From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
USA.gov is the official web portal of the United States Government. It is designed to
improve the public’s interaction with the U.S. Government by
quickly directing website visitors to the services or information
they are seeking. USA.gov links to every Federal agency and to
State, local, and tribal governments, and is the most comprehensive
site in—and about—the U.S. Government. While the primary target
audience of USA.gov is the American public, about 25 percent of
USA.gov’s visitors come from outside the United States.
Until January 2007, USA.gov was known as FirstGov.gov. The name
was changed[1] in
response to user suggestions and telephone surveys.
USA.gov is part of the Office of Citizen Services and
Communications[2] in the
General Services
Administration (GSA), and includes the Spanish-language web portal to U.S.
government services, GobiernoUSA.gov
(formerly espanol.gov). The portals, which are funded by U.S.
taxpayers and are offered as a public service, are a member of the
Office of Citizen Services and Communication’s family of websites
that also includes pueblo.gsa.gov (the Federal Citizen
Information Center), Kids.gov, ConsumerAction.gov, and WebContent.gov.
History
USA.gov began in 2000 when Internet entrepreneur Eric Brewer,
whose early research in parallel computing was funded by the U.S.
Department of Defense, offered to donate a powerful search
engine to the Government. That donation helped accelerate the
Government’s earlier work to create a Government-wide portal. In
June 2000, President
Clinton announced the gift from the Federal Search Foundation,
a nonprofit organization co-founded by Brewer and fellow
entrepreneur David Binetti, and instructed that the portal be
launched in 90 days.
FirstGov.gov was launched 87 days later on September 22, 2000,
during the first-ever webcast originating from the White House Oval
Office. GSA and 22 Federal agencies funded the initiative in
2001 and 2002. Since 2002, USA.gov has received an annual
appropriation from the U.S. Congress.
Structure
USA.gov allows visitors to find information on its site in
several ways: through a search engine; an index of links organized by audience, by topic, and
by organization; a database of frequently asked
questions; RSS feeds; e-mail alerts; and live chat.
- Search Engine
- USA.gov's search engine crawls an unprecedented 50 million
web pages from Federal, State, local, and tribal governments and
U.S. territories. Powered by MSN Search and Vivísimo, the search clusters the results into categories and
accesses many kinds of official Government sources such as government podcasts,
citizens’ frequently asked questions, and about 12 million government images. It
also highlights information from Forms.gov, Fueleconomy.gov, USAJobs.gov, and MyMoney.gov.
- Index
- USA.gov offers an index of more than 10,000
links to official Government information. The index is categorized
by services and common topics, and can be accessed through five
audience gateways: Citizens, Businesses and
Nonprofits, Federal Employees, Government to
Government (for state, local, and tribal governments), and
Visitors to the U.S.
- The index links to diverse, useful, and timely citizen-centered
Government information and services that can help website visitors
apply for a Government job, register to vote, e-file their taxes,
find Government benefits, reserve a campsite at a national park,
prepare for disasters, shop at Government auctions, learn about
visiting the United States, or report an unsafe product, among many
other activities.
- The site's policy is to link to websites of the Federal
Government, quasi-government agencies, and those created by public
sector/private sector partnerships; state and local governments;
and recognized Indian tribes. In rare instances, the sites link to
websites that are not Government-owned or Government-sponsored if
these websites provide Government information and/or services in a
way that is not available on an official Government website.
- USA.gov's Frequently Asked Questions
- USA.gov's frequently asked questions database contains
thousands of answers to the questions the public asks most via
USA.gov or the contact center at 1 (800) FED-INFO. For more than 30
years, the contact center has been a source for answers to
questions about consumer problems and Government services. Visitors
to USA.gov can click on the link to FAQs to see what the public is asking and to
find their answers.
- If visitors still cannot find the Government information they
are looking for, they can call 1 (800) FED-INFO, e-mail USA.gov
through the "Contact Us" link on USA.gov (e-mail inquiries receive
a response within two business days), or get help through a live
web chat service.
- RSS Feeds
- USA.gov offers RSS feeds to help the public stay up to date on
useful Government information. "USA.gov Updates: News and Features"
announces the new content added to the USA.gov website, while "RSS
de GobiernoUSA.gov: News and Updates" announces the new content
added to the GobiernoUSA.gov website. "Popular Government Questions
from USA.gov" features the most popular questions and answers
related to the U.S. Government from USA.gov’s frequently asked
questions database. Website visitors can sign up for USA.gov RSS feeds, the GobiernoUSA.gov feed, or
visit USA.gov’s RSS library for
other Government RSS feeds.
- E-mail Alerts
- Visitors to USA.gov can sign up for free e-mail alerts in both
English and Spanish to learn when new
content is added to the site’s most popular pages. The pages'
subjects range from benefits, seniors, and Internet fraud to
hurricane recovery, the arts, and parents.
- Live Chat
- USA.gov offers live chat in English,
where service representatives can answer website visitors'
questions about Federal agencies, programs, benefits, or
services.
- Blog
- Gov Gab, USA.gov's new blog,
will give consumers a fresh and interactive perspective on how they
can use government resources to make their every day lives better,
easier, and more fun. The five bloggers have diverse interests and
points of view and post daily entries on a wide variety of topics.
From saving money and visiting National Parks to finding out about
the latest government auction, if there’s a government resource or
service that the bloggers use in their daily lives, consumers will
find it in a Gov Gab entry.
GobiernoUSA.gov
A part of USA.gov, GobiernoUSA.gov pulls together all of the
U.S. Government’s Spanish-language websites and makes them easily
accessible to the public in one central location. The site, which
was developed by Spanish speakers, represents an important outreach
effort to some 43 million Americans who report speaking Spanish at
home.
