PORTFOLIO - OFFICE OF THE STATE AUDITOR
Rebuilding an accessible, easy to navigate site for Minnesota's Office of the State Auditor
High Monkey handled the full OSA website refresh: a rebuilt information architecture, WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility compliance, and a flexible content tagging system built on Umbraco.
Minnesota Office of the State Auditor | Launched June 2026
About the client
Minnesota Office of the State Auditor (OSA), led by State Auditor Julie Blaha, is the constitutional office responsible for overseeing how Minnesota's local governments report and use public money. Established at statehood in 1858, OSA provides financial oversight for more than 4,300 counties, cities, towns, school districts, and special districts across the state.
Established 1858 | Constitutional state government office | Oversees $56+ billion in local government finances
The challenge
OSA's site served thousands of local government staff who rely on it to find forms, file reports, and access compliance guidance every year. The existing site had grown page by page over time, with content organized around one-off decisions rather than a consistent structure. Finding the right form or report meant knowing exactly where to look. The refresh needed to reorganize thousands of pages, articles, and files around a clear structure, meet new WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility standards, and give OSA staff a way to manage content themselves without relying on developers for every update.
Key requirements
- Existing-infrastructure authentication - Reorganize the site around the audiences using it (counties, cities, towns, special districts) rather than the patchwork structure it had grown into over time.
- WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility compliance - Meet accessibility standards across every page and component, not as a final pass but built in from the start.
- Staff-managed content - Give OSA staff a way to control what shows up where through tagging, without needing a developer for routine content changes.
- Flexible, reusable page templates - Support forms, reports, data, due dates, and news across multiple entity types without building a custom page for every combination.
Our approach
High Monkey handled the full OSA refresh, from information architecture through development, accessibility testing, and staff training. The team rebuilt the site on Umbraco with a tagging system at the core, so the structure could scale across dozens of page types without one-off development work.
Information architecture rebuild
The existing site was mapped against a new structure organized around who the content serves, counties, cities, towns, and special districts, rather than how the old site happened to grow. The result is a site where related content (forms, reports, and data) lives together instead of scattered across unrelated pages.
Tag-driven content system
High Monkey built a tagging architecture, so content automatically surfaces on the right pages based on how it's tagged. Staff tag content once, and it appears everywhere it needs to, on landing pages, sidebars, and the homepage, without manual placement.
Flexible page templates
A reusable general interior page template powers the majority of the site, with a configurable sidebar, rollup content lists, and two content block display types (a filterable table view and a simplified list view). This gives OSA the flexibility to show due dates, news, and related links on any page without custom development.
Staff training and documentation
High Monkey built a tagging guide and led hands-on training so OSA staff could take over content management independently after launch, tagging and organizing content correctly without ongoing developer support. Accessibility testing ran throughout development rather than as a final step before launch.
Results and impact
The rebuilt OSA site launched in June 2026, giving Minnesota's local government staff a more organized, accessible way to find forms, reports, and compliance guidance.
Key outcomes
- WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility compliance - The site meets current accessibility standards across its templates and components.
- Independent content management - OSA staff can tag and publish content themselves, with the site's structure surfacing it in the right places automatically.
- Positive staff reception - OSA staff have responded well to the new site, citing the more intuitive structure and easier navigation to the content they need.
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