foia

New FOIA beta site + national portal. The site is based off of 18F recommendations from our discovery sprint with the Department of Justice.

Content

Majority of the site content is in markdown format. Markdown is intended to be as easy-to-read and easy-to-write as is feasible. Here are some resources for working with markdown.

• Basic writing and formatting syntax
• Mastering markdown
• Edit this file in markdown

The entire site can be edited directly from this Github repository. Here are some resources for working with Github.

• Editing files in your repository
• Introduction to GitHub for Newcomers
• Github help

Workflow

This Github repository is setup with continuous deployment. That means that any change you make, approve, and merge will be automatically deployed. This means you can easily see the changes you make in the development environment and once approved, deploy to production automatically. The process in general works like this:

1. Edit a file on Github.
2. Commit the change to the develop branch.
3. Any change made to develop will be automatically deployed to the development environment.
4. Review the change on the development environment.
5. Open a pull request against the master branch.
6. Have a teammate review and approve the code change in Github.
7. Merge the pull request.
8. The change will be automatically deployed to the production environment.

For the nitty-gritty details of how automated deployment works, please see the deployment documentation.

Web content

Site content lives in the markdown pages under the www.foia.gov directory.

Glossary terms should be edited in markdown, one term per file. The name of the file is not important. The term is pulled from the front matter within the file.

The primary and secondary navigation items live in the site configuration file.

The landing page content lives in configuration and in the layout.

Footer links can be edited in the site footer.

FOIA request forms

Individual agency FOIA request forms live in the back stage and are owned by OIP. However, the per-section help text (blue box content) can be edited one section per-file in markdown. The files should be numbered so they appear in the correct order, but the name of the file is not important.

Note: You should avoid changing the front matter in these files. The front stage javascript application depends on this information.

Agency contact information

Contact information lives in the back stage but this information should be updated individually by agency FOIA personnel.

Development

Please browse the additional documentation topics on development.