Thursday, April 20, 2006 Meeting Minutes
Topics: Future Digital System (FDsys) and survey of Web Managers
Facilitator: Sheila Campbell
Attendees: Approximately 80 people on the call
News
Sheila Campbell of the Web Managers Advisory Council kicked off the call by mentioning that this semester’s Web Manager University is off to a great start. Space is still available for all classes, but register soon since classes are filling up. See Webcontent.gov for all details about upcoming classes and how to register.
Future Digital System (FDsys)
Lisa LaPlant, Kirk Petri and Moira Shea of the Government Printing Office (GPO) joined us to discuss the Future Digital System (FDsys). FDsys will be a comprehensive digital information system for managing government content, managed by GPO. It will accept, authenticate, catalogue, preserve, and provide access to content that is currently part of GPO's Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP). The content -- which may include text and associated graphics, video, audio, and other forms of content -- will be available for web searching, downloading, desktop printing, conventional and on-demand printing, as well as other dissemination methods. To ensure a successful implementation of FDsys, GPO wants to reach out to federal employees who create, handle, and disseminate government content to better understand agencies' content management processes and systems.
GPO Inventory of Existing Digital Documents
Contact: Moira Shea
Lisa LaPlant discussed GPO’s mission: 1) provide printing services to federal agencies; 2) provide a program to sell brochures; 3) provide public access to government information via the Federal Depository Library Program.
The agency has been doing this for a LONG time. Typically, agencies request a publication, and then GPO prints and distributes them. However, everything has changed as digital technology has become available. Last year, 92% of the publications were “born” digital, and never actually printed – rather, they were only distributed electronically. The challenge is how to manage this information, both paper and electronic. How can we help users find what they are looking for? How can we maintain document integrity when the information is distributed electronically? What about preservation? Is it easy for the public to purchase documents from the government, in the format they want? How can they make it easier for agencies to interact with GPO?
GPO needed to shift from print-centric to a digital model – basically, to a flexible, digital platform. With FDsys, they are hoping for an xml-based, comprehensive life-cycle document management system, comprised of 25 different parts, handling multiple types of content. The plan is for FDsys to have the following features:
- ability to easily order information in multiple formats;
- style tools for online content creation;
- “version control” mechanism for cataloging and preserving content;
- ability for the public to search content in the desired format (print, electronic, etc.)
- a modular, flexible, open repository that is open to search engines, library catalogs, portals such as USA.gov (formerly Firstgov.gov), etc..
Questions?
Q – What happens to things like surveys or forms? Are they considered publications? What about OMB requirements (paper vs. digital copies)?
A – It depends. You should refer to Title 44 for the definition of a “publication”.
Q – Is there going to be a request for agencies to provide information to populate FDsys or does GPO proactively look for agency documents to populate FDsys?
A – Within Title 44, agencies are required to provide content to GPO. But it’s also part of GPO’s responsibility to harvest data. Some information will automatically be included, if agencies provide the information and it fits the scope of the project. Title 44, USC 1901, 1902 defines “government publications” as:
(Roughly translated)
1901 – Defines informational matter published at government expense, required by law.
1902 – “Government publications” means everything published by a government agency, excluding items that are: official use only; classified; no public use; or administrative only.
Not everything published on a website would be considered a “government publication” for the purposes of this project. Entire websites are not considered publications in and of themselves.
Q – Can this guidance be distributed via the Web Managers Forum listserv, so web managers can work with agency records officers to determine which documents should be submitted?
A – Absolutely. Web managers should discuss the Title 44 requirement with their agency records managers.
Q - Is there an online inventory of what GPO already has in the Federal Depository Library Program and what publications will potentially be part of FDsys?
A – Catalog of U.S. Government Publications contains the entire GPO catalog of documents, so you can see what they’ve already catalogued for your agency. We can add a link to this from Webcontent.gov.
Q – How does this relate to other records management requirements, for example the ones required by NARA?
General records management responsiblities, by government agency are:
- Library of Congress deals w/copyrighted materials.
- NARA deals with federal records.
- GPO deals with published federal documents according to definition in Title 44, which is much more limited than NARA.
Q – Is GPO capturing data from NIH medical (and other) databases?
A – We’ll look into this. This should be part of the information stored in FDsys.
EPA is involved in a publication harvesting pilot with GPO, which looks promising. They’ve found through this pilot that metadata makes harvesting easier.
Moira reiterated that agencies should contact her with questions about Title 44.
Q – Is it correct that the overall objective of FDsys is to create a central repository of government publications that is more easily accessible and searchable?
A – Yes. The main emphasis is on preservation of published government documents, in perpetuity. A search component will be a key element.
Q – One caller searched through GPO’s catalog website, but the search results were not helpful.
A – Sites that have good metadata and are well organized will help GPO more easily find pertinent information and catalog them. For example, having a directory of all your PDF files will make it easier for GPO to locate your publications. Please contact Moira Shea at GPO if you need help finding an inventory of publications for your agency.
