Webcontent.gov: a US official practical guide

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http://Webcontent.gov

Webcontent.gov is a practical guide to help you manage your agency's website. Everything you need to know as a web content manager is here, including:

· information about federal website requirements

· guidance on how to fulfill OMB's web policies

· common web content practices

· staffing and governance issues

· website design and usability

· performance measures

 

Where is the equivalent for EU websites ?

Well done but …

…These problems are unfortunately typical of government web efforts. An online compliance checklist for designers of government websites identifies no fewer than 24 different regulatory regimes with which all public government web sites must comply.

Ranging from privacy and usability to FOIA compliance to the requirements of the Paperwork Reduction Act and, separately, the Government Paperwork Elimination Act, each of these requirements alone is reasonable enough. They reflect the considered judgment of our political process, informed by whatever understanding of information technology was available when they were written. But the stultifying cumulative effect of these rules has not been, and probably would not be, endorsed by anyone.

Indeed, there is no guarantee that these requirements interact in such a way as to make total compliance with all of them possible, even in principle.

Moreover, as long as government has a special role in the presentation and formatting of raw government data, certain desirable limits on what the government can do become undesirable limits on how the data can be presented or handled. The interagency group that sets guidelines for federal webmasters, for example, tells webmasters to manually check the status of every outbound link destination on their websites at least once each quarter.

And First Amendment considerations would vastly complicate, if not outright prevent, any effort to moderate online fora related to government documents. Considerations like these make wikis, discussion boards, group annotation, and other important possibilities impracticable for government websites themselves.

 

Source: Government Data and the Invisible Hand

David Robinson, Harlan Yu, William Zeller  and Edward W. Felten

Paper download at

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1138083#PaperDownload

A final version of this essay will appear in Volume 11 of the Yale Journal of Law and Technology in Fall 2008.

 

US Law References of this text:

Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)  http://www.usdoj.gov/oip/

Paper Reduction Act: www.reginfo.gov/public/reginfo/pra.pdf

Government Paperwork Elimination Act http://www.cdt.org/legislation/105th/digsig/govnopaper.html

WebContent.gov Reference

http://www.usa.gov/webcontent/index.shtml

“You have subscribed to the following WebContent.gov information” (http://www.usa.gov/webcontent/index.shtml)

Items:

• · Requirements and Best Practices Table of Contents
• · Best Practices
• · Federal Laws and Regulations
• · OMB Policies for Federal Public Websites
• · Requirements and Best Practices Checklists
• · International Governments
• · Local Governments
• · State Governments
• · Usability and Design Table of Contents
• · Accessibility and Section 508
• · Design Templates
• · Usability Principles and Techniques
• · World Usability Day
• · Improving Your Website Table of Contents
• · Evaluating Your Website/Web Metrics
• · Making Changes/Redesigns
• · Web Marketing
• · Using Technology Table of Contents
• · Content Management Systems (CMS)
• · Products Agencies Are Using
• · Search Engines
• · Blogs
• · Podcasting
• · RSS Feeds
• · Archiving Content/Web Records
• · Keeping Content Current
• · Knowing Your Audience and Doing Market Research
• · Managing Specific Types of Websites
• · Organizing and Categorizing Content
• · Writing for the Web/Plain Language
• · Management and Governance
• · Checklists
• · Library
• · Tools
• · Training and Workshops
• · Getting Started
• · Categories:
• · All WebContent.gov Updates
• · Requirements and Best Practices
• · What Other Governments Are Doing
• · Usability and Design
• · Improving Your Website
• · Using Technology
• · Social Media
• · Managing Content
• · Management and Governance
• · Resources and Tools
• · Getting Started

Comments

[Europa Information Provider Guide]

The Information Providers Guide (IPG) is intended for information publishers on EUROPA (coordinators, webmasters, developers, contractors, etc.). The guide covers all aspects of publishing on the EUROPA site, describing the relevant editorial, technical and presentation standards in force, as well as providing a wide range of recommendations based on best practices.

The rules set out in the IPG are compulsory in order to ensure a coherent and user-friendly service to the users. The IPG is freely available on EUROPA in English, and is a living document which is regularly updated.