IRS Source vs. LB&I Intranet: The LB&I intranet migrated to the IRS Source platform as part of the Servicewide vision of moving all intranet content to the Source as the replacement of the IRWeb. LB&I was the first major business unit to migrate, due to the Windows Server 2003 end-of-life.

Content Dispersal: The IRS vision for intranet content, requires splitting of content that was formerly housed in singular intranet sites. This vision is articulated by IRS C&L; and consists of content in one of three platforms:

Authority for intra-site consistency is derived from IRM 11.1.4.4, Intranet Sites and Servers Must Be Registered.

The LB&I Web Team is responsible for:

Content managers are responsible for:

Content owners are responsible for:

SMEs are responsible for:

Commonly used terms and acronyms are defined below.

The Web Publishing Course participant guide is available for use as a reference on the LB&I Web Publishing Course SharePoint site:https://portal.ds.irsnet.gov/sites/LBI_MF_Public/webpub/Shared%20Documents/Students/Entire%20Course%20-%20Students.pdf

The W3Schools website is a good resource for learning HTML, CSS, Javascript and other web-related topics. See https://www.w3schools.com/.

Content on the LB&I Source will be maintained as long as it remains current, accurate, and applicable. Content that no longer serves a business purpose will be removed to ensure availability of storage space, as well as to eliminate confusion for users.

Content will be archived according to standard practice, and will not be maintained on the web for "historical" purposes. Content that is required to be maintained for "historical" or other "archiving" purposes should be maintained using appropriate record retention methods by the content owner.

Content must also properly belong on the LB&I Source, or have an exception from the LB&I webmaster to be temporarily housed in the LB&I Source. Content with a temporary exception will be maintained for a period of one year, after which time, it must receive another exception to remain on the LB&I Source. Other proper platforms for content are the Servicewide Knowledge Management Library, and SharePoint collaborative sites.

If content properly belongs in the Source platform, but has a servicewide audience, the author/owner will coordinate with the LB&I Web Team to have it placed on the IRS Source.

If the content properly belongs in the Servicewide Virtual Library or a collaborative SharePoint site, the author/owner will coordinate with the HCO SKM team or the LB&I SharePoint Project Office to have it placed in the appropriate platform.

Web pages will be designed to inherently support accessibility. Section 508 (29 U.S.C. 794d – commonly referred to as "Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act" ) requires all Federal agencies to make their electronic and information technology accessible to people with disabilities. To comply with this requirement, all visual content must provide a text-only format, available to screen reader technology. Additionally, the following considerations are to be followed:

Files uploaded, and made available for users to download via hyperlink, should be thoroughly checked for accessibility. While all parties involved are responsible for the accessibility of documents published to the web, Content providers/contributors/authors retain the primary responsibility for correcting any accessibility shortfalls. The built-in accessibility tools in the Microsoft Office Suite and Adobe Acrobat provide adequate functionality for ensuring Section 508 compliance. Documents may be submitted to the IRS Alternative Media Center for review prior to publishing to the intranet, or alternatively, the LB&I Web Team can assist with some accessibility concerns.

In general, the LB&I intranet must be presented in an accessible format. Accessibility of web content is not a "compliant" or "non-compliant" issue, but rather a sliding scale, by which content can have varying degrees of compliance. The foremost goal is to provide a web experience to all users, which is as nearly identical as practical. Resources for accessibility include:

Content published on the intranet must properly reflect the professional nature of the Internal Revenue Service and the Large Business & International Division. No content should be published that reflects poorly upon LB&I or the IRS.

All content published to the LB&I intranet must have a valid business purpose, and serve the overall goals of LB&I. Content should help users take a required action, learn or reinforce a skill, or find content related to their official duties.

The IRS’s policy on limited personal use extends not only to users of the intranet, but also to Content Publishers regarding content publishing. LB&I intranet pages must not link to content that is inappropriate or prohibited by the IRS limited personal use policy.

Content should not be duplicated on the LB&I intranet. This means that if content is available elsewhere on the IRS network, content managers should link to the relevant content. Additionally, if content is published on the public-facing internet (IRS.gov), LB&I intranet pages should link to that content, rather than generate duplicate information. These rules are in addition to E-FOIA and SBREFA considerations.