GobiernoUSA.gov features more than 900 external
links and provides access to more than 125,000 Government pages in
Spanish. Although most of the resources are federal, the site also
links to Spanish-language content provided by 42 states, the
District of Columbia, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, and local
government websites.
Web visitors also can search all Federal and State web pages for
Spanish content through the site’s search engine, e-mail their
questions and receive responses in Spanish, or call 1 (800)
FED-INFO for help in Spanish and English. Spanish-speaking visitors
can sign up for e-mail alerts in Spanish
to let them know when new content is added to GobiernoUSA.gov. The
website also offers information on the same topic in both English
and Spanish by simply clicking on a toggle button.
Web Best
Practices
USA.gov actively promotes best practices within the Government
Web manager community to improve the overall quality of U.S.
Federal websites as well as public access to Government
information.
Interagency
Committee on Government Information
USA.gov has a leadership role on the Interagency Committee on Government Information
(ICGI), formed to meet requirements of the E-Government Act of 2002
(Public Law 107-347, 44 U.S.C. Ch 36). The ICGI drafts
recommendations and shares effective practices for Federal
Government information access, dissemination, and retention.
Federal Web Managers
Council
USA.gov sponsors the Federal Web Managers
Council, which the ICGI established in January 2004. The
council is an interagency group of about 40 senior Federal Web
managers from every cabinet-level agency, several independent
agencies, and representatives from the judicial and legislative
branches. The council developed recommendations for
Government-wide standards for U.S. Federal public websites to
comply with Sections 207(f)(1) and (2) of the E-Government Act of
2002 and other requirements.
The Federal Web Managers Council serves as the steering
committee for the much larger Web Content Managers
Forum, an online exchange of more than 1,000 Federal, State,
and local web managers.
In collaboration with the Federal Web Managers Council, USA.gov
also sponsors:
- WebContent.gov, a "one-stop" website for
Government Web professionals that provides guidance and resources
to help them improve Government websites. It includes information
on Federal website requirements and policies; common Web content
practices; staffing and governance issues; website design and
usability; and performance measures.
- Web Manager University,
which provides Government Web and usability specialists with a
multidisciplinary curriculum that addresses the varied
responsibilities of managing Government websites. Current courses
and seminars include User-Centered Design, Usability, and
Accessibility; Web Management and Governance; Web Content and
Information Architecture; Search Engines; Marketing Your Website;
and Website Evaluation and Web Metrics, among other topics.
- Web Manager Best Practice
Awards, which are given for outstanding Federal websites, based
on excellence in Web content, interactivity, design, usability,
evaluation, and innovation.
- Research-based Web Design and
Usability Guidelines book, in collaboration with the U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services. The publication
contains detailed illustrations and directions to help federal Web
managers and developers ensure their sites are usable and follow
design guidelines that are based on the latest industry
research.
Crisis Response
Initiatives
USA.gov is a critical destination for information during
national disasters. After the September 11, 2001, attack on the
United States, USA.gov became a major tool for the U.S.
government to provide the most accurate, timely, and comprehensive
information, resources, and Government services available during
that crisis.
Several years later, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina
in August 2005, USA.gov coordinated web-related resources among
more than 1,000 government Web Content Managers Forum members. The
forum was the only group in place with the ability to develop a
coordinated Federal Web response to Hurricane Katrina. It quickly
adopted guidelines for Federal Web managers, such as priority
content posted on Federal websites would be information related to
saving life, sustaining life, and facilitating comprehensive
recovery, and that duplication of information would confuse the
public and should be avoided.
For three weeks after the disaster, USA.gov participated in
daily conference calls among key members of the web forum to learn
what the public was asking about most frequently by phone and
e-mail. The web forum members categorized the subjects and assigned
them to Federal websites based on their areas of expertise.
For example, the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention became responsible for all
health and safety information related to the hurricanes. The other
Federal websites then linked to that site for that particular
information, using the same terminology across the various Federal
websites.
The continuing communication among the members of the Federal
Web community allowed them to react quickly and make adjustments
easily as they identified new or changing information. In addition,
the public could find information more easily because the major
Federal Government sites were all linking to the same sites and
using the same terminology.
Finally, the categories identified during Katrina matched
information people would be looking for in "any" disaster, whether
natural or man-made. The Federal Web community can now re-use a
good deal of the content developed in response to the hurricane
crisis, to enable them to be even better prepared when the next
disaster occurs.
A Model to Other
Government Websites
USA.gov serves as a model for other government websites and
strictly adheres to all requirements and guidelines for Federal
websites, including those established by the E-Government Act of
2002, the U.S. Office of Management and Budget's
(OMB) Policies for Federal Public Websites, and Section
508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 regarding website
accessibility. The site also strictly follows requirements of the
Privacy
Act, the Federal
Information Security Management Act, and other privacy and
security requirements.
Awards
USA.gov has won numerous awards and media endorsements, including Time
Magazine's 2007 "Top 25 Sites We Can't Live Without," listing among
the "Best of..." by Money Magazine, "Favorite Places on
the Web" by the Chicago Sun Times, "Hot Sites" by
USATODAY.com, and "Top 100 Classic Sites" by PC
Magazine. It also has won "#1 in Global E-Government
Readiness" in the United Nations' Global E-Government
Readiness Report 2005; "#1 in Overall Federal e-Government" by Brown
University’s Taubman Center for Public Policy; and the
"Innovations in American Government Award" by Harvard
University’s Kennedy
School of Government.
GobiernoUSA.gov was awarded as a finalist for the Arroba de
oro, ("the golden @"), has won the Web Content Managers' "Best
Practices" award, and consistently scores among the highest in
Government or private sectors in the American Customer
Satisfaction Index.
See Also
References
External
links
Wikis
Quiz
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