The challenge

The CMS Information Security and Privacy Group (ISPG) is in charge of the policies and programs that ensure the security and privacy of data that is handled by CMS information systems. ISPG staff and contractors work to maintain policies, distribute guidance, communicate with customers, support security programs, and promote new initiatives.

While doing this important work over the years, they amassed a large collection of documents and resources that were spread across various locations and formats. This led to issues with version control and made it hard for people to find the information needed to do their security-related tasks.

Without a single, trusted location for cybersecurity information – and with many of the documents being in static PDFs that were full of jargon and hard to understand – finding essential information from ISPG could be onerous, negatively impacting CMS’ overall security posture.

Client goal

To improve their customer service and promote better security across CMS systems, ISPG engaged our team to develop a user-friendly website (informally known as “CyberGeek”) at security.cms.gov that is recognized as the authoritative home for CMS security and privacy information. With this project, ISPG aims to:

• Improve customer service through modern information delivery
• Support CMS security personnel with the resources needed for their critical work
• Make security topics and policies more approachable and human-centered
• Build user-friendly processes to help ISPG staff maintain their content
• Establish a platform where customers can find news and updates from ISPG

Our Approach

Together with our partner Affix Digital, we worked closely with ISPG stakeholders and customers to understand the cybersecurity ecosystem at CMS. We built relationships across ISPG and partnered with their leadership and program teams to streamline their content into a single, trusted platform that makes cybersecurity information approachable and human-centered.

First, listen and learn

We started by interviewing ISPG customers to make sure we built the site’s information architecture in a way that made sense to the people using it. Card sorting – a process that involves users in the design of the site navigation – helped solidify the menus and categories that would be the foundation of a user’s journey through the site.

Open source and accessible

We built a decoupled site using Drupal and React to give the client flexibility for technology changes in the future. Utilizing the U.S. Web Design System (USWDS), we created a component library that ensures the site meets government requirements for things like accessibility and mobile responsiveness. We used Storybook to build components in isolation before deployment to the site, catching errors in real-time so they could be fixed on the spot.

Search at the core

One of the main problems ISPG wanted to solve for their customers was the headache of searching for security documents, templates, and program information – which had been difficult to find in various internal repositories. We implemented a powerful search feature using Algolia, with filter options to help people find information specific to their needs. Improvements to search are ongoing as we learn more about how people use it.

The challenge

The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent federal agency created by Congress in 1950 to “promote the progress of science” and “advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare." With a 2021 budget of $8.5 billion, NSF accounts for over 25 percent of the total research funds awarded at U.S. colleges and universities.

CivicActions was tasked with rebuilding the entire public-facing NSF website, including implementation of all new visuals and improvement of the information architecture. By collaborating closely with stakeholders across NSF and adopting a rapid-iteration MVP approach, we regularly released prioritized features while simultaneously building the back-end infrastructure to power the ongoing full-scale migration.

Client goal

To better serve employees and the scientific community — including researchers in mathematics, computer science, social sciences, and beyond — NSF needed to replace the existing NSF.gov with a modern, flexible, cloud-hosted online experience. Primary goals were to:

• Modernize and improve the user experience for nsf.gov
• Improve funding search for colleges, researchers, and scientists
• Empower NSF staff with a new Content Management System (CMS)
• Leverage user research and testing throughout the project

Our approach

To support timelines for a public launch, we took an “MVP approach” by launching a beta site with a small, prioritized set of functionalities. As new pages and features are built, the site continues to develop over time, in the open. This approach requires rapid prototyping and iteration, frequent testing, and continuous engagement with stakeholders.

Start by understanding the needs

After some initial design discovery, NSF engaged CivicActions in September of 2018 to begin a site-wide redesign and migration. The legacy NSF.gov site — built mostly in static HTML — was hard to manage and laborious to update. We knew a scalable, flexible CMS solution was needed, so we got right to work on development and design — starting the site infrastructure, building the initial set of components, and kicking off design research.

Identifying “top tasks” of various user groups helps us solve the right problems for people.

Deliver fast and improve continually

By the spring of 2019, we’d launched beta.nsf.gov and established an iterative, MVP-based approach that allowed our design and development team to release and test content with static data while continuing to build out the site infrastructure. Later that year, we released an updated Careers portal on https://beta.nsf.gov/careers, and began research on the Funding portal and the Funding Search feature.

Improve organizational processes

Working closely with NSF stakeholders, we continued to steadily test and release features, launching the Science Matters blog and an updated top level menu in February 2020. By the fall, we integrated the Pims Rest API to streamline NSF’s online program management, and deployed the Drupal Layout Builder tool that allows content editors to drag and drop content as they build and publish pages.

Partnership for public good

In 2021, after extensive research, testing and iteration, the updated Funding Search Portal will be launched in June — creating a simpler, quicker way to fund the research that powers the U.S. scientific community. Additionally that year, CivicActions was awarded a $44 million contract extension to continue supporting this important work. As we look to the future with a growing team and ambitious goals, we are grateful for our ongoing partnership with NSF.