Ms. Philippeaux served as the lead for the Spanish website project during its final year at Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). As project manager, she rose to the challenge of an expanded project scope and new target launch date, and oversaw the complex process of translating newly required content while updating older translations that were out of date. She demonstrated remarkable creativity, resourcefulness, and resilience in dealing with the many obstacles that stood between the team and the final launch. 

 

From day one, the team overcame countless challenges through sound communication, ingenuity, hard work, and the incorporation of best practices. Their solid methodology and use of a scientific process which relied on data to drive decisions focused efforts on areas of the site with the most impact. The site addresses Executive Order 13166 with an initial goal to translate the top 100 most-visited pages of ATF.gov. The Executive Order, "Improving Access to Services for Persons with Limited English Proficiency," requires organizations that receive federal funding to make their services accessible to persons with limited English proficiency. The team chose Spanish as its first non-English language based on data from the Census Bureau, which shows that about 41 million U.S. residents speak Spanish.

 

Since the initial launch, the team has continued work to develop the Spanish site even further. They’ve been diligently working to translate the other content and have been constantly making updates and improvements. Additionally, the team developed a presentation of lessons learned to share with the federal web development community. Ms. Philippeaux led a presentation of the ATF en Español site in front of live and world-wide virtual audience at Drupal GovCon.