USA.gov Blog

Throughout USAGov’s history, we’ve relied on the expertise of federal agencies to help fulfill our mission of giving the public clear, accurate information about government services and programs. Connecting regularly keeps us up-to-date with agencies’ priorities and activities. We do this in many ways.

A significant part of USAGov’s work is to answer the public’s questions about government through our USAGov Contact Center. In 2019, we received more than 430,000 calls. Our agents answered many requests for other agencies’ phone numbers and questions about the status of applications, payments, or personal information. We believed that we could answer these requests more efficiently by expanding our use of interactive voice response (IVR). An IVR is an automated system that routes callers on a phone tree, based on their voice responses or pressing a specific button on their phone keypad.

How many people are visiting USA.gov and USA.gov/espanol right now? What kind of devices are they using and what content are they looking for the most? These are all easy-to-answer questions with the USAGov analytics dashboard. It’s open to everyone and provides a snapshot of popular content on our websites and technical and geographical stats about our users. 

Earlier this year, we piloted our USAGov chatbot to help visitors find answers to their questions about scams and fraud. After the launch, we made tweaks to the interface based on customer feedback and usage data. 

USAGov manages a contact center that answers questions from the public via phone and chat in both English and Spanish. We analyze the types of questions we get so we can learn about our users and their needs. This data allows us to continuously revise and improve the ways we’re providing services to our audience, not just through the USAGov Contact Center, but online at USA.gov, and through outreach and social media as well. 

The USAGov team plays a challenging, but important role in times of national disaster in helping people across the country prepare for and recover from disasters. To do this, we use different tactics across our channels to ensure we are delivering accurate, helpful information to those who needed it most.

For nearly 50 years, USAGov has been working to serve every person and every government agency. Our history has been full of change, and never static as we improve people’s lives by connecting them with the government services and information they need.

After 15 years, GobiernoUSA.gov, the trusted source of government information in Spanish, begins a new era. As part of our fifteen year celebration, we are announcing our new name: USAGov en Español.

After studying the latest research and monitoring trends with our Twitter audience, we are experimenting with three new ways to better connect with Spanish speakers.  

GobiernoUSA, just like USA.gov, is part of a unique effort with a large mission, to guide people to the government information and services they seek. We cover a lot of topics in Spanish via our website, social media platforms, email sends, and contact center. One of the communication channels we focus a lot of attention to is social media; and we routinely measure how our efforts are going.