Annual Summit
2023 Government UX Summit
User experience (UX) experts across the federal government will share case studies and best practices during this virtual summit.
2023
Information architecture
Organizing the information on your website to make it findable, understandable, and usable helps build trust with the public.
Websites are made up of information—which needs to be organized to be useful. Information architecture (IA), which has roots in physical spaces like libraries and hospitals, should be designed with intention to help people find what they need to know or do. Making sure that search, labeling, appropriate nesting, calls-to-action, and your sitemap are clear and usable is all part of having a functional information architecture.
Related Policy
21st Century Integrated Digital Experience Act & OMB Memo M-23-22
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Web Managers
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Information architecture events
User Experience
2022 Government UX Summit
A two-day summit—June 7 and June 8—with experts who will share their experiences as UX practitioners in the federal government.
2022
Information architecture news
18F’s engineering craft practices at 10
18F recently celebrated its 10th anniversary by renewing its commitment to refining and sharing best practices through regular publications, tech talks, and updates to The 18F Engineering Guide. They also instructed a permanent principal consulting engineer role to enhance digital service delivery and support skill development within the organization.— via 18F
Search.gov year in review: 2023 report
Learn what types of information people searched for on federal websites in 2023, see emerging trends the team is exploring to improve customers’ search experience in 2024, and check out three new updates. The data tab provides insightful summaries for 13 popular topic areas—and lists the public’s top 25 search terms, in their own words, for each.— via Search.gov
Modernize Your Identity Management Process Through ILM
Modernize Your Identity Management Process Through ILM—GSA’s Office of Government-wide Policy is pleased to announce the Identity Lifecycle Management (ILM) Playbook, designed for identity program managers, and enterprise and application architects interested in modernizing their identity management process for federal employees. This practical guide helps federal agencies understand how to shift their focus from managing employee access based on credentials to managing the lifecycle of identities as outlined in section III of OMB Memo 19-17. This will help agencies achieve an enterprise Identity, Credential, and Access Management (ICAM) system that is agile enough to support technology modernization and aligns with the Federal Identity, Credential, and Access Management (FICAM) architecture.— via General Services Administration
User Experience
Open-source Information Architecture Design: Using the Tools You Have To Conduct Card Sorting and Tree Testing
Learn how we used GitHub to conduct a card sort and tree testing to improve the information architecture for onrr.gov.
The Data Briefing: Design-Driven Enterprise Architecture Creating the New Federal Government Agency
It’s been a while since I’ve checked in on enterprise architecture (EA). My last in-depth work with EA was around 2011 when I was on detail to the Office of Personnel Management’s Open Government Team. The EA model I worked with was the top-down organizational design of information technology assets, data assets, and business processes.
More News and Events on Information architecture
12 posts
18F’s engineering craft practices at 10
18F recently celebrated its 10th anniversary by renewing its commitment to refining and sharing best practices through regular publications, tech talks, and updates to The 18F Engineering Guide. They also instructed a permanent principal consulting engineer role to enhance digital service delivery and support skill development within the organization.— via 18F
Search.gov year in review: 2023 report
Learn what types of information people searched for on federal websites in 2023, see emerging trends the team is exploring to improve customers’ search experience in 2024, and check out three new updates. The data tab provides insightful summaries for 13 popular topic areas—and lists the public’s top 25 search terms, in their own words, for each.— via Search.gov
Annual Summit
2023 Government UX Summit
User experience (UX) experts across the federal government will share case studies and best practices during this virtual summit.
2023
Modernize Your Identity Management Process Through ILM
Modernize Your Identity Management Process Through ILM—GSA’s Office of Government-wide Policy is pleased to announce the Identity Lifecycle Management (ILM) Playbook, designed for identity program managers, and enterprise and application architects interested in modernizing their identity management process for federal employees. This practical guide helps federal agencies understand how to shift their focus from managing employee access based on credentials to managing the lifecycle of identities as outlined in section III of OMB Memo 19-17. This will help agencies achieve an enterprise Identity, Credential, and Access Management (ICAM) system that is agile enough to support technology modernization and aligns with the Federal Identity, Credential, and Access Management (FICAM) architecture.— via General Services Administration
User Experience
2022 Government UX Summit
A two-day summit—June 7 and June 8—with experts who will share their experiences as UX practitioners in the federal government.
2022
User Experience
Open-source Information Architecture Design: Using the Tools You Have To Conduct Card Sorting and Tree Testing
Learn how we used GitHub to conduct a card sort and tree testing to improve the information architecture for onrr.gov.
The Data Briefing: Design-Driven Enterprise Architecture Creating the New Federal Government Agency
It’s been a while since I’ve checked in on enterprise architecture (EA). My last in-depth work with EA was around 2011 when I was on detail to the Office of Personnel Management’s Open Government Team. The EA model I worked with was the top-down organizational design of information technology assets, data assets, and business processes.
A Deeper Look into the USDA.gov Website Redesign
We hope you are finding it easier to get the information you need on USDA.gov following the launch of our site redesign in March. We’ve already welcomed over 1 million visitors to the new site and we are pleased with the positive feedback we’ve received thus far. Our redesign makes it easier for you to
The Data Briefing: Understand Serverless Architecture in Three Minutes
You may have heard of “serverless architecture” or Amazon Web Services (AWS) Lambda product and wondered what is unique about this new buzzword. As with many new digital cloud technologies, serverless architecture could mean two things. It may be applications that are built using third-party cloud applications. Or serverless architectures could be pieces of code
Expert Insight on Content Strategy and Structure for Future-Ready Content
We recently interviewed Sara Wachter-Boettcher, author of Content Everywhere: Strategy and Structure for Future-Ready Content. Sara, a frequent conference speaker, runs a content strategy consultancy, and is the co-author of Design for Real Life. She has extensive experience consulting with major brands, universities, agencies, nonprofits, and others to make their content more memorable, manageable, and
How Do You Redesign a ‘Dinosaur’? Redesigning an Intranet Site: the Beginning Stages
Many content managers in the digital world understand the irrepressible desire to improve, fix, edit, add, and move things around. Indeed, it’s our job to nurture this ongoing process to create, update, test, update again. And, repeat! But, what about those sites or pages that seem to never crawl up to the ‘high-priority’ list and
Information Architecture vs Content Strategy—and Why YOU Need Both
The idea of portable content is nothing new. Content needs to be mobile ready, responsive, and readily consumed by tools such as the Internet of Things (IoT)—a proposed development of the Internet in which everyday objects have network connectivity, allowing them to send and receive data. Developers need to stop creating fixed, single-purpose content and
