Contribute

This site is for the collaborative development of the Federal Identity, Credential and Access Management (FICAM) Program’s Access Management Playbook

We encourage you to read our LICENSE and our README, which exist within this repository.

• You can visit the GitHub repository here.
• If you have any questions, open an issue under the ‘Issues’ tab.
• Opening issues or adding content does require the creation of a GitHub account.

How to Contribute

Thank you for considering contributing to the development of open and transparent FICAM guidance documents. To contribute to this site, please leverage the information provided below, and visit the GitHub repository which houses the source files for the site and exists here. If you have any questions, feel free to open an issue under the ‘Issues’ tab of the repository. Please note that opening issues or adding content to the repository will require the creation of a GitHub account.

GitHub issues are the primary way of sharing information and discussing this site with the broader community. For example, they should be used for:

• Suggestions: You would like to suggest an edit or addition to any existing pages or information on this site
• Corrections: You have identified a problem with existing information on the site and would like to discuss a correction
• Pages: You have identified a topic for a new guidance document that is not yet on the site that would be beneficial to the playbook

Each issue that you open should be named to clearly align with its primary topic, and tracked so that you can discuss the issue with other contributors and follow any updates. All suggestions and corrections should be stated clearly, with any links or other relevant information included in the issue.

Direct changes and line edits to the content may be submitted by clicking ‘Edit this page’. You do not need to install any software to submit content. You can use GitHub’s in-browser editor to edit files and submit a pull request for your changes to be merged.

If you have identified an open issue suggesting a new topic for the site and would like to drive the creation of that guidance document, whether through leveraging existing content from your agency or starting from scratch, follow the steps below:

How to Build a New Guide

• To see an example of the type of content and structure that could exist within a guidance document, visit the ‘How do I PIV enable my network logon?’ page here.
• This example guidance document was created using a template file, which exists in the GitHub repository. To find this template, go to the pages folder on the repository and select the ‘template.md’ file.
• Click the ‘Raw’ button towards the top right of the page to view the file as raw code. Within this file are helpful comments and instructions on where different parts of your content will be entered. Please note that you will not need to know how to code to contribute, as the only code within the file is simply to help format the final page.
• Copy all of the code from this page.
• Navigate back to the pages folder and select the ‘New file’ button towards the top right of the page.
• Enter a name for your file in the text box that says ‘Name your file…’, which will also act as the permalink for your page.
• Paste the template code and follow the guidance within the code to populate the template with your content.

How to Submit Your Completed Guide

• When your file is ready to be added to the repository, enter a title and quick description of your new page in the ‘Commit new file’ box at the bottom of the ‘New file’ page.
• Within this box are two radio button options. Be sure to select the ‘Create a new branch for this commit and start a pull request’ radio button, so that your content can go through the proper review process before going live on the Playbook site.
• Click the ‘Propose new file’ button. This will route you to the ‘Open a pull request’ page.
• Within the information box on the pull request page, create a title that reflects the nature of the content added, as well as a reference to the issue number that was opened stating the need for this topic, such as ‘Issue #39 - Added more information about Access Management Framework’, entering any other relevant notes within the comment field.
• Click the ‘Create pull request’ button. This will send a notification to the site administrators that a new page has been added, which they can then review.
• Be sure to follow the progress of the issue that you opened stating what content you intended to add! This will allow you to see if others have comments or contributing information for the process, or if the site admin has responded with an updated status on your new page.

If at any point you have a question during the contribution process, do not hesitate to open an issue requesting clarification.

General Practices

This content is Vendor neutral. Marketing materials for Commercial Products should not be submitted. If you would like to contribute a page or content which includes Commercial Products and specific references for development and engineering, please review the Commercial Product trademark or copyright guides from the Product Vendor and reference those guides in your Pull Request.

Plain Language

Contributors should consider the audience when submitting content. Plain language benefits a broad audience. Review your proposed content for use of acronyms and specialized jargon before submitting.

Thanks

The idea for providing this content as open source, the contributing framework, and the licensing framework are based on work from 18F.