GSA debuts service to shrink federal Web addresses

The General Services Administration is developing an official government service that shortens Web addresses for users of social networking tools who are restricted by brief messaging formats. The service, Go.USA.Gov, is in beta testing and is expected to be adopted governmentwide by the end of the year.

The increasing popularity of the microblogging site Twitter, with its 140 character limit on messages, has made commercial link-shortening services like bit.ly and tr.im important cogs in the social media community. Link-shortening applications take existing Web addresses and shrink them to fit into short messages that can be read via Twitter or on a smart phone. Since traditional URLs often can be extremely long, link-shorteners create short Web addresses that point at the same piece of content.

Go.USA.gov will serve as a trusted government counterpart to those services; only employees with official government e-mail accounts can use the service and only links from official government domains can be shortened.

"People can click on Go.USA.gov knowing it will lead to an official U.S. government source of information," said Bev Godwin, director of USA.gov and Web best practices at GSA's Office of Citizen Services. Godwin said GSA has been considering the tool since 2008, when USA.gov first created a Twitter account. The agency finally moved forward after several other agencies and states began requesting the service.

"The idea for it is good. It's basically a privately run version of bit.ly," said Kevin Merritt, chief executive officer of the social media site Socrata, who added that he has heard of some agencies blocking bit.ly URLs.

"The coolest thing about the site is the fact it's still in beta. It shows you as a consumer and customer of government that there is emphasis being placed on being experimental and trying things out, which is the only way you learn," said Dan Munz, senior research associate and manager of the Collaboration project at the National Academy for Public Administration.

Munz said the service is an example of the government trying to emulate the commercial sector when it comes to providing services consumers expect to find on the Web. He called it a "huge step forward" for the government's ability to keep its data authenticity while ensuring that data reaches a wider audience.

"As government agencies get into shortening URLs [for social media], we lose our identity with a commercial shortener," Godwin said, adding that citizens recognize dot-gov URLs as authoritative sources of information. She said Go.USA.gov should be able to leverage the same brand and authority.

GSA launched the beta service on Sept. 22 and is using the service on Twitter and Facebook. In addition to link shortening, the application also tracks how many times each new link is clicked, and the home page displays the 25 most popular shortcuts. The resulting data should help GSA better serve the American public, Godwin said.

"It's a great dashboard of content people finding interesting in government," Munz said. "It shows how much mileage you can get out of a Web site that has a quick intuitive feature."

GSA developed the application internally, using open source software, allowed the agency to avoid any costs beyond employees' time. Godwin said GSA chose the Drupal content management system because of its range of features and the depth of talent in the developer community that works with this platform. After deciding on Drupal, GSA canvassed agencies for people with open source expertise to assist with creating the application. Godwin said the Veterans Affairs Department took a key role in creating the tool, detailing employee Kirsten Burgarde to GSA for several months to assist with the software development process.

Four other agencies and two states, Nebraska and New York, are taking part in the beta testing, but Godwin said her team plans to roll the service out to the entire government by the end of the quarter. So far, the service has proved wildly popular. On Tuesday, news of its existence was picked up by several blogs, with the resulting traffic spike causing the Go.USA.gov home page to crash.

"We wanted to start small with the beta test. One Tweet on our USA.gov site, then slowly adding other beta testers," Godwin said, admitting that the traffic overwhelmed the site and caused delays for users. "From a stress test standpoint it was a good thing to happen. It was stressed more than we planned, but it helps us learn what we need to do to handle more usage."

So far 253 URLs have been shortened with more than 16,000 clicks, according to Godwin. There are 150 users on the waiting list for accounts, which will be distributed as the service ramps up, Godwin said. Her office is optimistic about the possibilities for the user data that will be collected through the application, which will provide some of the first comprehensive statistics on government's ability to reach the public through social media. The site also includes a blog and frequently asked questions section, which is still being developed, to help users unfamiliar with the tool or its purpose.