Federal agencies move on mobile-friendly websites
With more than 40 percent of traffic to federal websites coming from mobile users, agencies must ensure their citizen-facing mobile websites are as friendly as the desktop versions.
With more than 40 percent of traffic to federal websites coming from mobile users, agencies must ensure their citizen-facing mobile websites are as friendly as the desktop versions. The Connected Government Act, signed by President Donald Trump in January, codifies existing governmentwide guidance, but it also has a schedule to push agencies to adopt mobile-friendly design practices.
The first deadlines are approaching. By about July 4, new federal websites must be mobile friendly, meaning they must load quickly, offer mobile-optimized navigation and supply the same basic services as a desktop site.
The General Services Administration is helping agencies meet the Connected Government Act's mobile-friendly requirements. Technology Transformation Service's Mobile Program Management Office Director Jacob Parcelll is leading a team charged the effort, which includes people at TTS and elsewhere inside GSA.
For the past seven years, Parcell has been nurturing a mobile community of practice inside the federal government that has reached 1,100 feds who have developed or are developing mobile apps. He's also been able to recruit a volunteer group of more than 250 who test mobile sites in development across the range of devices and operating systems to troubleshoot potential problems and design bugs.
Currently, Parcell said, his group is talking to agencies to see what questions they have about the Connected Government Act, and what standards are going to be put in place to prove out whether a site qualifies as mobile friendly. Legacy sites aren't required to update to conform to the law unless they come out with a redesign.
Parcell said more guidance should be coming out in March. He expects to take existing mobile guidance "and hone it and make it more specific to the requirements of the law," including some detail on what constitutes a redesign versus an iterative update.
The law is also an opportunity to examine what mobile users truly want from a website. Parcell said the best practice is "to really look at analytics and look at what mobile users are coming to the website for and design mobile versions of the website that actually meet those needs."
Under the law, GSA is tasked with producing a report by July 2019 to detail implementation on an agency by agency basis.
This article was first posted to FCW, a sibling site to GCN.