GovLaunch – the new MyFCC.gov

Today was the beta launch of MyFCC.gov

Couple interesting items from their blog post announcing the release: that caught my interest

The ability to customize an online experience is pretty unique for government:
“MyFCC is a new tool designed to let you create a customized FCC online experience for quick access to the tools and information you need. Personalization options built into MyFCC make it possible to easily create, save and manage a customized page, choosing from a menu of “widgets” featuring a wide variety of the FCC’s most frequently used tools and services. Examples include the latest headlines and official documents, the Daily Digest, and quick access to forms and online filings. The public Beta offers 22 such widgets for starters, with more on the way.”

Cool to see FCC release a Drupal open-source module for other government to use
“In the process of Beta launching FCC.gov, we are also helping other government agencies make their own online offerings accessible and open to everyone. MyFCC is powered by an open-source module known as the Content API, an innovation other federal agencies can easily install and use. The Content API makes the contents of the website available to developers and other interested parties for projects on their own websites. For more information about our API development, visit FCC.gov/developer.”

Third party single sign-on
I have not seen many government agencies use third party single sign-on and it’s interesting to see FCC use a variety of authentication from OpenId to FB to Google and Twitter. Makes a lot of sense to me but I’m sure they had to do some good lawyering and rationale as it’s historically been very tough for government agencies who often think they can’t use outside authentication.

Congrats to the FCC .gov team – impressive to see how much work they’ve accomplish in a few years revamping the FCC web presence and rethinking what the web means for government agencies.