The new Digital Government Strategy (released in May 2012 as “Digital Government: Building a 21st Century Platform to Better Serve the American People”) lays out a compelling vision for the use of technology to improve the delivery of information to all through web sites and online channels. The strategy covers many trends, from mobile devices, to cloud computing, to security and transparency and provides vision and guidelines for all. But beyond this, the Digital Government Strategy (DGS) also lays down a clear mandate for action, in the form of milestones and a delivery timeline for all government agencies. This Brief outlines how Percussion will help you comply with the DGS mandates.

1. © Copyright 2012 Percussion Software, Inc. percussion.com
STRATEGY BRIEF
Percussion software has been a partner with the United
States Government for over a decade, providing web content
management to Federal agencies and divisions of all sizes.
Percussion today powers over 150 Federal web sites, from
some of the largest and highest traffic sites like healthcare.gov,
cdc.gov, hhs.gov, and usa.gov, to more focused public
outreach sites like kids.gov and NOAA’s Office of Science
and Technologies web site at st.nmfs.noaa.gov.
Percussion has worked with our clients to deliver mandates
from ADA accessibility, to Open Government and Cloud First.
Through webinars, interactive participation, and articles,
Percussion has already laid out strategies and best practices
for meeting the challenges of the new Digital Government
Strategy. Today, Percussion is ready to help you deliver—on
time and within budget—the milestones set out in the Digital
Government Strategy.
The DGS sets out milestones in four key areas; Information
Centric, Shared Platform, Customer Centric, and Security and
Privacy. This brief provides an overview of each of these areas,
and the functionality Percussion delivers to help you meet the
DGS timeline.
Information Centric
An information centric approach to delivery embraces not
only the broad range of devices, from mobile to desktop,
but opening up access to content through direct web APIs in
machine readable formats. Specifically, the DGS calls for:
zz 1.2 Agencies: Ensure all new IT systems follow the open
data, content, and web API policy and operationalize
agency.gov/developer pages. (May 2013)
zz 2.2 Agencies: Make high-value data and content in at
least two existing major customer-facing systems available
through web APIs, apply metadata tagging and publish a
plan to transition high-value systems. (May 2013)
Digital Government Strategy—Percussion Enables Compliance
The new Digital Government Strategy (released in May 2012 as “Digital Government: Building a 21st
Century Platform to Better Serve the American People”) lays out a compelling vision for the use of
technology to improve the delivery of information to all through web sites and online channels. The
strategy covers many trends, from mobile devices, to cloud computing, to security and transparency
and provides vision and guidelines for all. But beyond this, the Digital Government Strategy (DGS)
also lays down a clear mandate for action, in the form of milestones and a delivery timeline for all
government agencies. This Brief outlines how Percussion will help you comply with the DGS mandates.
Percussion provides an off-the-shelf solution for creating both
the “/developer” page and the associated web APIs needed for
accessing high value content. Percussion’s Delivery Tier Services
component allows agencies to tag content, publish it, and have
it automatically available through a public web API in a machine
readable format using both XML and HTML.
Shared Platform
Here the DGS stresses shared learning, best practices, and
fostering an openness across agencies in technology. .
Specifically, the DGS calls for:
zz 3.4 Innovation Center: Identify shared and open content
management system solutions.
Percussion believes strongly in open and shared use of
technology, but also is committed to improving the speed
of adoption, and to reducing the high costs of deploying,
operating and supporting open-ended development
platforms. Rather than sharing Code we recommend sharing
content, using open web APIs, and bounded, interchangeable,
off-the-shelf applications. Our productized approach to
content management dramatically reduces the cost and time
to market far below the typical costs of implementing open
source development platforms.
DIGITAL GOVERNMENT:BUILDING A 21STCENTURY PLATFORM
TO BETTER SERVE THE
AMERICAN PEOPLE
MAY 23, 2012

2. © Copyright 2012 Percussion Software, Inc. percussion.com
…continued
About Percussion
Percussion Software’s products enable you to take control over your web content management and
content marketing strategies to increase traffic, drive revenue, improve engagement, and create
compelling online customer experiences. Delivered in a highly usable and affordable product package,
hundreds of leading companies, education institutions, and government agencies are using Percussion
to lower the costs of their content strategies and gain the flexibility to address “What’s Next” on the
web. Leading customers include vegas.com, weather.com, AutoTrader.com, Rentokil, Watchguard
Technologies, Lancaster Bible College, Sunoco, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the City of Corpus
Christi, the U.S. General Services Administration, and the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services.
Percussion Software, Inc.
600 Unicorn Park Drive
Woburn, MA 01801
Toll Free 800 283 0800
Tel. 781 438 9900
Percussion provides our solutions on a shared basis in a
variety of purchasing vehicles at both the agency and
division level. Further, our productized approach to content
management dramatically reduces the cost and time to
market far below the typical costs of implementing open
source development platforms.
zz 4.2 Agencies: Establish an agency-wide governance
structure for developing and delivering digital services.
(Dec 2012)
While your governance structure does not required a specific
technology solution be in place, the Percussion WCMS provide
workflow, versioning, and process automation to ensure
governance policies are enforced in all digital services. Having
a ready solution to implement governance can ensure definition
of policies and procedures that are achievable.
Customer Centric
In many ways the most daunting challenge for a Federal agency
is going beyond transparency to delivery of information in a
way that is highly consumable, easy to find, available through
mobile and other devices, and over all, reduces the need for
citizen to “absorb the complexity of Government.” Specifically,
the DGS calls for:
zz 6.3 Agencies: Ensure all new digital services follow
digital services and customer experience improvement
guidelines. (May 2013)
zz 7.2 Agencies: Optimize at least two existing priority
customer-facing services for mobile use and publish a plan
for improving additional existing services. (May 2013)
Percussion provides native support for the latest Responsive
Design techniques. Because web sites built on Percussion
utilize the related technologies by default, (HTML5, CSS3, and
semantic markup in RDFa), responsive design requires no extra
work on templates or CMS implementation. Design, whether
existing, or through a redesign delivered by an design agency,
can be used “as is” and even converted to Responsive Design
to be opened up for other devices and form factors.
zz 8.2 Agencies: Implement performance and customer
satisfaction measuring tools on all .gov websites. (Dec
2012)
Percussion provides web analytics measurement through our
Dashboard and built-in integration with Google Analytics. A
variety of Gadgets will show the editorial team where content
is being used, where it is difficult to find, and more importantly,
provide this is in measurable repeatable terms.
Security and Privacy
While the DGS stresses openness and sharing, it also
requires solutions that “ensure confidentiality, integrity, and
availability by building security into digital government
services.” Furthermore, the strategy recognizes that due to
the constantly changing web, security and privacy challenges
are always evolving as well, due to the variety of devices,
systems, and usage patterns.
While the security milestones set out in the DGS are primarily
oversight and policy related at this time, Percussion provides
a compelling solution that combines open access to content
with a fundamentally secure architecture. Percussion’s
Decoupled Architecture separates the delivery of open web
content and APIs from the internal secured operation of content
management users. This architectures also isolates the secured
content management layer from the intense rate of change
of web delivery technologies and public interactions. This two-
tier Decoupled Architecture makes Percussion uniquely suited
for Government agencies.
Contact Percussion to learn more about how Percussion
ensures compliance with the mandates of the Digital
Government Strategy.