Our Blog

Creating a single piece of content is one thing, but creating a whole new section for our website is quite another endeavor — especially when it needs to address a gap in government information. It takes time and resources to produce the content, test the sections, and build the infrastructure. This blog post is the first in a series about that process.

Last year, I shared a new KPI that we were piloting — the content efficiency metric. 

Social media is a key part of USAGov’s outreach efforts, which aim to connect the public with government information and services quickly and easily. As we all know, social media is continually evolving, and we try to adapt accordingly.

This blog was originally posted on HIV.gov on May 29, 2018.

The Consumer Action Handbook (Handbook) and its Spanish counterpart,the Guía del Consumidor (Guía), have been mainstays of USAGov since the 1990s. However, life as a consumer has changed drastically since these books began. To understand the changing consumer landscape, a cross-functional group from USAGov conducted a study of the scope of these publications. We wanted to answer several questions:

Over the course of tax season, our content and marketing teams worked together to help our audience better understand the ins and outs of filing taxes and other important steps in the process. We collaborated on messaging for our various platforms including targeted email and social media. We covered many important tax topics, from finding out if you qualify for the Earned Income Tax Credit to avoiding refund scams.

Content on the USA.gov and GobiernoUSA.gov websites provides information on many different government benefits, services, and programs. We group the content into various taxonomy buckets to make it easier for people to find what they are looking for. But after listening to user feedback, we realized that content about different programs wasn’t always written in the same style and format, which made it hard for people to find what they were looking for across topics.

The process of searching for and bidding on federal government contracts is complicated, and last year our research revealed that it was an area the public needed help navigating.

In order to understand if certain pages and sections of our website effectively help customers complete their tasks, we run page-level and pop-up surveys that allow people to leave feedback and tell us what was helpful or what wasn’t.

The Contact Center team handles all calls, chats, and emails coming to USAGov from the general public, for help navigating government services and information. We provide a multi-channel shared service platform to serve those who have questions ranging from housing assistance to how to file taxes.