Traficom.fi – Secure online services for wide target groups
Three Finnish agencies joined forces to promote the development of the digital society and to ensure efficient, safe and sustainable transport and communications services. Traficom and the new traficom.fi web service were born.
Briefly
Traficom.fi resulted from the merger of three Finnish agencies into Traficom, aiming to offer a user-friendly, secure web service for efficient access to online services, guidelines, and forms. The project focused on design, usability, and adherence to accessibility guidelines while consolidating content from various environments into a single CMS. The solution involved redesigning the site, prioritizing popular content, and utilizing technologies like React, GraphQL, and Elasticsearch for speed and security. The outcome was a streamlined, operationally robust web service contributing to the development of the digital society and ensuring nationwide access to transport and communications services.
About this work
What is Traficom
The Finnish Transport Safety Agency (Trafi), the Finnish Communications Regulatory Authority (FICORA) and certain functions of the Finnish Transport Agency merged to form the Finnish Transport and Communications Agency Traficom. The Traficom.fi web service was developed as the primary service channel for the new agency.
Objectives
The new online service should provide easy access to Traficom’s online services, guidelines and forms. It should also make it possible for the various target groups to be informed about the agency’s tasks without any difficulty. The goal was to direct the customer to the right content or service and thus reduce customer contact to the customer service.
Awards
Blue Arrow Award 2020 Honorary Mention “A living proof there is a way to make your site 100% accessible.”
Digi Success 2020 Research in Finland: “Best digital service experience”
Google Lighthouse test by YLE in 2019: full 100/100 points
The challenge
The web service was required to adhere to good design practices, usability principles, and the W3C Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.0) and other accessibility specifications. The Traficom.fi web service was meant to be first class in usability and security, without sacrificing clarity and style. The service also needed to build the image of the new agency.
The new web service should bring existing content hosted in different environments into a single CMS. The site should be redesigned in terms of appearance, navigation, user interfaces, technical solutions and content presentation.
The goal was to direct the customer to the right content or service and thus reduce customer contacts to the customer service. In design and implementation, this should be taken into account, among other things, so that the information can easily be found by target group (e.g. motorists) and according to need (e.g. applying for a permit or information related to a specific issue).
In addition to clear navigation, it is important that relevant information can be found as easily as possible directly from a search engine or internal search. Attention was also paid to the terminology of the online service in order to make the text understandable and accessible.
The solution
The content structure was designed and implemented with the most popular content on the site and customer service contact topics in mind. The Most Used Services were brought to the homepage so that users who come to the site can quickly find the services they need.
The front pages of the sections contain transactions, information, campaigns and other case-by-case information on a single topic, and you may come to the site to handle a particular transaction, or to search for regulations, and case-specific information without unnecessary browsing around the site.
The Traficom.fi web site has a wealth of information, but the implementation ensures that the user easily and quickly finds the information they need in an accessible format, either by navigating to the site, using the site’s own search function, or by accessing the service directly from a search engine. The site also uses a variety of visual elements to make the text easier to read.
The technical implementation of the service is a combination of the latest and most powerful technologies (including React, GraphQL, and Elasticsearch). The implementation of the service is superior in terms of speed and data security in terms of site usage, lifecycle, and visitors.
The Traficom.fi web service ensures seamless security for both the users of the site and those responsible for content management. Features of the site include fast performance regardless of network quality, the security of decoupled implementation (including only public data being stored, content management separate from application rendering), and reliability, which is a prerequisite for the agency’s operations.
The results
The end result of the project was a common web service for the new Traficom agency, unique in data security and operational capability. Both the agency and its recent website contribute to the development of the digital society and to ensure efficient, safe and sustainable transport and communications services nationwide.
The information from the two agencies is now available on the same web service and the main goals were to make less but more relevant content, to be customer-oriented and to publish the beta before the actual release.
Most of the content is new, and the content was reduced from over 28,000 pages to just under 4,000 pages. The beta version of Traficom.fi was released in November as an internal release for the agency and an external beta site in December. The Cyber security centre website (kyberturvallisuuskeskus.fi/en), which was also part of the project, was first released in beta as well. The customer’s online presence and ease of access formed the backbone of the entire reform.
Services used in this project
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