usa.gov

Readiness by lane

Green: usa.gov. Thin bar: Government Services peer median.

Priority fixes for usa.gov

Ordered by impact and by how common each practice is among peers.

1. Priority 1 · Accelerate

   Static files cached for 30 days or more

   Observed: A same-site stylesheet or script was cacheable for 1800 seconds, short of the 30-day benchmark.

   Why it matters: Returning visitors and later page views reuse cached files instead of downloading them again.

   What to do: Give versioned (fingerprinted) CSS, JavaScript, fonts and images Cache-Control: public, max-age=31536000, immutable, and change the file name whenever the content changes.

   30% of Government Services peers do this. Limit: Read from the homepage response only; other pages or regions may send different headers.

   Guide: Browser Caching Guide for Website Owners

2. Priority 2 · Accelerate

   Modern image formats in use

   Observed: The homepage had 9 images and none used WebP or AVIF.

   What to do: Serve WebP or AVIF with a JPEG or PNG fallback, either through an image CDN or by generating both formats at build time.

   15% of Government Services peers do this.

   Guide: AVIF, WebP, JPEG, and PNG: Choose the Right Image Format

3. Priority 3 · Harden

   Content Security Policy present

   Observed: The homepage response did not include a Content-Security-Policy header.

   What to do: Start with Content-Security-Policy-Report-Only to see what would break, tighten the policy over a few weeks, then enforce it.

   On Drupal: The Security Kit module includes CSP settings.

   41% of Government Services peers do this.

   Guide: Payment Security and PCI DSS: What Website Owners Need to Know

4. Priority 4 · Accelerate

   Offscreen images lazy-loaded

   Observed: The homepage had 9 images and none used loading="lazy".

   What to do: Add loading="lazy" to images below the fold. Do not lazy-load the main hero image, because that delays the largest visible element.

   36% of Government Services peers do this.

   Guide: Lazy Loading Without Broken Pages

What usa.gov already does well

Practices fewer than half of Government Services peers use.

• Structured data presentJSON-LD structured data found.15% of peers
• DNSSEC signedDNSSEC delegation (DS record) present.19% of peers
• Reachable over IPv6IPv6 address published.27% of peers

What we saw

Homepage checked

https://www.usa.gov/

Homepage response

HTTP 200

TLS

TLSv1.3, HTTP/2

Certificate

Let's Encrypt, 89-day validity, expiring 2026-12-16

CDN or edge

Amazon CloudFront

Platform or framework

Drupal

DNS operators

1 self-run or other nameserver domain

HSTS

max-age 730 days, includeSubDomains

DMARC policy

p=reject

Homepage HTML

48 KB, br

Images on homepage

9 (svg 7, png 4)

Limits: homepage only, one location, one moment. Header checks reflect the homepage response; other pages may differ.

Stack and providers

Seen in the homepage response, certificate and DNS. Provider pages compare how their customers configure the same checks.

All 31 checks

Select a gap for the method and fix. How each check works

Compare with other Government Services sites

• nea.gov.sg75
• nyc.gov75
• tsa.gov75
• uscis.gov75
• vegvesen.no75

Government Services readiness benchmark