Procedure: EPA Public Web Snapshots

Brief Description

This procedure describes the requirement of capturing a complete copy (or "snapshot") of all EPA public web content whenever a Presidential transition occurs. These snapshots are static copies of EPA public web content from a specific moment in time. This procedure includes options for the process of capturing the content.

This procedure does not apply to social media. 

• Rationale
• Definitions
• Required Steps
• Exemptions
• See Also
• Related Governance Documents
• Full Metadata about this Procedure

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Rationale

Capturing a static copy of EPA public web content and files provides the public with an easily accessible and searchable collection of information from a specific moment in time. Providing these snapshots increases transparency on changes made and information about key environmental topics, data, and policies, particularly if there is a new Administration.

Definitions

EPA public web content: Publicly accessible servers and websites hosted at OMS-approved hosting service provider(s). These websites use the epa.gov domain and provide 24x7 access to EPA’s public information.

National Program Manager (NPM): The owner/developer of a public EPA application that resides elsewhere on epa.gov (e.g., not www). NPMs manage applications like Energy Star, ECHO, CDX, etc. NPM does not refer to Editor-in-chief (EIC) of content in the Public Access (Drupal) WebCMS. 

Snapshot: A static copy of EPA public web content from a specific moment in time, usually on or around January 20th, Inauguration Day. Snapshots help preserve information across administrations; they are not official records.

Third-party snapshots: Services exist that can archive your site or application, including the Internet Archive. Each site and application owner must vet such third-party services for completeness.

www.epa.gov: The EPA flagship website that provides publicly accessible data and information. This application is one of many public applications and web sites that EPA maintains.

Required Steps

Each National Program Manager is required to create snapshots of their web properties before every Presidential inauguration. There are many technical options for generating snapshots. Your office should select the snapshot solution that works best for your web properties.

A high-quality snapshot helps ensure that the American Public and EPA staff can easily access historical information that may change across administrations. Since each office manages its own web properties, each office must do its part to make snapshots available.

Each snapshot must be available within two months of a Presidential Transition. 

Some Technical Alternatives for Generating Snapshots

This list is not meant to be comprehensive.

• Submit your site URL to the Internet Archive via the End of Term (EOT) archive.
• Contract with a third-party archiving solution.
• Build your own, following a rough process like the one outlined below.
• Extract or dump your database and archive it, along with instructions for reading or resurrecting it.
  • First clean the database of any PII and sensitive information, like passwords.
  • You could possibly store this data on EPA's Go Anywhere FTP service or Github. 
    • Extracting a database would save the trouble of saving every HTML page, which can be particularly challenging for dynamic applications.

WWW Snapshots

The Office of Mission Support (OMS) manages snapshots for the Public Access (Drupal) WebCMS, covering www.epa.gov and espanol.epa.gov. If you have content on www or espanol, and nowhere else, your content is covered by this OMS snapshot.

The following steps demonstrate the snapshot process for www.epa.gov and espanol.epa.gov web applications. The process for other websites and applications may vary depending on the content, but this high-level process can be applied for other applications.

A copy of the publicly available (published) web content from the www.epa.gov and espanol.epa.gov databases is saved on January 19, just prior to a US Inauguration. Static HTML files are generated from this database content; copies of images, documents, and other media files are also saved.

The steps below prepare the content for eventual public display:

• Disable all forms (such as contact us forms), instead linking to a page with an explanation of why the public cannot submit information from the snapshot collection. See an example of this type of page.
• Transform links so that snapshotted content links to other snapshotted content, instead of out to the live site.
• Centralize common assets like CSS files, page elements (header/footer), etc., so they can be changed globally if needed.
• Add a banner to every page. This banner includes text indicating this snapshot is not the current website, that the content is no longer maintained, and that links may break, as well as a link to the current website.
  • Translate banner text for the snapshot collection of alternate languages content.
• Include a "Site Exit" alert on all external links which tells users they are leaving the snapshot island.
• Include a "noindex" directive in the robots.txt file to discourage search engines from indexing the content.

Exemptions

There are no exemptions to this procedure, which applies to all EPA public web content. Every National Program Manager must snapshot all of their Office's public web sites and applications.

See Also

• None

Related Governance Documents

EPA

Related Policies

• None

Related Procedures

• Ensuring EPA Public Content in the EPA Web Environment

Related Standards

• None

Related Guidance

• None

Non-EPA

• None

Full Metadata about this Procedure

Name EPA Public Web Snapshot
Type Procedure
Required or Recommended Required
Effective date  5/10/2023
Date approved 5/10/2023
Category 
Web Council review by 5/10/2026 (or earlier if deemed necessary by the Web Council)
Governing Policy Web Governance and Management