Portfolio
Office of the People’s Counsel for DC
Website redesign, Gutenberg rebuild and years of digital support for the District of Columbia Office of the People’s Counsel, the independent advocate for DC utility consumers.
LaunchedSeptember 2022, rebuilt on the block editor in July 2025
BuiltCustom WordPress theme, built to WCAG 2.1 guidelines
ConnectedUtility bill calculators, complaint intake, Copilot Studio chatbot, GTM and GA4
The Problem
A consumer-advocacy agency’s website was hard to navigate and did little to engage the DC residents it exists to serve.
Objectives
Make utility rights, complaints and bill help easy to find for every DC resident.
Give agency staff a site they can publish to and manage themselves.
Keep the site current, accessible and measurable year after year.
Challenge
The Office of the People’s Counsel (OPC) is the District of Columbia’s independent advocate for utility consumers, representing residents in electric, natural gas, telephone and water matters before regulators and the courts. Its website is where residents learn their rights, file a complaint, estimate what a rate request will cost them and find information in their own language.
When the engagement began, the agency wanted a site that was attractive, easy to navigate and aimed squarely at the constituents it was trying to reach. The site also had to carry a lot: press releases, publications, testimony and formal case records; interactive bill calculators; complaint and speaker-request forms; and resources in seven languages beyond English. The first task was a redesign. The longer task was keeping a public agency’s website current, accessible and secure over the years that followed.
Strategic Approach
We led the redesign with our development partner, building a custom WordPress theme on WP Engine with a homepage organized around the issues residents actually search for: climate, solar, legal, billing, electric, natural gas, water and telephone. Consumer assistance, legal advocacy and news each got a clear section; complaint and speaker-request forms were rebuilt in WordPress; and the site launched in September 2022 with a written guide and staff training so OPC could publish posts, publications and pages on its own.
The work did not stop at launch. We handled ongoing maintenance with monthly reporting, then in 2024 scoped a conversion to the WordPress block editor: roughly ten reusable components and flexible page templates built to WCAG 2.1 guidelines, with about 50 pages migrated and the bill calculators, forms and seven language pages carried forward. The rebuilt site launched in July 2025 with Google Tag Manager and GA4 in place. Later that year a Microsoft Copilot Studio chatbot was added to guide residents to complaint, calculator and consumer-assistance information, and in 2026 we delivered a twelve-month GA4 and Search Console analytics report and a prioritized roadmap for the site’s next improvements.
Built around the issue, not the org chart
Residents start from the utility or issue in front of them, then move to help, rights or a complaint.
Consumer AssistanceFile a ComplaintUtility CalculatorsLegal & AdvocacyNews & Events7 Languages
Outcome
OPC has run on a modern WordPress site since 2022 and on a block-based rebuild since 2025, with its calculators, forms, multilingual pages and news archive intact across both. Virtual Window continues to support the agency with maintenance, measurement and planning, most recently a twelve-month analytics baseline and an improvement roadmap for the year ahead.
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Ready to Start the Conversation?
Every engagement begins with an introductory call. We’ll discuss your goals, answer your questions, and determine whether Virtual Window is the right fit.
