We're beginning to roll out a digital forms tool so you can submit more forms online. This is still a work in progress, but we're using the digital forms you'll see on this site to learn where we can make improvements for you.
May Updates
Our site has been live for about six weeks! We took some time to analyze how we did in the first month, and want to share what we’ve learned.
We received over 93,000 visitors to this new site in just one month. We hope you felt welcome, and were able to find what you needed. Our top viewed pages are listed below.
View Adoptable Dogs PRC Emergency Assistance
Jobs Child Support
We also received nearly 250 responses to our feedback forms across the site. Thank you! You helped us understand how you’re navigating, what you expected to see, how we missed the mark, how we could improve things, and also how we’re doing a good job. Within the first day of launch, you all let us know of some mismatches between the web address you entered and the page you landed on. This helped us pinpoint and fix the issue and get you to the pages you were looking for.
The majority of our negative feedback had to do with trying to find contact information. It’s difficult to know who to talk to about what questions you have. So, we’re working on a plan to streamline adding contact information to our most viewed pages in the coming months.
30% of the feedback you gave us was positive. This is a great starting point for us. Most of us can agree that we don’t take the opportunity to give positive feedback as much as we do to share a negative experience. And the positive feedback came on pages across our agencies, which is a good sign.
30% of the feedback was about dogs. These pages are high traffic, and we love hearing the enthusiasm you all have for our dog shelter. Several of these were submitted on our launch day, and let us know that folks were not seeing the content they expected. This helped us pinpoint an issue with our backend setup and we were able to make changes within 24 hours.
There are also blank pages we want to prioritize updates. Our reentry programs in particular have received feedback about what kind of information would be helpful. Our reentry team is working on creating meaningful content.
We're looking forward to hearing more from you, making improvements, and better serving you.
FAQ's
What's new on the website?
The website has been carefully redesigned to improve usability and access to services. Key upgrades include:
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A mobile-friendly, modern design
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Streamlined navigation
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Centralized access to all county agencies from one site
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Digital forms and online service tools
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Improved accessibility for all users
What did the old website look like?
The old Franklin County website can still be found at old.franklincountyohio.gov, and we've come a long way since then. For example, the old site had 'exact match' search, meaning that any variation in words would result in no matches - a very frustrating experience. Let's say you typed in 'pet shelter' and got back zero matches. Franklin County has a pet shelter, but we call it the 'animal shelter'.
How does it help me?
You'll have a faster, smoother experience when accessing county services online. You will spend less time searching for information, have the ability to complete services online, and connect with county departments with ease.
What was the timeline for this redesign?
The redesign of the One Franklin County website started in September 2023 and officially launched in May 2025. Throughout this time, the project went through a thorough research and planning process across the 14 Board of Commissioner agencies, the GX Concourse team at the Franklin County Data Center, and the Granicus team. This process included workshops, stakeholder interviews, a complete content review, analysis, user testing, search engine optimization (SEO), and more.
To assist residents and visitors during this redesign process, a temporary 'services' site was set up in April 2024 as our first step. This site served as a central hub for the county, providing important information about user behavior, search trends, and public feedback. The data gathered from this temporary website was essential in shaping the design and features of the final website.
Who has been involved in the website redesign?
This project began with the involvement of 14 Board of Commissioner agencies in the first cohort consolidating their websites into one. The OFC initiative is led by the GX Concourse team within the Data Center in collaboration with our vendor, Granicus. In all, we worked with sixty county staff and heard from over 120 residents about what worked best.
Who is Granicus?
Granicus offers cloud-based software and advanced technology solutions to governments all over the world. Their goal is to enhance efficiency and transparency in government operations. They specialize in creating and managing government websites, handling public records, and improving technology to foster better communication between residents and public officials.