Q – What about outdated information – how will GPO handle changes to information that are contained in publications, and notify citizens when information is updated?
A – Version control is a major part of this system – we really want to make sure that the system will be able to notify users that the version they are looking at is current, or outdated, and provide a link to the most recent information. We’re also planning to provide “relationships” between documents.
See “Requirement Doc version 2 for more background about this “version control” requirement.
Next steps: Please provide comments and feedback to GPO ( mshea@gpo.gov) . GPO is actively seeking feedback from web managers, so let them know how we can work together. They are happy to set up a meeting with you to discuss your individual needs.
Survey of Tools and Products
Richard Huffine, a Web Analytics Manager at GSA, lead a discussion of the recent survey that we conducted with Forum members, the "Survey of Tools Used to Manage Government Websites." Richard helped lead the “Web Metrics task group” – part of the Web Managers Advisory Council -- that designed and implemented the survey. We received 177 responses to the survey, so it's been a huge success. Richard explained the broad results of the survey and talked about how we plan to share the final results.
Richard explained that the survey was an experiment, to see how it would work to do a large-scale survey of our community. We tried to keep it brief and targeted. Lots of “experts” from our community helped design the survey.
There was some confusion about whether this should be a “pooled” response – one response per agency – depending on how your agency is organized. We had a good balance of agencies and individuals who responded, representing all levels of government.
The briefing today is going to be a general overview, since we’re still sifting through the data.
Initial Findings:
A large number of the respondents have been web managers for a long time. Even though the web is relatively new, most respondents have a lot of experience. One interesting fact is that more than 60% of total respondents are now using content management systems.
Lots of respondents are using “in-house”-developed tools in almost every category. Because of requirements, timeframes, etc., often times government ends up doing things in-house just to get a project done.
Some areas had more “I don’t know” responses than expected, e.g., search engine or website hosting.
Most agencies are not using an “FAQ” service.
Most respondents said they have a lot of influence in choosing tools for their agencies, except in web hosting, listserv management, and FAQ tools.
Possible future survey topics:
- Value of a “knowledge management” system for contact centers – so we can have consistent responses to phone calls and email.
- Personnel or skills survey – Is there a correlation to size of site and number of support staff?
- Section 508 requirements – compliance, technologies that can help.
Questions
Q – Could some “in-house” tools be used by other agencies? Some content management systems are so expensive; can a system developed by one agency be shared throughout government?
A – This could be a possible future survey question. How integral is the system to actual content creation? Are these systems used “cradle to grave” or are just parts of the system being used?
Q – Where can we see results of the survey?
A – Richard has already emailed preliminary results to the Listserv. We’re still deciding how to best organize and release the full set of data to both the Listserv and Webcontent.gov. We haven’t yet released individual product names since we don’t want to endorse particular products. But we want to find a way to share information within our community that will help all of us.
Sheila noted that there’s a difference in sharing specific product data within the government web community vs. publishing information on Webcontent.gov which is publicly available. However we share the information, it will be important to note that just because an agency uses a particular product, doesn’t necessarily mean they are satisfied with it.
Richard mentioned there are lots of ways to present the data. We can possibly breakout the data and compile results for one agency, for local governments, etc. We’re still working on the metrics and will keep you informed once we do more analysis.
Q – This group at one time put out a list of CMS products used, and it might be time to refresh that list.
A – Good idea, we’ll look into how using a survey tool can help us do this. The current list is on Webcontent.gov, but it’s a challenge to keep it up-to-date.
One major trend that came out of the survey is that CMS is a major consideration for most government agency websites today (many use them, are considering using them, or have attempted to implement them).
It would be interesting to approach GSA to see if there’s a more streamlined way to procure products that multiple agencies want to buy, where there are similar requirements.
Q – Since some agencies may not have had time to respond to the survey, can you extend the deadline?
A – The survey is still out there for about another week, so please respond if you haven’t yet.
Q – Since some agencies had more responses than others, doesn’t that skew results?
A – This was a “test” and that is something we need to examine for future surveys. Some agencies are very distributed and do use different products throughout their agency, so it may be valid for them to have multiple responses. We need to take this into consideration when we gather and analyze the data.
Want to Get Involved? Join the Web Metrics Task Group
If you have a “metrics” person at your agency who is interested in joining the Web Metrics Task Group, they should contact Richard Huffine (richard.huffine@gsa.gov) or Joe Pagano (jpag@loc.gov). The task group – which developed the survey -- is part of the Web Managers Advisory Council and works on many other activities related to web metrics of government websites. You can read more about the web metrics group on Webcontent.gov.
Next Forum call
Time: Thursday, May 11, 2006, at 11 am eastern daylight time.
Topic: Search engine optimization - how to write content so it is found on search engines. Guest speaker: Bob Keating, Manager, USA.gov Search Program (formerly FirstGov Search Program)
(NOTE: We usually have the conference calls on the third Thursday of every month, but we moved it up a week to avoid a conflict with a Web Manager University class on May 18).
Page Updated or Reviewed: January 12, 2007
