EBSA Retirement Benefits
Lost & Found
Designing the first PRA-cleared, research-led public digital service at the U.S. Department of Labor
The EBSA Retirement Benefits Lost & Found Portal is a congressionally mandated public service designed to help Americans locate missing retirement benefits across decades of fragmented records. I served as the UX Strategy and Research Lead, responsible for defining the research approach, securing regulatory approval, and aligning experience decisions across multiple federal stakeholders for a product intended to operate at national scale.
This work required operating within fixed legislative timelines, strict legal and ethical constraints, and a user population often under financial stress, while establishing a defensible, repeatable model for public-facing UX research inside DOL.
Context
This project represented a structural shift in how the Department of Labor approached public-facing UX research.
At the time, no UX research involving the public had been conducted under DOL OCIO without first securing Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA) clearance — a process requiring formal justification, legal review, and Office of Management and Budget (OMB) approval prior to engaging with users.
The challenge was not simply designing an interface, but establishing trustworthy, ethical, and auditable research practices capable of operating within federal governance structures.
Additional conditions shaped the work:
A congressionally mandated delivery timeline
Multiple internal stakeholders with differing success metrics
A nationwide user base navigating financial uncertainty
A system expected to scale and remain operational long-term
My Role
I served as the UX Strategy Lead and Research SME across the full lifecycle of the project.
My responsibilities included:
Defining and leading the end-to-end UX research strategy, including PRA-compliant methodologies
Authoring research protocols, consent language, testing scripts, and reporting frameworks
Acting as the primary UX liaison across OCIO, EBSA, legal, policy, and delivery teams
Ensuring accessibility, equity, and ethical research standards throughout execution
I assumed responsibility for ensuring research decisions were legally defensible, ethically sound, and survivable under audit, while maintaining momentum toward a fixed national launch.
Strategy
Because public-facing UX research at this scale had not previously been conducted within DOL OCIO, the strategy prioritized governance before velocity.
Rather than treating PRA as a blocker, I used it to formalize how UX research could be conducted responsibly and repeatably within a federal environment. The approach emphasized clarity of purpose, informed consent, accessibility, and methodological rigor balanced against regulatory feasibility.
Equally important was internal alignment. I focused on creating shared language, decision frameworks, and documentation that allowed research insights to inform product and policy discussions, not just design outputs.
The result was a research strategy that supported immediate delivery needs while establishing durable infrastructure for future public digital initiatives.
My approach emphasized:
Clear articulation of research purpose and scope
Transparency and consent in all public interactions
Methods that balanced statistical value with regulatory feasibility
Accessibility and plain-language principles throughout
Project Roadmap
This roadmap functioned not as a delivery checklist, but as a governance mechanism, designed to reconcile congressional mandates, PRA approval cycles, and real-world validation without delaying launch.
Key phases included:
Research planning and regulatory clearance
Evidence gathering and synthesis
Cross-agency alignment and decision support
Experience validation and launch readiness
Each phase was structured to produce defensible insights that could withstand legal, policy, and executive review.
Outcomes
Established the first PRA-cleared UX research program within DOL OCIO
Created reusable research templates and processes adopted across subsequent digital projects
Informed national launch decisions for a congressionally mandated public service
Strengthened cross-agency alignment around evidence-based design
Advanced accessibility and equity considerations in federal UX research
While the portal itself serves millions of Americans, the longer-term impact was structural: changing how public digital services could be user-informed, validated, and optimized over time, to continually meet end-user needs, without compromising business goals or data security.
What This Work Demonstrates
This case reflects how I approach complex, high-stakes digital services: by aligning research, policy, accessibility, and delivery around shared outcomes.
It demonstrates the necessity for informed leadership in environments where constraints are real, timelines are fixed, governance ambiguous, and every decision must be defensible and evidence-based.
Most importantly, it shows how UX strategy can operate as a governance and trust-building function, not just a design discipline.