Federal Web managers are giving each other mixed reviews on a series of “best practices” guidance documents recently updated on the Howto.gov website as part of a “Checklist” for federal websites.
The checklist presents a series of 22 requirements and 13 best practices for federal websites, along with multiple policy background and guidance documents. Users could rate 23 Best Practice Guidance documents with one to five stars.
However, judging by the ratings, federal users do not think highly of the best practices guidance. The users rated 16 of the 23 best practice guidance pages with “One Star” out of five stars possible, symbolizing a poor review.
Only seven of the 23 best practices pages scored higher.
The highest rated page was for Information Architecture, rated five stars out of five, or excellent. The page, recently updated, offers ideas on how to set up an organizing structure for federal websites.
Other best practices documents getting favorable reviews included mobile websites, rated 4.2 out of 5; Plain Writing, 4 out of 5; Social Media, 3.5 out of 5; First Fridays usability testing, 3 out of 5; Top Tasks, 2.25 out of 6; and Web Analytics, 2 out of 5.
However, most of the best practices guidance documents scored low on the rating system. One vote and one star was typical.
One reason for the poor ratings may be that some of the best practices guidance documents have not been updated recently. For example, the guidance for “Keep Content Current” was last updated in December 2010.
At the same time, the guidance on updating content itself was difficult to follow and perhaps that is why it received a low score. In my opinion, the guidance did not fully explain the importance of placing “Date of Publication” dates on all federal web documents.
The checklist itself is a case in point. It does not have a publication date or date stamp. I have been trying to determine whether it is new, old, or a little of both.
Consider the evidence. On the one hand, the Federal Web Managers Council and General Services Administration—which sponsor Howto.gov—recently announced the availability of the checklist in the announcements box on the front page of Howto.gov, encouraging users to make use of the documents. That suggests the checklist, and the best practices guidance documents, are new.
The checklist itself states, at the bottom of the web page, that it was last updated on April 30, 2012. That is fairly new. But many of the guidance documents contained in the checklist are previously published. As noted, the guidance on content updating is from December 2010, for example.
The date of publication for the checklist may not seem like a big deal, but it may have some implications for the low ratings for most of the guidance documents. Many of the low ratings were based on a single star, single review. That suggests few people visited those pages. But is that because they are newly-published pages and visitors have not had time to visit yet, or are they longstanding web pages that, for one reason or another, just are not popular? It is difficult to know without knowing the publication date.
So my best guess is that some of the checklist is new, and some is old, and it was recently refreshed. I’m half-guessing here because Howto.gov did not make that information readily available.
I have contacted GSA but have not heard back yet. Once I receive a response, I will publish a follow-up article.
Admittedly, as a journalist, I put a lot of attention on things like dates of publication of federal documents on the web, probably more so than the general public does. But open government is supposed to be making everyone a “citizen journalist” who can track the government’s activities. The keys to tracking are facts on what, when, how and where. Without basic facts such as the dates of publication for key federal documents, open government will suffer.
Posted by Alice Lipowicz on May 21, 2012 at 7:11 AM1 comments
The State Department is getting a bit of buzz on Twitter with its TechGirls initiative helping young women in the Middle East pursue technology careers.
Under the three-week TechGirls global exchange program, which starts in June, a group of 25 teen girls from Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine territories, Tunisia and Yemen will travel to the United States to participate in computer camps and other educational activities, according to a news release.
The department launched a Twitter account for the program on May 15. “We are very excited to be joining everybody on #Twitter #girlsintech,” read the inaugural tweet from @TechGirls. The account had 66 followers as of mid-day on May 16.
Along with more than a dozen tweets from various users publicizing the program and welcoming the TechGirls to the U.S., some of the users offered comments. One user suggested TechGirls ought to "be a #TT (trending topic), suggesting that the Tech Girls ought to get even more publicity. But the same user added "lol" (Internet shorthand for "laughing out loud") at the end of her tweet, so the meaning was a bit mixed.
Another user announced an internship available for working with the program, while a third user asked the @TechGirls: “Why ‘are’ there so few women in computer science?’
The goal of the initiative is “to encourage innovation and promote the spread of new technologies to give women and girls the support that they need to become leaders in this field,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wrote in the announcement.
The teens also will attend interactive technology events, visit technology companies and participate in community service.
The program is modeled after the State Department’s TechWomen mentoring program, which sets up American women in technology as mentors to women abroad.
Posted by Alice Lipowicz on May 16, 2012 at 12:34 PM1 comments
The Health and Human Services Department’s new online “Health IT dashboard” made its debut this week, and there are a couple of interesting graphics in it.
The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology is sponsoring the new dashboard, which is more like a Web portal. It gives direct access to several web pages displaying maps, charts, graphs and data downloads with information about the implementation of the health IT provisions of the economic stimulus law in 2009.
Under that law, HHS received $20 billion to pass onto hospitals and doctors who purchased and used electronic health record systems. The money is still flowing. There also were education and training programs involved.
The dashboard gives an overview of the program, as well as the regional extension centers and the community college associated programs.
Probably the most useful item in the dashboard is the “Performance Indicators” graphic for the regional extension centers program. The centers enroll physicians to help them implement electronic health record systems. On May 10, the graphic showed the number of doctors involved to date, more than 140,000, and the percentage toward the “live EHR” goal, 74 percent. Those are impressive benchmarks delivered in an easy-to-understand format.
On the other hand, the large map shows health IT dollar amounts distributed to each state—but only by clicking the web cursor on that state. As a journalist, I’d rather see a written list, ranked by amount, large to small, for all 50 states than an unwieldy map. But I suppose if someone just wanted to check their home state, this would be an easy way to find it.
Posted by Alice Lipowicz on May 10, 2012 at 6:04 AM0 comments