FDAVoice: Need a guidance document? We’ve got you covered

By: Chris Mulieri, PMP

We all understand the frustration of searching online for something and not finding it. The Food and Drug Administration recently helped end this problem by making it faster and easier to find our guidance documents—some of the most requested items on our website.

Guidance documents represent FDA’s current thinking on a particular subject. Currently, there are about 3,100 of them – and the list is growing.

FDA’s Web & Digital Media team and the Office of Information Management and Technology have created a dynamic search list on one site so you can go to just one page and find the guidance documents you need, no matter where they are on FDA.gov. This search tool is powerful and easy to use. Now you can go to just one search box to find what you need in moments, instead of the 10 different pages on FDA’s website where guidance documents are posted.

It doesn’t matter if it’s a guidance document on devices, drugs, biologics, tobacco, veterinary medicine, or foods – it’s all there.

We did this as part of FDA’s Transparency Initiative and in response to the feedback we got from our stakeholders via the American Customer Service Index (ACSI) online survey. They told us just how hard and time-consuming it was for them to find these important documents. So we decided to do something about it.

It’s not practical for us to put these documents all in one place. So, we assembled a working group with representatives from each of FDA’s Centers (which post the guidance documents on their own sites) and developed the search criteria.

In addition, we tagged the documents with metadata (search terms) needed to make search and filtering functions work as intended. Now, the list automatically populates as you enter search terms and filters. Each column is sortable.

You can narrow your search by filtering on different categories, including product, date issued, FDA organization, document type, and subject. Refine your search by draft guidance, final guidance, whether it’s open for comment, or by comment closing date.

How are we doing?

Since the launch of the guidance search in December 2014, page views have increased from about 22,000 to more than 136,000 for the first quarter of 2015. For the first time, the page is among the top visited on FDA’s website. And we’ve seen improved user satisfaction, reflected in the feedback in the ACSI responses.

We hope you’ll try the new guidance document search page soon and let us know what you think.

Chris Mulieri, PMP, is FDA’s Director, Web & Digital Media, Office of External Affairs.

The opinions expressed in this blog post are the author’s only and do not necessarily reflect those of MassDevice.com or its employees.

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