December 2020 Newsletter
You are invited!
jQuery Update
We are updating our version of jQuery, which powers the type-ahead search suggestions you may display for your website’s search box.
We are planning to test this upgrade against sites where we know type-ahead suggestions are used, and we invite you to participate in the final round of testing in January, 2021. We’re confident in the upgrade, and while participation is optional, we want you to have the chance to verify the script’s performance on your websites.
If you are interested in taking part in this test, please let us know. You can email us at search@gsa.gov; detailed testing instructions will be provided when we’re ready for you to test.
If you are running jQuery on version 2 or earlier, please note these are no longer supported, so talk to your tech team about upgrading. To the extent possible, we’ve verified there are no conflicts between the coming upgrade and older versions.
In Search Of…
Search.gov Index Manager Detail Position
Our team is seeking a detailee to oversee our main web index, which includes guiding customers through our indexing workflow, monitoring domains for currency, and occasional troubleshooting.
If you are interested in learning more about this opportunity, please contact Karen Trebon, Chief of Staff, TTS Office of Solutions (karen.trebon@gsa.gov).
Get To Know the TTS Stack
Digital Analytics Program (DAP) and Federalist
Did you know that Search.gov, the Digital Analytics Program and Federalist are all part of the Technology Transformation Services (TTS) at the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA)? We all help agencies improve delivery of information and services to the public. In this edition of our newsletter, we want to share information about their services and how they could be a valuable resource for your agency.
For All Sites
The Digital Analytics Program (DAP) provides a web analytics tool (currently Google Analytics), training, and support to federal agencies at no cost. The team holds various virtual trainings throughout the year and also offers an analytics helpdesk at dap@gsa.gov. Additionally, the DAP team maintains analytics.usa.gov, the public window into federal government web analytics data. For more information, see https://digital.gov/guides/dap/. For access requests or questions, please email dap@gsa.gov.
For Sites Planning A Redesign
Federalist, part of the cloud.gov family is a platform for rapidly building and deploying highly performant, resilient, and secure agency websites. Federalist supports a host of different open source tools for developing and maintaining agency websites, and is built on the FedRAMP-authorized cloud.gov platform and Amazon Web Services infrastructure. With Federalist, the pathway to an ATO for deploying your website can be dramatically shortened by leveraging the existing GSA ATO granted to the Federalist platform.
Federalist integrates with Github to automate deployments upon every code or content change, enabling fast iteration and easy collaboration among technical and product teams. They also support Github-backed and headless content management systems, such as Netlify CMS, to help non-technical staff make content updates. You can bring your own codebase or get a jump start using one of their pre-built starters, which come with 21st Century IDEA-compliant design, search, and analytics baked in.
If you or your team are interested in learning more about Federalist, or scheduling a demo, please reach out to inquiries@cloud.gov for more information.
Release Notes
Want to learn about the latest features, fixes, and focuses of the Search team? We post monthly Release Notes on our website.