From this site
Thanks to all the folks who worked on this! Web and IT are among the less obvious but critical folks in the agency.
Note: since my original post, I have heard some forest concerns about how these changes are working, which are in the comments below.
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If you use our agency forest, grassland and regional websites, you’ll have noticed a recent change. As part of an overarching effort to improve the public’s digital experience, we have migrated our websites to a new content management system. What does that mean?
It means that we’re going to have a whole-of-agency approach to website design and management. Visitors will be able to find the same kind of information under the same topics across all forest websites. The web is our virtual first impression. It’s where visitors meet our forests and grasslands, and it should be welcoming, easy to navigate and clearly demonstrate the services and value we provide to the American people. The most obvious shift is in our menu: Rather than basing our website on our internal organizational structure, the menu is topic-based, a design that was developed based on data and with the public in mind.
This web migration is a strategic overhaul that ensures our digital presence aligns with current trends, technology and federal mandates. It meets user expectations for modern web presence, providing consistency and improving agency efficiency.
By eliminating reliance on outdated, licensed technology and uniting the agency under a single, efficient cloud environment, this migration delivers more than $1 million in annual cost savings and redeems our fiduciary responsibility to the American public. It has allowed us to systematically review our content and remove redundant, outdated and obsolete information while preserving our records. We are ensuring that links work, photos are appropriately captioned, and accurate information is readily available.
These changes benefit you as well. The streamlined approach will make it easier to provide up-to-date information. Web contributors will be able to edit content more easily without needing extensive coding skills, and publishers will be able to push updates with the click of a button.
You will notice that not all content has moved. We have thousands of webpages across the internet, so we ask you to be patient as we continue to bring pages online. If you have any questions or concerns, contact your region or station web manager for assistance.
This has been a significant undertaking that required support from across the agency. Our webmasters, web contributors, data specialists, public affairs staff, developers, and many others have been working in the background to deliver these improvements. I thank the teams that tested processes and links, identified what worked and what needed to be improved, and dove into the details to make sure the old systems talked to the new systems. And I especially thank those who took leading roles in this effort: Mason Lowery for his oversight; Joey Jones and Rob Herring from CIO; regional web team members Joe Banegas, Cyndee Maki, Chase Martin, Kelsey McCartney, Witne Neil, Kate Salm, Michelle Tegan, and Sean Tullis; and those who led the project: Kari Boyd-Peak and Linda Harms.
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The folks at the FS also gave me a contact name for those of you who find broken links.. in the past, I know that’s been difficult. The address is SM.FS.webmaster at usda.gov
Here is what I have heard from forests. Please add other issues.
* Promise to upload trail data was not delivered. Not available for peak season so others had to step in and input information.
* Folks were told pages would migrate, but instead they had to be rebuilt manually.
* Widespread link failures (we, the public, noticed this one)
*One per Forest master publisher, SMEs not able to publish directly, all updates routed through PAOs, and even PAOs can’t edit certain pages without RO approval.
*Approval needed by understaffed RO
*Design changes while units rebuild, pages needed to be reworked multiple times.
I have to be honest, the only problems I had were with SOPAs and links to projects.. I had no idea that all this was going on behind the scenes. The good thing about CMS is that it makes it easier for non-IT experts to update and so updates and fixes should be current. The downside is if you want to have control and consistency over what’s on there, which is also important, you can’t have everyone changing without some kind of oversight. I’m sympathetic to everyone involved.