http://GobiernoUSA.gov

History

http://GobiernoUSA.gov was established in a joint context with the gradual adoption of online service delivery by the government in the early 2000s, and the policy development that has sought to minimize discrimination and increase language access. Three especially relevant policy steps were pertinent in this direction. First, the early initiation of the process can be traced back to Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which had the intention of minimizing discrimination by country of origin. Second, in line with this provision, Executive Order 13166 was signed by President Bill Clinton in August 2000 and legally required government agencies to ensure that the services they provide are meaningfully accessible to persons with limited English proficiency. Finally, this mandate of providing multilingual information on government services was reaffirmed in a 2011 memorandum [Page 973]to the Heads of Federal Agencies from Attorney General Eric Holder. This memorandum cited the 2010 Decennial Census as evidence of the need for equitable language access and highlighted the importance of providing more equitable service access for both routine government matters and emergency government communications.

In April 2003, the government launched an initial Spanish-language Web site called FirstGov en Español. Later that year, a press release described the service as a central portal for the then 28.1 million Spanish-speaking residents of the United States to access government information, communicate with government agencies, and complete official transactions in their native Spanish language. U.S. General Services Administration's Office of Citizen Services and Innovative Technologies manages both the Spanish-language Web site and the English-language Web site, http://USA.gov.

Rather than simply translating its English-language counterpart, the Spanish-language Internet initiative is intended to cater to the cultural sensitivities of the audience it serves. In 2005, a research effort was initiated—utilizing surveys, Hispanic focus groups, and public feedback—to increase the general utility of the site and promote its credibility, trustworthiness, and acceptance by the Spanish-speaking community. This research supported a name change for the Web site to GobiernoUSA. gov. The Web site was redesigned to include official government imagery and a color scheme that is distinctively different from the English-language version. A new publication policy rapidly followed, which maintained native-language standards by prohibiting linking poor machine-translated text. This research and its resulting developments brought the Web site in line with the apparent cultural sensitivities of its Hispanic users.

Current Functioning

The potential outreach of http://GobiernoUSA.gov is shown by the contemporary growth of the Hispanic population and the sizable proportion that uses the Internet. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Hispanics became the largest minority group in 2000, and by 2010 came to represent 50.5 million people, or 16.3 percent of the total U.S. population. Moreover, the Pew Hispanic Center's report “Latinos and Digital Technology, 2010” found that 65 percent of Hispanics, generally, and 47 percent of Spanish-dominant Hispanics, in particular, access the Internet. Regarding online activity specifically, the Office of Citizen Services found in 2008 that social media Web sites are disproportionately used by Hispanic Internet users (77 percent) as opposed to Internet users from other groups (42 percent). In light of the unprecedented growth of the Hispanic population in the United States, which increased by over 40 percent in 10 years, facilitating interaction between the government and Spanish-speaking users has become increasingly relevant.

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