Sensitive But Unclassified (SBU) information should never be published to the LB&I intranet. SBU content includes (but is not limited to) tax and personnel (privacy) information. For example; publishing specific tax cases even if removing the taxpayer identifying information is inappropriate and unacceptable.

If Official Use Only (OUO) information is published on the LB&I intranet it must be clearly identifiable as OUO information by indicating the # sign where the OUO information is located, along with other identifying information at the top of the webpage, to indicate that it contains OUO information. HTML coding should be used to remove this information from the printable webpage profile, so that it cannot be printed and inadvertently provided to outside entities. To set content to be non-printable, add the class attribute “no print” to the container element.

Source and Attribution is an acceptable manner of publishing third-party information. However, care must be used to ensure that the source of the information is identified and the information is not embellished with information from the tax or personnel record.

The important thing to remember is to include the source and attribute the information to the source, so as not to accidentally give the impression that the IRS or LB&I are the source. When possible, link to the original source.

Every page on the LB&I intranet should have a clear purpose and audience. If appropriate, consider a brief introductory sentence or paragraph to describe the purpose of the page.

The excessive use of images and graphics has a negative impact on website readability and performance (speed of page loading). Use images sparingly and only when the image adds value to the content it accompanies or supports a business goal. Further information regarding accessibility standards can be found in IRM 11.51.2.3.2, Accessibility of Web Content. Further information regarding graphics can be found in IRM 11.51.2.9.2, Image and Graphic Specifications.

All webpages must be checked for spelling and grammatical errors as well as ensuring that links are valid, before they are published. Do not solely rely upon the software’s "Spell Check" function. Proofread all content for readability and correct errors that may have been missed by the spell checker.

It is important to identify your target audience and understand their needs. Remember LB&I employees, managers, and executives are very busy and need to access specific information on your webpages quickly and efficiently.

Clearly state the purpose of the page in the first paragraph. Introduce your topic at the start of your page and progress logically to the conclusion. Following this approach will help users identify if they are on the correct page. It can also help the search engine find the correct page, based upon the content.

Brevity is key. People are uncomfortable reading content on the computer screen. Seventy-nine percent of web readers scan. As a guideline, try to use about half the words you would use in print publishing.

Spelling, grammar, punctuation, and invalid link errors significantly detract from the professional nature of LB&I content. Review all content to make sure these errors are avoided.

In addition to proper spelling, grammar, and punctuation, content should be written using the AP Style and the IRS Style Guide. The LB&I C&L Staff is available to assist and advise writers upon request.

Due to the use of the IRS Source platform on SharePoint, organizations within LB&I will no longer have "landing pages" or "homepages" . The only "landing" pages used will be to provide navigation across the LB&I Source, to content residing in the various lists. These "landing" pages will be maintained by the LB&I Web Team.

The standard background color for LB&I webpages is white, with a black color font. LB&I intranet pages must maintain the standard color scheme used by the entire site/subweb. In addition, the standard colors from the "One IRS Design Standards" are preferred. The following color codes identify this schema:

Contrast should be considered when using colors, and a scheme of "light-on-dark" or "dark-on-light" should be used. The WCAG 2.0 standards upon which Section 508 is based, require the following:

The usage of any other colors or schemas must receive prior approval from the LB&I Webmaster, and will likely require coordination with the IRS Design Office.

The standard font, font color and size used for all basic text on the LB&I intranet is Arial, 10 or 12pt (1em). Regular, unformatted text placed in the Source template pages is automatically displayed in Arial.

The "One IRS Design Standards" should be preferred. The following identify the various font families used:

These font families are built into the global IRS Source styles.

Page headings (not to be confused with the page title displayed in the blue bar at the top of the browser window when a page is opened) are extremely important features of each webpage. They should communicate at a glance, the subject of the page. The proper use of headings is not only important for visual display to users, but also ensures 508-compliance, by allowing screen-readers to identify the structure of the page, and "read" the content accordingly.

In order to properly use the headings, and ensure 508-compliance, use standard HTML heading style tags to define section and sub-section titles. Do not use font style settings to format headings, or mimic their appearance. The predefined heading formats that may be used are:

Bold: Boldface font should be used for emphasis of text. The use of bold font should be limited, and entire sentences should not be bolded. Bold font is identified by using the <strong> tag.

