Texas Commission of Environmental Quality Website Modernization

Fragmented Navigation Increased Compliance Risk

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality’s (TCEQ’s) website is a primary gateway for regulated businesses, industry, and the public to understand and comply with the state’s environmental requirements. Over time, the site grew organically, which resulted in fragmented navigation; inconsistent content structure; and pages that were difficult to search, interpret, and engage with. These challenges can increase user confusion and place additional demands on TCEQ staff, and even introduce compliance risks that ultimately affect Texas’s environmental resources.

RESPEC is working with TCEQ on a user-centered approach to content strategy, information architecture, and user experience design. The team is conducting stakeholder interviews, mapping user tasks and regulated workflows, defining and refining content types and taxonomies, and redesigning site structure and navigation to align with how users think and work. To ensure lasting value, RESPEC is also supporting governance through staff training and developing an AI-driven roadmap to future-proof content creation, life-cycle management, and content findability, making the system more consistent, accurate, automated, and scalable.

Reducing Friction While Improving Regulatory Clarity

The modernization effort is producing a clearer, task-oriented site structure that reduces navigation friction and shortens the path from question to action. The site will also enable TCEQ staff to manage content more efficiently. Over the long term, this work strengthens regulatory compliance, operational efficiency, and public trust, supporting environmental stewardship by making critical information easier to access, understand, and use.