Guidance

Public policy, web protocol, guidelines and best practices used to develop the ScanGov Standards.

Indicators	Guidance	Standards
	21st Century Integrated Digital Experience Act (IDEA) Modernizes government websites and digital services.	Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) Page title Page description Viewport meta tag
	28 CFR Part 35 State and local government web accessibility requirements.	Page title Page description Viewport meta tag
	CISA Cybersecurity Performance Goals Voluntary, high-impact security practices.	security.txt Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS)
	U.S. Federal Website Standards Improves accessibility, consistency and user experience.	Page title Page description
	Google Search Central Resources to improve site search rankings.	Canonicalization www resolution
	GSA Site Scanning Checks and tracks federal .gov websites.	Canonicalization Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) Open Graph site name Open Graph type Open Graph title Open Graph description Open Graph URL Open Graph image Open Graph image alt Page title Page description sitemap.xml Viewport meta tag
	Memorandum (M-23-22) Delivering a digital-first public experience.	Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) Page title Page description Viewport meta tag
	Open Graph Improves how social media content shows.	Open Graph site name Open Graph type Open Graph title Open Graph description Open Graph URL Open Graph image Open Graph image alt
	OWASP Top 10 Helps make websites and apps safer.	X-Content-Type-Options
	RFC 9116 A file format to aid in security vulnerability disclosure.	security.txt
	security.txt Contact file for reporting security issues.	security.txt
	sitemaps.org Website sitemap standards.	sitemap.xml
	Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) Rules for making websites accessible.	Accessibility best practices ARIA attributes Audio and video Color contrast Hidden elements Language Names and labels Mobile affordances Navigation Tables and lists
	The Web Robots Pages Guidelines for controlling search engine crawling.	robots.txt
	CISA Website Security Protect websites from cyber threats.	Content security policy (CSP) Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) security.txt
	Web Vitals / Core Web Vitals Google's speed, interaction, and stability metrics.	Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) First Contentful Paint (FCP) Interaction to Next Paint (INP) Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) Time to First Byte (TTFB)