Agencies have struggled to meet IDEA Act requirements, watchdog finds

Only about one-third of federal agencies met all accessibility requirements for their public-facing digital services in 2023, with the remaining entities either not meeting all of the mandates or failing to report on their progress, according to a Government Accountability Office report released on Tuesday.

The watchdog’s audit reviewed 24 federal civilian agencies’ compliance with the 21st Century Integrated Digital Experience — or IDEA — Act, which required the entities to make their websites more user-friendly. The law, which passed in 2018, set minimum usability standards for new and existing federal platforms and also required that agencies submit annual reports to the Office of Management and Budget detailing their adherence to the mandates. 

The IDEA Act’s modernization requirements called for platforms to be accessible; consistent; non-duplicative; searchable; encrypted; user data-driven; customizable; and mobile-friendly. 

GAO found, however, that compliance with both the IDEA Act’s eight requirements, as well as adherence to the mandate for covered agencies to submit annual reports, was lacking. 

“Overall, the 24 [Chief Financial Officers Act] agencies submitted 84 (or 70%) of the 120 total required annual reports due between December 2019 and December 2023, when the reporting requirement sunsetted,” GAO found. 

The watchdog’s review of agencies’ 2023 annual reports found that seven entities addressed all IDEA Act requirements, while 11 did not address all of the mandates and six did not submit any reports. 

GAO noted that agencies' compliance with all of the combined standards was lacking, despite the entities making some progress in recent years. 

“Of the 192 requirements that the 24 agencies were to report on each year, the agencies addressed 84 in 2022 and 109 in 2023,” the watchdog said. 

GAO also said the agencies’ annual reports had “varying levels of content and detail,” which led to inconsistencies in submitted information “as agencies were allowed to interpret compliance differently throughout the reporting period.”

Although OMB reviewed the agencies’ annual reports, GAO said that “it did not require the use of a standard template for the annual reporting requirement and sought to maximize flexibility in agencies’ reporting.”

Agencies have pointed to OMB’s lax guidance as a contributing factor in their low IDEA Act compliance rate, as well as the IDEA Act’s lack of detail on “what data the agencies should collect, how the data should be presented and whether the reports must cover all eight requirements.”

To rectify some of these issues, OMB released new guidance in September 2023 that outlined the law’s eight modernization requirements and the steps that agencies should take to meet its accessibility standards.

Although GAO said that agencies’ compliance with these new requirements “would likely provide an assessment of the extent of [their] progress,” it noted that it also “had minimal effect on the annual report contents, due to it being issued just 3 months prior to the final report’s due date.”