Italics: Italics should only be used for quoted material. When long sections of text are quoted, they should be indented to identify a blockquote. Other than in quotations, italics should not be used, as it can cause eyestrain, and detract from the readability of the text.

Underline: Underlined text should never be used on the intranet, as it is reserved for automatic (default) styling of textual hyperlinks. The improper use of underlining can cause user confusion, and the mistaken appearance that broken hyperlinks exist on the page.

Highlighted Text: Highlighted text should never be used on the intranet, as it can cause significant eyestrain for sighted users, and is ignored by most screen-reading technology. Additionally, highlighted text on a webpage will often not display as highlighted when printed on a black-and-white printer.

Other Stylized Text: Other stylized text should be avoided, as most practices can cause eyestrain, and are often not 508-compliant. Additionally, certain styles are reserved for specific use; such as red-colored text, which is used for identifying required fields, input validation errors, and other system exceptions.

General information pages should be short and to the point — no more than 2 screens in height (as scrolling on an 800x600 resolution screen size). They should highlight current or important developments and provide links to other parts of the list topic. Content should be organized into additional pages, to reduce webpage "clutter" .

When content must be on the same page, long pages of text should be broken into appropriate sections using the appropriate heading types, with navigation links provided at the top of the page. "Back to the top" links should be provided at appropriate intervals to assist in page navigation.

The page title from a browser perspective is distinguished by the page heading (content title), in that it appears in the title bar of the browser window (it is not visually displayed in the content area of the webpage). The title also appears as the label in bookmarks to the page, as the page header when the page is printed, and in search results, lists, and statistics reports. A page title should properly reflect the page's content, be concise, and meaningful to the audience. This may, or may not, be the same as the page heading.

The page title is contained within the <title> tag, which resides in the <head> tag of the webpage. This is automatically duplicated from the [Title] of the content, which also becomes the page heading (<h1>), and placed into the HTML code for the page. Manually changing the <title> is no longer necessary in the IRS Source platform.

As a general rule, all LB&I intranet content should be in webpage format. LB&I intranet runs on the IRS Source platform on a SharePoint server, which utilizes the server-side function of Active Server Pages. In the instance that file downloads must be used, the files will be stored in a document library, and the files provided via a link on relevant content pages. This ensures that users are provided contextual explanations of the documents, in line with the links to the document download.

The hyperlink formatting (color & underline) used on the LB&I intranet, is the default for the current browser and version approved by IRS IT. This formatting should not be altered, without written authorization from the LB&I Webmaster.

When files are published to the web, a description of the file type and size must be displayed to the right of the hyperlink, in parentheses, as shown below:

Apply the following formatting standards to file hyperlinks:

The letter characters used for file type and size designations of hyperlinked files should match the standard convention for file systems:

The parenthetical file type and size, including the parentheses, should be placed in extra-small (x-small) font size, to preserve the readability of the page text.

The three primary image formats used for the web are:

Any images or graphics that are created in another format (e.g., .TIF, .BMP, and .SVG) must be converted to either .GIF , .JPG, or .PNG prior to publishing on a webpage. Note that when you convert an image or graphic, certain aspects such as color or fonts may be affected, depending upon the format that it is converted to. Contact the LB&I Web Team for assistance in converting images to an appropriate format, without loss of color or resolution.

Reduce large image files to a "webpage" or "screen" resolution (or "print" resolution as needed) before publishing on the web. The Microsoft Office Picture Manager program is suitable for this task.

Graphics Interchange Format (.GIF) If you are offered different "save" options for the .GIF format; save the graphics as "89a Non-Interlaced .GIF files" . Animated .GIF files will NOT be used on the LB&I intranet.

Joint Photographic Experts Group (.JPG) If you are offered compression options for the .JPG format, experiment with different compression levels to determine the best balance between image quality and file size. Due to bandwidth considerations, you should use the lowest resolution possible without degrading the image quality.

All non-text items, including images, must include an alternative text (’alt text’) attribute. Most images should receive descriptive text regarding the image content. See IRM 11.51.2.3.2, Accessibility of Web Content, for more information.

