Page 20 - FCW, May 2021

Digitally Transforming the Customer Experience
How to build a more user-focused
website
With the right platform, agencies can easily comply with mandates for modernizing internal and external websites
Kale Fluharty
Director of Federal, Liferay
to further streamline agencies’ ability to create websites that achieve the goals of
the act. Liferay is particularly focused on facilitating action-oriented, self-service interactions. Our analytics component allows agencies to create audience segments so they can personalize the experience of website visitors based on why they use the site and what’s important to them.
We also offer a more robust cloud-based analytics offering and the ability to test different versions of content to find the best way to reach the target audience. With Liferay, agencies can meet IDEA’s searchability requirement with a best-in- class capability right out of the box.
Shifting the focus away from back-end systems
At its most fundamental, the Liferay platform is open-source and has all the security and stability advantages of open-source software. With a robust community reviewing Liferay’s source code, vulnerabilities are quickly identified and fixed. For our enterprise product, we harden that open-source offering through rigorous security, vulnerability and cyber-hack testing.
Furthermore, agencies can deploy the Liferay platform wherever they choose, including in a government data center when data must stay local or in their preferred cloud service provider environment.
Liferay helps agencies achieve the 21st Century IDEA’s goals for both external- and internal-facing websites. For example, when the team behind Grants.gov decided
THE PANDEMIC HAS
amplified the need to improve
agencies’ ability to interact digitally with citizens and other constituents. It has also magnified the importance of the 21st Century Integrated Digital Experience Act’s (IDEA) goals of creating secure, searchable websites with a consistent look and feel. Underlying all of this is the demand for analytics that can drive evidence-based improvements in the customer experience.
Site improvement efforts begin with understanding what people are trying
to accomplish when they interact with a government resource online. Gathering information about those interactions
can help agencies determine if users are accomplishing their objectives. If users are
not successful, the data can help agencies identify what they need to change for creating a better digital experience. And, of course, it’s vitally important that all online interactions happen in a way that is secure and trustworthy.
A personalized, self-service experience
After the 21st Century IDEA was
signed into law, the General Services Administration’s Technology Transformation Services published the U.S. Web Design System. This offers guidance and technology that agencies can use to create websites that are IDEA-compliant.
Liferay applied the principles of the U.S. Web Design System to our platform
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