Subscribe to the Free Print Edition!
Celebrating 25 Years

GCN Home > 05/09/07 web stories

CIA poised to launch expanded Web site

Focus groups tested navigation, usability features

By Wilson P. Dizard III

The CIA plans to activate a redesigned and expanded public Web site next Monday, with improved graphics and navigation features tested by focus groups to assure their clarity and usability, agency officials said.

“We worked closely with the agency’s four major directorates and independent offices to make the site much more informative and detailed,” said public affairs officer Elizabeth Tascione Licamele.

Tascione Licamele worked for almost exactly a year with Web manager and public affairs officer Mike Stepp as well as contractors and officials from other agency divisions to buttress the site’s content and reshape its “look and feel.”

The new site will provide optional flash multimedia clips to illustrate the agency’s functions and missions, Tascione Licamele said during a briefing at the agency’s McLean, Va., headquarters.

“We have split the Web site into seven areas,” Tascione Licamele said, to reflect the major categories of information it presents. For example, links to key information such as methods of contacting the CIA, how to apply for employment, how to access research information in the agency’s online library and its kids’ site appear prominently on the opening page.

The CIA has added new categories of public information to the site to help explain its missions and activities more clearly to its various audiences. For example, a section describing the CIA museum includes photographs of clandestine gadgets, such as a specially-designed cosmetic compact case and a submersible vehicle, that previously were only displayed at agency headquarters.

The museum photographs form part of a virtual tour that provides unprecedented online access to explanations of CIA operations, in line with a “social contract” doctrine adopted by central intelligence Director General Michael V. Hayden, USAF over the past year.

“Right now we are doing load balancing so the servers will always be up,” Stepp said. The public site uses production servers running Unix and content management servers running Linux, he added.

Members of the public can communicate with the CIA via a comment function, which sends encrypted messages back to the agency. The agency’s Web site already uses secure socket layer technology to authenticate that visitors are in fact connected to the CIA site and not a copy. The SSL implementation last July required the CIA to change its address from http://www.cia.gov to https://www.cia.gov , ensured visitors’ privacy when browsing pages or submitting information and prevented third-party tampering with data moving between the site and its visitors, the agency said.

The site’s designers — led by officials in its public affairs office — conducted focus groups in major cities across the nation to test the site’s usability and ease of navigation.

More news on related topics: Communications / Networks, IT Security, Web Strategies, Workflow / Collaboration



GCN Popup