For Webmasters: Implementing Google Analytics at EPA

• Meeting the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Requirement
• How is EPA Implementing Google Analytics (GA)?
• What if My Pages are not Tagged with the Agency GA Code?
• Separate Google Analytics Accounts -- Permission is Required
• What if I was Already Using a Separate Google Analytics Account?

Meeting the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Requirement

OMB's Digital Strategy Milestone 8.2 requires federal agencies to gather traffic metrics on all their public websites and report them to OMB. The General Services Administration (GSA) offers their custom Google Analytics Tracking Code (GATC) as a means for agencies to meet this requirement. EPA has set up its own custom implementation of Google Analytics, and a copy of the metrics EPA collects is sent to GSA as a way of meeting OMB requirements while maintaining the integrity of EPA’s Web traffic metrics.

Procedure: Maintaining the Agency Web Analytics Code on All Public HTML Pages also codifies the OMB requirements.

How is EPA Implementing Google Analytics?

The Google Tag Manager code is automatically added to all WebCMS content.

Content on Buckeye (www3; archive) and applications is tagged in one of three ways:

1. DEPRECATED: The core JS file that is part of Template 4: http://www.epa.gov/epafiles/js/epa-core-v4.js
2. DEPRECATED: The core JS file that is part of Template 3: http://www.epa.gov/epafiles/js/epa-core.js
3. Standalone template pages: Google Tag Manager (GTM). Owners of custom template pages should ensure their pages include the GTM script. If you need to add the GTM script to your content, please contact the web analytics program.

What if My Pages are not Tagged with the Agency GA Code?

OMB and EPA require that the Agency collect traffic metrics for all its public .gov websites. To meet this requirement, please ensure that all public Web pages, including Web applications, managed by your office include the Agency GTM script. This requirement can only be met by adding the Agency GTM script to all pages.

• express permission is required in order to create additional analytics accounts beyond the agency account. 
• please contact the web analytics program if any of your office’s Web pages are not sending metrics to the agency GA account (UA-32633028-X), 

Separate Google Analytics Accounts: Permission is Required

EPA employees can access all of EPA’s Web traffic metrics via the agency GA account. EPA’s implementation of GA is intended to serve all organizations, so there is no need for separate GA accounts. The agency account includes dashboards, event tracking for file download links, email links, and external links.

If you find that the agency GA account does not meet your needs, please contact the Web analytics program.

In some cases, having multiple GA accounts on the same website will not cause any issues. However, certain customization, including Event Tracking and Custom Variables, will be pulled into all active GA accounts that are tagged on a given page, creating unnecessary complications. To avoid such complications, all separate GA accounts must be approved by EPA’s Web analytics program.

• Note: even if you get permission to create a separate account, you may not remove the agency GA code, as it is required for all EPA public websites.

What if I was Already Using a Separate Google Analytics Account?

If you have already established your own Google Analytics (GA) account, you still need permission to maintain that account. Please contact the web analytics program.