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Principles

Our working principles are based largely on those of 18F, GSA's technology and design consultancy for the U.S. Government.

User-centered design and development

Our team follows user-centered design and development practices as best we can.

Working in the open

We work in the open, with open-source tools. We believe this approach is a good fit for government. All of our site changes and issues are captured here in our GitHub repository.

Our duty is to everyone

We work for the people of the United States, and thus believe our product and work processes must be accessible and inclusive to everyone. As a result, accessibility is among our core success metrics.

Team

Our team is comprised of:

• product manager (2)
• engineer / developer (3)
• user experience designers (1)
• content strategist (1)
• acquisition strategist (1)

Project background

The GSA Service Delivery team has partnered with the Center for Charge Card Management on user research, product framing, content audit, iterating on an 889 compliance tool, pro/con analysis on Drupal vs. Cloud.gov Pages, and developing wireframes for a loginless GSA SmartPay training.

We are now shifting gears into an agile, human-centered build process for a minimally viable product (MVP) of GSA SmartPay’s website and training platform, and procurement for post-MVP contractor support.

Build and procure proposal

Using iterative and user-centered delivery cadence, build MVP of GSA SmartPay website leveraging Cloud.gov Pages and MVP of GSA SmartPay training through a custom application, and support acquisition of development resources for post-MVP and maintenance. This approach will allow us to work quickly, ensure we’re constantly delivering user value, improve security posture (and avoid MFA requirements), enable GSA SmartPay to have access to its own infrastructure and data, and (hopefully) lead to cost avoidance.

This would include:

• Developing a style guide and an archiving strategy for redundant, outdated, and trivial content
• Build MVP of GSA SmartPay website leveraging Cloud.gov Pages and the U.S. Web Design System
• Build MVP of GSA SmartPay training with loginless approach and reporting by bureau
• Conduct usability testing and iterate on prototypes with users
• Ensure sites are accessible and mobile-enabled
• Supporting acquisition strategy, market research, drafting of solicitation, and vendor evaluations (as advisors to the evaluation panel)
• All code will be in GitHub / open source

This would NOT include:

• Replicating everything currently on GSA SmartPay’s website, especially dated content, functionality that has accessibility challenges, or content that generating low/no user value (e.g. savings calculator, programmatic charts)
• Replicating the exact look and feel of the existing GSA SmartPay website
• Building post-MVP GSA SmartPay training features. For example:
  • SmartPay training interfaces that make it easy for GSA SmartPay to directly update content/survey questions – you’ll likely be dependent on an engineer (Service Delivery, or contractor) for these updates but we understand this is done pretty infrequently today
  • Customized reporting for agencies
• Ensuring ATO of website and training platform – we can support conversations with GSA IT / Security but this is not within our responsibility set
• Serving on the vendor evaluation panel as official evaluators

Current status

Our product framing and user-centered design process guide our work.

We work in two-week sprints. You can track what we’re working on now by visiting our milestones.

Participating in development

We welcome contributions to the site. You can add a new issue to make a suggestion or let us know about a bug. We also welcome code contributions in the form of pull requests.