Harris County Area Agency on Aging > Spanish Gateway

Harris County Area Agency on Aging

Internet gateway to all U.S. government websites in Spanish

The Office of Citizen Services and Communications at GSA is very excited to offer a new resource to the Spanish-speaking LEP  community: a single Internet gateway to all U.S. government websites in Spanish. The new site, FirstGov en Espaņol, is available as of May 2. You can view it at: http://www.firstgov.gov/Espanol/index.shtml.
The new site is part of an overall site redesign for FirstGov.gov, the official web portal of the U.S. government. FirstGov en Espaņol is a collection of thousands of web pages from every cabinet-level federal agency and numerous independent and state agencies.

It connects Spanish-speakers with official U.S. government information and services on a vast range of topics, including health, education, consumer protection, housing, benefits, voting, and much more. The site also offers links to hundreds of publications in Spanish and an online contact form where Spanish-speakers can e-mail questions about government services and programs and receive a response in Spanish. You will see a link to the LEP website on the main page as well as a paragraph about the LEP initiative on the "Sobre Nosotros" (About Us) page. Please also take a look at our multi-language gateway: http://www.pueblo.gsa.gov/multilanguage/
multilang.htm, which links to government resources in dozens of other languages, from Arabic to Vietnamese. Please note that the site is part of a "soft-launch" and is considered a pilot at this time.

We are awaiting a large-scale launch of the site at a later date, so we do not want to inform the media or press at this time. However, we welcome you to add a link to FirstGov en Espaņol from your agency's website (ideally from your Spanish-language pages if you have them). Instructions on how to add the FirstGov en Espaņol logo can be found on our "Vincule Su Sitio a Nosotros" (Link to Us) page at the bottom of each page: http://www.firstgov.gov/Espanol/link_to_us.shtml (you'll also find a link to English instructions on this page). We'd also love to have your feedback about the new site, by using the "Contactenos" (Contact Us) link at the bottom of each page: http://www.firstgov.gov/feedback/
FeedbackForm-esp.jsp.

We are very excited about the new site, but realize that it's only a first step in providing government-wide Internet resources to the Spanish-speaking community. We plan to conduct additional usability testing with Spanish-speakers and to make on-going improvements based on users' feedback. Please keep us informed of any new Spanish resources that we can add to the site or other suggestions you have for improvement. We look forward to working closely with the LEP group to ensure that this new resource meets the needs of the LEP population into the future. Thanks again to everyone for your support of the new site. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions. ------------------------------------------------------

Sheila Campbell 
Senior Content Specialist
202-208-5588
www.firstgov.gov

Federal Citizen Information Center
Office of Citizen Services and Communications
U.S. General Services Administration 

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