Yes, the Digital Analytics Program (DAP) is the government-wide implementation of Google Analytics. DMA Public Web participates in the program at the direction of the DODCIO, however, it is not intended to be a replacement for Site Gauge, and here's why:
-Google Analytics (DAP) uses a javascript file to call out to Google's servers to record which pages were hit and tracks individuals using a browser cookie.
-Pros: Tracks individual / unique users more accurately
-Cons: NIPR configurations may have javascript blocked, or the call to google blocked. In these cases the data simply vanishes. There is no way to know how many systems this may affect. It is essentially a silent failure. The call to google just never arrives and therefore they aren't counted. This isn't a problem with Akamai because Akamai records every request for content it receives.
-Additionally, the DAP program was set up with government-wide data collection in mind, so all of our data goes into a single DOD bucket. This makes accessing an individual site's data fairly difficult. You can run filters on the data, but often the data is sampled - meaning a small percentage of visits is used to extrapolate out an estimate of visits to a particular page. Lastly, DMA / Public Web has no ability to manage users, or to show specific users certain segments of data. As a result, it can be an overwhelming user experience.
-All in all, Site Gauge (or logfile based analytics in general) are more likely to be accurate in the NIPR environment. As a result, this is the data we report on. Also, because the two systems are different, you can't compare them side by side. They measure using totally different technology.