Updated Dashboards Reveal Agency-Specific Website Traffic

By Christine Kern, contributing writer

Filters provide important insights into public interactions with federal agencies.

Big Data analytics is a powerful tool for government agencies and an updated dashboard is providing new insight into public interactions with federal agencies, according to the Federal Times. In addition, a blog post on DigitalGov.gov notes the main analytics.usa.gov page now contains a dropdown that allows users to view filtered dashboards for websites administered by one of 10 specific agencies, including:

• Department of Commerce
• Department of Education
• Department of Energy
• Department of the Interior
• Department of Justice
• Department of Veterans Affairs
• Environmental Protection Agency
• National Aeronautics and Space Administration
• National Archives and Records Administration
• Small Business Administration

Previously, users could see traffic on top pages and get overall metrics, but those are often deceptive. “For example, at the time of writing this post, the domestic vs. foreign traffic on the whole of participating Digital Analytics Program sites is about 90 percent to 10 percent, respectively,” the development team wrote. “But the VA specifically has a 99 percent to 1 percent ratio, while NASA has a 62 percent to 38 percent domestic to foreign visits ratio.”

While the initial list only filters for 10 agencies, developers plan to increase that over time, ultimately expanding the list to contain all 45 agencies participating in the analytics program. This filtered data is valuable to the agencies, according to GSA.

 “We think this level of data is valuable to gain a more clear understanding of the kinds of interaction the public has with the various different parts of the federal government and what is important to them,” developers said.

The new filters allow users to compare individual agency website performance against the aggregated view of all participating agency websites, according to DigitalGov. For example, while the percentage of foreign visitors to all the tracked websites is 10 percent, the new dashboard shows that NASA’s foreign visits make up 38 percent of its traffic.

The pages also display the most popular user downloads at the agency level, the most-visited pages in the last 30 days and the overall number of people on the agency’s websites at a given moment. Dashboards also record details on visits for the past 90 days, including users’ devices, browsers and operating systems.

As the Analytics.usa.gov site explains, the data “provides a window into how people are interacting with the government online,” allowing them to assess how users find, access, and utilize government services online to better fulfill their role as a government agency.