California Victim Compensation Board

Streamlining Digital Services For Victims Of Violent Crime

California Victim Compensation Board (CalVCB) oversees compensation to victims of violent crime and collection of restitution from criminal offenders. The state agency works to reduce the impact of crime on victims’ lives but its website was difficult to use, disorganized, and cluttered with old and non-essential content. It created friction and frustration rather than relief and confidence.

Following a Governor’s office mandate, CalVCB’s newly appointed executive director aimed to design and build a new user-centric website focused on providing fast, easy access to the resources victims need most. Impressed with 10up’s work with with other state agencies like the California DMV, State Library, OSHPD, and California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR), CalVCB engaged 10up to reimagine its website.

10up began with stakeholder discovery workshops, interviewing CalVCB executives, front-line call center staff, and victim advocates. Armed with a greater understanding of what victims in crisis need most, what information they are looking for, and what actions they need to take, 10up audited the existing website content, consolidated and streamlined duplicate content, and removed irrelevant, out of date content to deliver a new site map and simplified content strategy.

With no content management system (CMS), the old website was not editable by the Public Affairs team. All website updates ran through the IT department while a separate Blogspot blog was used to share timely information. To reduce demand on IT and empower the Public Affairs team to maintain full editorial control over the site, 10up built the new website on WordPress, migrated the blog content into the main website, and assisted CalVCB with entering new content within the CMS.

• The new website is powered by the modern WordPress block editor. It leverages a variety of custom content blocks to provide a flexible page-building experience and editorial controls that make updating the website and publishing new content simple.
• Custom content types and taxonomies facilitate the discovery of press releases, board minutes, summaries, legal decisions, and commonly used forms.
• A new directory of third-party service partners and victim advocacy groups offers lets visitors search for additional in-person and online services that provide victims aid by location or type of crime.
• To showcase career opportunities, 10up built a simple integration with the CalCareers website that pulls in and displays job listings through a custom content block within the WordPress editor.
• As many victims are socioeconomically disadvantaged and can only access the internet with a smartphone, 10up engineers prioritized site speed, performance, and mobile optimization to ensure the site is accessible via low-bandwidth phones and cellular data connections.
• For the new WordPress website, 10up Managed Services architected and implemented a cloud hosting infrastructure within CalVCB’s own AWS account and continues to provide ongoing support and maintenance of both the website and the hosting infrastructure.

The new CalVCB website not only makes it easy to ensure all website content remains accurate and up-to-date but helps those in crisis find the information they need quickly and easily. It is now a valuable resource advancing the agency’s mission to reduce the impact of crime on victims’ lives, connect victims with services and support, and inform and empower victims.