Minimize any extraneous background space in an image by cropping it. This will help focus attention on the subject of the photo and reduce the overall size of the image.

No other editing should be done to images, including graphics and logos, on the LB&I intranet. This includes photoshop editing and "touching up" of images. Only the IRS Design Office, Visual Information Specialists, and the LB&I Web Team have the authority to edit images on the web in this manner.

The IRS seal and Department of Treasury seal are used to represent the IRS and Treasury in certain formal communications. In general, seals are used only on IRS letterhead stationary, official communications to the public from the Office of the Commissioner, other official and ceremonial documents and materials, and building signage.

The IRS and Treasury seals are not interchangeable with the IRS logo because they have historical significance and are not easily distinguishable from other federal agency seals. Seals must be used in accordance with IRM 1.17.7.2.1.3, Official IRS Seal.

The official IRS logo is a graphic image consisting of the IRS eagle placed above or to the left of the acronym "IRS" . The IRS Logo must appear on all published and electronic products, with the exception of internal forms, letters and IRS letterhead. The IRS logo may be scaled to suit the needs of specific applications, but may not be modified or changed in any other manner, except when applied using the IRS "Wayfinding" system.

The IRS logo color may be black or IRS Blue on white, or White on IRS Blue. The IRS logo should always appear separate from any other images or elements of a page. No other content should touch or otherwise cover any part of the IRS logo.

IRS Blue is PMS 301C / HEX #0065A4 / RGB 0-101-164. Black logos and blue logos must appear on white background. White logos may appear on an IRS Blue background.

Contact LB&I Communications & Liaison Office with questions about proper use of the IRS logo.

Many IRS divisions and departments are using homegrown logos and graphic images to "brand" themselves visually. Because these logos and images are inconsistent from one division and department to another, the overall IRS brand is weakened, possibly appearing disjointed and confusing to IRS taxpayers, employees and stakeholders.

To promote consistent branding and visual identity across the Service, Media & Publishing Services has created a visual organizing framework called the "wayfinding" system. This system offers IRS offices a consistent, effective means of identifying and distinguishing themselves, ending the need for homegrown logos.

The wayfinding system incorporates names of operating divisions and departments in conjunction with the IRS logo. It reinforces the One IRS concept, while at the same time clearly identifying where various communications originate.

The wayfinding system also assigns standardized color palettes to IRS operating divisions and departments. Together with the department name, these assigned colors can help identify the source of published materials. See Document 12749-U, IRS Design Standards One Sheet Booklet, for examples of how wayfinding logos and colors may be used in IRS publications and documents.

LB&I is fully embracing the IRS wayfinding system. The LB&I wayfinding logo may appear as blue-on-white, black-on-white, and white-on-blue.

LB&I organizations and departments are being asked to stop using "homegrown" department logos and graphics and transition to the wayfinding system. LB&I department-specific wayfinding graphics can be requested from the LB&I Web Team.

All federal agencies are required by law to make their websites accessible to people with disabilities. Content providers are responsible for ensuring that the content they submit for publishing is compliant with the accessibility standards of Section 508.

LB&I Source standard templates have been designed to ensure that all federal accessibility requirements are met. Do not alter these templates; doing so may alter their accessibility.

Additional resources for accessibility can be found at:

LB&I is committed to protecting the privacy of our employees in both electronic and paper records. Due to the IRS Source platform, now every webpage on the site collection has a link to the Intranet Privacy Policy. LB&I program area sites should not create their own privacy policy page.

Employees may not publish to an IRS intranet site any copyrighted material without license or written permission of the copyright owner. If there is any reason to believe that text, images, or other materials may belong to someone else, do not copy or otherwise use it without first obtaining written permission.

If permission to use copyrighted material has been obtained, its use on the LB&I Source is still subject to approval by the LB&I Webmaster and C&L Director. A copy of the written authorization to use the copyrighted material will be required for C&L approval. For additional information about this policy, refer to IRM 1.17.2.

Official forms are published in the Electronic Publishing Catalog. Do not publish copies of official documents that are available in the Electronic Publishing Catalog; link to them instead.

The Electronic Publishing Catalog Help Section provides instructions on properly linking to published products. Additional resources can be found at: