How many people visited U.S. federal government websites in the last quarter? 6.58 Billion people. Government citizen and employee services have evolved with the global Covid-19 pandemic.  This demand for increased virtual services has accelerated government digital transformation. Discover how we effectively modernized and migrated our government customer’s website.

The United States Forest Service (FS) is a federal agency under the department of agriculture that manages 193 acres of public land. In the past month, the FS website was the most visited website under the department of agriculture with nearly 4 million website visitors. The National Symbols Cache is one of the FS’s websites that needed migration and modernization. TechTrend partnered with the FS to design, deploy, architect, integrate, and launch the Symbols site.

Overview

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) FS National Symbols Program focuses on the distribution of educational and promotional materials about conservation and wildfire prevention. These materials include Woodsy Owl, Smokey Bear, and Junior Ranger products. Field units and partners use these tools, products, and services at the regional level to enable scalable conservation and wildlife program implementation. The FS selected TechTrend for this project because of our extensive application development and cloud migration experience.

Challenge

TechTrend kicked off the National Symbols Cache modernization and migration project using our unique human-centered design approach. We collaborated with the FS to understand their citizen and government employee user needs.  The National Symbols Cache program needed a modern website, compliant with FS security guidelines and standards. The website also needed to be hosted in a virtual datacenter (VDC) environment. The site required integrations with both Login.gov (login registration system) and Pay.gov (secure payment processing system). Our experts

Solution

We built the application using nopCommerce technology stack and delivered the project one month before the deadline. Our agile project management team:

• Provided a custom agile project roadmap to track and manage the project lifecycle.
• Used Sprint Planning Meetings, Daily Scrum Meetings, Sprint Reviews, and Sprint Retrospectives to ensure the website exceeded FS expectations.
• Developed the site using the USDA and FS Digital Strategy Playbook.
• Delivered user experience and user interface design mockups incorporating FS employee and user feedback.
• Provided professional photography for all products on the website.
• Created custom integrations for interfacing with Login.gov and Pay.gov.
• Designed and deployed customer website and admin website architecture for processing orders and with extensive reporting capabilities.

Results

• Launched fast and robust Symbols web and mobile application using modern e-commerce tools.
• Delivered solution 100% compliant with FS Security Guidelines and Standards.
• Achieved customer satisfaction across multiple government agencies, departments, and end users.
• Increased Smokey Bear, Woodsy Owl, and Junior Ranger product sales.
• Successfully trained FS end users on the new website.
• Created user manuals for managing the new website, processing orders, and creating reports.

See the results for yourself when you view the before and after images. Want to see it live? Click  here.