NOTE: The following reflects my experience as a federal employee at the DHS.
CHALLENGE:
In 2011, Secretary Napolitano’s Efficiency Review Initiative laid the groundwork for change in the agency’s web operations, including the DHS.gov website. The Efficiency Review office issued an Action Directive on Web Systems Modernization, which included a series of required tasks, starting with an agency-wide data call.
The data call required owners of all public-facing websites across DHS to answer a series of questions about their sites. User experience, agency priorities, tools, metrics, and web workforce were all open for review.
I compiled the survey, analysis, and results into a benchmark report. This put everyone on the same page regarding known issues and the need for changes. With this study, DHS established its first accurate baseline of the assets and footprint of the DHS public web, marking a significant milestone in the Department’s history.
I developed a new content strategy for the Department, which was subsequently adopted by the governance body. Soon after, the websites of every component underwent a significant transformation, including the migration to a common cloud-hosted platform.
Known design and content problems with the DHS.gov website were myriad and typical of issues faced by other components:
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- The public got lost on the site (hard to navigate)
- The site lacked consistency between departments, agencies, and services
- There was so much content that it was confusing and unwieldy to many
SOLUTION:
To remedy these problems, the new DHS.gov had three goals:
- Simplify and unify our site
- We curated a core set of new Topic pages to help tell the story of DHS to a global audience. We added robust resource directories to point users to the most important publications, products, and tools related to these topics.
- The information architecture is new and improved, informed by heuristic best practices and user-centered design.
- Concentrated on navigation via Topics and related resources in place of the program.
- We included an easy-to-navigate “how do I” section, which quickly lets users find the information they need to complete their tasks when they visit the site.
- We highlighted our engagement channels with a new “get involved” section.
- We curated a core set of new Topic pages to help tell the story of DHS to a global audience. We added robust resource directories to point users to the most important publications, products, and tools related to these topics.
- Embrace web customer service standards.
- We adopted consistent page layouts by content type and standard functional modules. Because the entire site will use template-based, not hand-coded, HTML page-based publishing, staff can now focus their time on adding value to content, rather than the mechanics of web design or web publishing.
- We moved from an org-centric to a customer-centric structure (We restructured DHS.gov to offer a consolidated resource for priority topics in a unified voice)
- Enhance content quality, especially search.
- We eliminated duplication and content that was redundant, outdated, or of lower priority. We reduced the content by approximately 20 percent under this standard.
- We created new online directories.
- A self-service applications directory showcasing more than 60 applications from across the enterprise, available in one place for users
- A social media directory to showcase these channels from across the enterprise to promote public engagement
- A website directory page for all top-level domains that are not redirected
- We improved our searchable collection by adopting a new internal search engine (using the free USASearch Affiliate program from GSA) and enhancing our metadata
RESULTS:
The redesigned website made interactions on DHS.gov faster, more convenient, and easier to navigate. Plus, you won’t need to know the organizational structure or the mission areas of DHS to find what you are looking for.
DHS.gov was recognized, along with the State Department, as one of the two “best-performing websites” among the 75 websites in an independent study, based on aggregate scores for quantitative and qualitative metrics chosen by evaluators. In this study, DHS was tied with the U.S. State Department, earning a score of five out of five (signifying excellent). (Best of the Web, comScore analysis of best practices among federal websites, by comScore)
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