NRC gives sneak peak at website modernization progress
As the Nuclear Regulatory Commission works to modernize and redesign its website, user experience is top of mind, according to the agency’s top IT leader and other team members.
“At the heart of this project is a straightforward question: are we meeting the public’s needs when they come to our website?” Scott Flanders, CIO and chief AI officer at NRC, said during a public webinar Wednesday.
The modernization effort officially kicked off in January, and the team expects the redesigned website will launch during the summer. The NRC debuted a prototype of the redesigned home page during the webinar.
The homepage prototype has already been reviewed by staff for accessibility and presentation, according to Flanders. Stakeholders, such as industry partners and the general public, were invited to provide feedback about the draft and current challenges with the site.
“Our goal is simple: to deliver a public website that is modern, accessible, intuitive and aligned with federal digital experience standards,” the IT leader said.
While the NRC’s Office of the CIO is helming the project, a crossagency focus group composed of a range of subject matter experts has played a supporting role.
The NRC website homepage prototype shared during the webinar on April 22, 2026.
“Our focus group has spent considerable time discussing how to balance the information we believe is most important to highlight with what the members of the public most frequently seek,” Flanders said. “We’ve had robust conversations about information architecture, how content should be organized, labeled and structured across the site.”
In addition to a redesign of its public site, the agency has tapped Riva Solutions to migrate its content management system to a newer version. The broader modernization effort is expected to extend through the end of fiscal 2026.
The past couple administrations have tried to improve federal government websites through different means.
During the Biden administration, the Office of Management and Budget issued a memo that provided guidance to agencies on how to implement modern design standards. Before leaving office, the administration reported that the majority of government websites had improved metrics. Gaps remained, however, such as a lack of feedback mechanisms, lagging search optimization and design inconsistencies.
The Trump admin has taken up the mantle, with officials touting website redesign efforts as a lever to illustrate a “one government” approach to service delivery. Last August, President Donald Trump launched the National Design Studio as part of an executive order focused on improving federal government websites. The studio has designed the Tech Force and Genesis Mission sites. The presidential directive also required agencies to improve sites’ user experience and produce initial results by July 4, 2026.
As part of NRC’s user-experience focus, the regulatory agency is now planning to begin tree-testing, a method to evaluate whether its redesigned site layout is navigable.
“The tree testing is very, very important for us,” said Thai Lam, UX lead on the website redesign at NRC.
