FCC Launches Complete Overhaul of Website
Website seems aimed at the public rather than those who use it every day.
The Federal Communications Commission announced Tuesday that it has launched a complete overhaul of its website. According to an April 5 press release from the FCC, the new website is "architected with a more intuitive user experience and the addition of Web 2.0 technologies, the new site improves and simplifies the FCC.gov experience for consumers, government, public safety agencies and the business community." This is the first major update to the Commission's website in 10 years.
Even before Julius Genachowski became FCC Chairman in June 2009, he stressed his desire to improve and modernize the way the public interacts with the Commission and the federal government. Since then, the FCC has utilized Web 2.0 technologies on official agency blogs, multimedia and social media outlets, as well as opening the agency's processes via online participation platforms. According to the FCC, The Commission's New Media Team will continue to update the new website with the help of public input through the public engagement and participation features in the new FCC.gov, as well as the agency's social media outlets.
"This FCC is empowering consumers and businesses to get the most out of technology," Genachowski explained. "The launch of the new FCC.gov keeps us at the forefront of innovation, and delivers on our promise to move at the speed of high-tech change."
According to the press release, FCC Managing Director Steven VanRoekel oversaw the technical development and innovation strategies for the new site. His vision for the new site drove the deployment of the site's cloud-hosted architecture, open source development and embrace of leading design techniques drawn from leading consumer sites. "Online innovators have built destinations that deliver outstanding experiences, high-quality products and great customer service," he said. "That's what consumers and businesses expect online, and it's what makes the web great. Traditionally, dot-govs have struggled to keep up with rapidly changing technology, but the re-imagined FCC.gov is proof that with the right tools and creative thinking, dot-govs can look, feel and run like dot-coms."
“The new FCC.gov comes from you: the citizens who commented on our blog posts, who submitted suggestions on our citizen engagement platforms, who answered our surveys, and who use the site day in and day out to make American technology work,” states FCC Managing Director Steven VanRoekel
More important than look and style, the FCC is hoping the revamped site will let users find the data they need more quickly. Some of the improvements according to the FCC include:
• One voice of the FCC: Intuitive design and layout optimized for the everyday citizen who isn’t familiar with the FCC’s own organizational chart.
• Top tasks: Surveys, testing, and analytics showed us what FCC.gov users do on our site. Those tasks now follow visitors throughout their FCC.gov experience in the “Take Action” bar.
• Great search: A powerful shortcut to help users get in and get what they need. For business users, powerful search filters make finding documents easy.
• Tech-forward: Built in the cloud, and developed with open source software, the new FCC.gov lowers barriers to future development as part of a long-term IT cost-cutting strategy.
• Feedback everywhere: Putting citizen skin in the game to make FCC.gov work better for users, and holding us accountable to continual improvement.
The press release explained that the new FCC website is built using web services -- a series of standards employed across many of the Web's most popular sites -- which empowers citizen developers to build off the new FCC site in innovative ways: "By building the new site using an open source, cloud-hosted and scalable architecture, the FCC has leveraged modern tools as a long-term cost-saving strategy, lowering the barriers to future development and innovation among other public and private sector websites."
Not everyone likes the changes as pointed out on an FCC customer feedback forum.
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