Some planned digital services updates still in the works, bureau reports

Work to modernize the federal consumer financial protection agency’s digital services – including updates to its extranet and HMDA (Home Mortgage Disclosure Act) Help services previously slated for last year – is discussed in the bureau’s December 2021 report to Congress under the 21st Century Integrated Digital Experience Act.

The report by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) states that the agency continued to maintain a high standard for its digital products despite changes in some 2021 priorities due to the coronavirus pandemic. But it notes remaining work needed to modernize the bureau’s extranet and HMDA Help Site.

“To begin to address requirements around Section 508 [addressing issues related to assisting people with disabilities] and user needs to the Extranet, the Bureau intends to conduct an assessment project to document and prioritize accessibility gaps and critical issues,” the report states. It also states that information from that assessment also may be used to inform a future decision on whether to migrate core extranet functionality to a shared platform service or continue to iterate on the current platform; and that this migration is currently under consideration as part of a larger cloud migration project.

Updates to the HMDA Help site to introduce consistent visual design and address the 508 accessibility gap will be part of a larger design review of the HMDA platform scheduled to begin in 2022, the report notes. It says that once prioritized, the CFPB will validate previous cost estimates.

State of Bureau Websites and Digital Services (December 2021)