09-09-2015 Stan Meiburg email on Completing the One EPA Web Transformation (Email Message)

From: Meiburg, Stan
Sent: Wednesday, September 09, 2015 12:57 PM
To: DAA; DRA; Deputy Associate Administrators
Subject: Completing the One EPA Web Transformation

Deputy Assistant, Regional, and Associate Administrators:

As you know, the Web is one of the EPA’s primary vehicles for communicating with citizens, the regulated community and other stakeholders. We began the One EPA Web project in September 2010 to take advantage of best practices and new technologies. The EPA’s website had grown to more than a million pages loosely organized along our organizational structure, which made important information hard to find for our Web users, who typically search by environmental topics. Also, our website used outdated technology that made it challenging to manage our Web content, and information could not be effectively accessed by the ever-growing number of mobile devices.

After two years of testing new Web-content strategies, launching our Google search engine, and developing a Web-content management system, former Deputy Administrator Perciasepe in November 2012 called on our senior managers to fully implement One EPA Web and to complete the transformation by September 2014. As work continued to transform the EPA’s website, Bob concurred in May 2014 with the Web Executive Board’s recommendation to extend the One EPA Web transformation by one year to September 30, 2015.   

We are now only a few weeks away from the completion deadline, and your hard work has yielded significant progress toward our goal. However, much work still remains. I would like to ask each of you to meet with your Senior Information Officials (SIOs) and Web Executive Board members in the days ahead to take stock of your One EPA Web progress. Between now and the end of this month, your organizations must complete the transformation of your highest priority Web Plan topics, and I’d like to ask for your help in making sure that happens.

I understand that completing this transformation by the September 30 deadline has been challenging to achieve in the midst of our agency’s many other priorities.  I have worked hard with the team in the Office of Environmental Information and the Office of Public Affairs to find ways to continue our One EPA Web momentum without overburdening our staff. As you know, we have set up a separate public-access server to help ensure that key content that won’t yet be transformed by September 30 remains publicly accessible.

Toward this end, I ask you to also work with your SIOs and Web Executive Board members to ensure that your Office or Region has a plan in place to temporarily transfer any Web content that has not yet been transformed but must remain publicly accessible to the separate public-access server, referred to as “www3.”  Requests for an extension and transfer of Web content to www3 were due to SIOs by August 31, 2015. 

There is considerable cost to the EPA for ensuring public access to content in both the new and legacy infrastructure into FY 2016. We will not be assessing a fee to offices and Regions who have not completed their transformation, but I have asked OEI to keep me informed of the extension requests they have received and their associated costs. I am also asking OEI to monitor the progress of temporarily transferred content and provide me updates to ensure that the transformation work is completed to our One EPA Web standards by March 31, 2016.

OPA and OEI remain available to assist your staff in making sure your Web content is transformed and remains accessible to the public. You can find more information about our One EPA Web efforts on the EPA Intranet at http://intranet.epa.gov/oneepa/web/. If you have any questions, you can contact Danny Hart, Office of Web Communications in OPA, at (202) 564-7577 or hart.daniel@epa.gov, or Jonda Byrd, Office of Information Analysis and Access in OEI, at (513) 569-7183 or byrd.jonda@epa.gov.

Thank you,
Stan

A. Stanley Meiburg, Ph.D.
Acting Deputy Administrator
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
MC-1102A
1200 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC   20460