Senate panel advances bipartisan bill to modernize aging federal websites

A Senate committee on Wednesday advanced a bipartisan bill that would require federal agencies to meet minimum performance and accessibility standards for their public websites, a rare point of agreement in a chamber that has struggled to pass technology legislation.

The Federal Digital Services Reliability Act cleared the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee by a vote of 12 to 2. Its sponsors, one Democrat and one Republican, said the measure was prompted by a string of outages during benefit enrollment periods, when sites for student aid, veterans’ services and tax filing buckled under heavy traffic.

“People should not have to refresh a page twenty times to apply for benefits they have earned,” said one of the sponsors during the markup. “We hold bridges and highways to engineering standards. The front door to government deserves the same.”

What the bill would do

The legislation directs the Office of Management and Budget to publish uptime, page-load and accessibility targets for high-traffic federal services within 18 months. Agencies would be required to report their performance publicly each quarter, and those that miss targets for two consecutive quarters would have to submit remediation plans.

It would also create a shared hosting and delivery platform, administered by the General Services Administration, that smaller agencies could use rather than maintaining their own infrastructure. Supporters argue that many agencies lack the staff to manage modern web operations and would benefit from pooled expertise.

The bill authorizes $480 million over five years, though appropriations would have to be approved separately.

Skepticism remains

Not everyone is convinced. The two senators who voted against the measure said they worried about creating a new compliance burden without guaranteed funding, and about concentrating too much federal web traffic on a single platform.

“Consolidation can improve reliability, but it can also create a single point of failure,” one said in a written statement. “I want to see more detail on how this platform would be protected.”

Advocates for people with disabilities praised the accessibility provisions, which would require agencies to meet current web accessibility guidelines and to test new features with assistive technologies before launch. Several groups noted that existing requirements are frequently ignored because they are rarely audited.

Next steps

The bill now heads to the full Senate, where its prospects are uncertain given a crowded calendar. A companion measure has been introduced in the House but has not yet received a committee hearing.

Agency officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment on pending legislation, said many of the bill’s goals were already in progress but slowed by procurement rules and staffing shortages. “The intent is right,” one said. “The question is whether the money follows.”