Seven Rules: The Tao of Government Web Sites

April 20, 2010

BALTIMORE, MD—As a developer working on major government web sites like The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, The Federal Aviation Administration, and The U.S. Forest Service, The Berndt Group has contributed to major government web initiatives and solved major usability, strategy and CMS problems that have a big effect on the populations that use the web sites. Solving these complex issues is a big focus for us. It's something we've also at times pondered with Winnie The Poo-like perplexity.

As anyone who has worked even tangentially on large government web sites knows, these projects are quite unusual, have an intense process, and have an almost overwhelming set of constraints associated with them. Government web sites are an intense mix of problem solving, politics, regulation, I.T. control, and massive audience pressure. The people who manage these projects on the government side are dealing with an unusually acute set of problems, and often can get overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of what has to happen to move a particular square inch of design from one page to another.  

In fact, many of the strategy, usability and implementation considerations that define other web projects break down in the government space, or are approached in a radically different way when working on government projects. They have a whole different logic, and require those who work on them to understand very different ways of working, thinking, and being effective. Sometimes constraints or considerations may seem absurd or impossible; but we feel it's always helpful to consider the bigger picture of how government web development works, to be able to "go with the flow" and cleverly get the best outcome for the web site. Like a rushing river, one can't fight the project, but rather, one needs to learn how to float above it, making decisive moves that reduce risk and create good outcomes.

The best way to achieve good outcomes is to understand what you are dealing with. To illuminate this for the folks who will work on government web projects, The Berndt Group has formalized seven rules that we think most strongly govern the reality of large government web development.

1. Contracting Counts. How the different parts of a large government web site are procured makes a huge difference, as government agencies have extremely specific ways they can obtain services from vendors. Everything about purchasing services, software, and hardware is highly regulated, and often connected to broader acquisitions that are going on. For this reason, aligning the activities of various vendors, or getting items or information you need in a pinch may be orders of magnitude harder. This puts great pressure on identifying all the touch points between vendors ahead of time, and on troubleshooting possible problems from the beginning of the project.   
2. Know the Politics. Every government web site is under scrutiny, not just from the project owner, but also from their bosses, and, in some cases, enemies or competing initiatives. It's best to understand who these "hidden stakeholders" are ahead of time, and to form good relationships with them; it is also important to make sure they are included early on in ways that are constructive, not disruptive. Also, one needs to know what political battles can't be won, and to know when it is better to accept something imperfect that is fixed through work-around. At times, this may be the only option, and realizing it sooner can save the project on a variety of levels.
3. Understand Parallel Initiatives. It isn't surprising to find multiple, apparently redundant or overlapping initiatives in the government web space—for instance, two sites that seem to do very similar things. Be careful with denouncing these too quickly—they may have technical, political or sociological reasons to exist that you don't know about. But it is important to understand any parallel initiatives, and know what their road maps are. That way, you can tune your project for maximum success and minimum redundancy.
4. Analytics and User Testing Matter. Many government agencies are using analytics, but in our experience, understanding of the audiences of government sites is still somewhat in its infancy. So, to the extent that you can master the data in existing analytics, it can provide compelling arguments for improvising usability, shifting strategy, or even structuring sites. Our experience is, if analysis is presented clearly and with an objective basis, it has some exciting potential to cut through politics and bureaucracy, and to enable institutional change. Focus groups and user testing can play a similarly constructive role—but watch out—focus groups can be used for both good and evil!
5. User Focused Design = Cultural Change. Despite Presidential mandates to the contrary, government sites still struggle with being highly institutional, dominated by agency structure and bureaucratic, hard-to-understand language. It's often hard to find a clear overview anywhere, but rather users must intuit their way through a maze of redundant content areas that each have just a piece of the puzzle. These issues need to be diplomatically, but directly, confronted.
   
   It is one of the most important goals of government web redesign projects to create this cultural shift from a more institutional view of the web site to a more user-focused one. However, in the course of trying to effect that change, one needs to pick one's battles. For instance, and there are many cases of this, you may need to give in to some very anti-user navigation that will persist (hopefully small and innocuous) so that you can have new user-centric navigation much larger below. Over time, these trade-offs will, with any luck, become less and less onerous.
6. User Interaction is Highly Regulated. The front end of government sites is a whole different kettle of fish. Keep in mind that all government sites have a complex, difficult layer of considerations for the sight-impaired that may not exist in the rest of the web world—namely, "Section 508" compliance. Did you know that to be truly "508 compliant" means having the full script available for each piece of video on your government site? In reality, many sites skate around these strict interpretations, risking the wrath of O.M.B., the agency whose job it is to make sure of compliance. Also, there are limitations on the use of cookies by government agencies, for privacy reasons.
   
   Unfortunately, these requirements are somewhat antithetical to the usability improvements we now know as "Web 2.0." Therefore, these and other constraints need to be part of the discussion early—both in terms of deciding what approach to take to the regulations—and in terms of planning to absorb the extra strategic and execution work they will require. At the end of the day, think of it as a large amount of overhead ranging from information architecture through CMS implementation that is involved with meeting each of these regulations.
7. "Enterprise" Unification Strategies that Sound Good May Not Work. The last point is an urging towards humility. In the corporate and even nonprofit worlds, there is a strong push towards unifying systems in grand "enterprise architectures" that create standardization, reduce duplicate data entry, centralize security, and, theoretically, reduce the total cost of purchasing and maintaining systems. These are difficult to pull off outside the government world, but for government I.T., even harder. This has to do not just with the contracting constraints mentioned above (it does), but also with the highly distributed, often risk-aversive technology strategies used in the government. So, bottom line—often, you don't want to be a hero, trying to pull off some grand unification that will never happen. It's much better to get a good, contemporary web site to happen that will serve the public for 3-5 years, than burn those cycles on a "unified content management architecture" of questionable utility, timing, and flexibility.

These are the seven rules of government web sites—we hope they are enlightening. If you work in the government, and we didn't offend you, we'd love to hear from you.

And if you are working on a large government project or are a prime contractor and need some help, we hope you'll contact us too. We know what we are doing and can be an efficient means to getting your government web project back on track. 

About The Berndt Group

The Berndt Group has been a leading Web design, development and brand communications firm since 1991. The firm provides an integrated set of creative services, including strategic consulting, brand and application development, software implementation, web site design, and internet marketing. Based in Baltimore, MD, the firm services a diverse international and regional base of over fifty active clients, including: The National Aquarium, Johns Hopkins Institutions, SafeNet, Inc., Raytheon, U.S. Immigration, The Federal Aviation Administration, The U.S. Forest Service, The Abell Foundation, and many others. For more information, visit www.berndtgroup.net.

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