News and Updates

Innovative work, news, and ideas from people and teams in government

95%: Describing the National Archives’ Holdings

The National Archives Catalog has reached a milestone: we now have 95% of our holdings completely described at the series level in our online catalog. This is a monumental achievement. Why? Because the National Archives holds over 14 billion pages of records, and we are adding hundreds of millions of pages to that total every

Jul 20, 2016

Joining Forces with BusinessUSA to Better Serve Our Nation’s Businesses

Four years ago, BusinessUSA launched with a mission to revolutionize the way government provides services to small businesses and exporters. Using technology to erase bureaucratic boundaries, BusinessUSA streamlined the way businesses find and get what they need from government. This “no wrong door” approach combined resources from over 800 websites and created a single point

Jul 19, 2016

Information Architecture vs Content Strategy—and Why YOU Need Both

The idea of portable content is nothing new. Content needs to be mobile ready, responsive, and readily consumed by tools such as the Internet of Things (IoT)—a proposed development of the Internet in which everyday objects have network connectivity, allowing them to send and receive data. Developers need to stop creating fixed, single-purpose content and

Jul 18, 2016

Where Content and Marketing Meet: An email Case Study

Content marketing is everywhere and you’re hearing more about it every day—but how do you do it well? While content marketing can take many forms (articles, infographics, videos, and more), it shares a common purpose: providing useful content to attract new customers to your product or service. At USAGov, customized email messages to our subscribers

Jul 15, 2016

Enhancing our Nation’s Cybersecurity

The mission of U.S. General Services Administration (GSA)’s Integrated Technology Services (ITS) is to deliver best value technology solutions to the government and the American people, and one of the most critically important capabilities that our nation currently needs is strengthened cybersecurity. We have been working with numerous other federal agencies to ensure that the

Jul 14, 2016

Analytics Trainings: 2016 So Far

In 2016, the Digital Analytics Program (DAP) team has ramped up our training schedule. We appreciate all the DAP users that have attended our trainings and we’re happy to provide the material. We’ve had many users ask about video of our sessions, so we wanted to provide you with some of our recorded trainings from

Jul 14, 2016

Catch the Mall! With Pokemon and Public Services

“… I have never seen so many people of all ages walking around our civic spaces and small businesses interacting as I have this morning. Teens catching them. People catching them in line for coffee. Moms outsmarting their kids. Local youths teaching my toddler how to throw a ball. Full grown adults. Marines. Kids on

Jul 12, 2016

Introducing the Digital Audio/Video Community of Practice

Tech giants have changed the world of broadcast forever. In a little more than a year, video on Facebook went from being a seldomly seen media type on a user’s timeline to a strategic priority for Mark Zuckerberg. The platform now serves over 8 billion video views a day and Facebook continues to roll out improvements

Jul 08, 2016

Connecting With the Public Safety Community Through Social Media

Technology is bringing the world closer together – from connecting people across the country instantly by live video chats to tapping into the insights of data analytics. This is the type of power that FirstNet aims to bring to the public safety community through the nationwide public safety broadband network. FirstNet is working to ensure

Jul 07, 2016

International telecommunications network operator, Ericsson, released their Mobility Report around the future of mobile recently with a bunch of interesting data around the future of telecommunications and mobile. The surprise star of the report is not mobile phones though—although it will continue to grow, especially in emerging markets where it hasn’t reached saturation like it

Jul 05, 2016

Census Bureau Releases Key Statistics in Honor of Independence Day

On July 4, 1776, the Continental Congress approved the Declaration of Independence, setting the 13 colonies on the road to freedom as a sovereign nation. This most American of holidays [is] marked with typical festivities ranging from fireworks, parades and concerts to more casual family gatherings and barbecues across the country. In honor of our

Jul 05, 2016

Twitter’s Evolution and What It Means for Your Government Account

Twitter has come a long way. In ten years of evolution, we’ve seen Twitter go from a simple text messaging service to a versatile platform, which in the words of Twitter, provides a “rich canvas for creative expression featuring photos, videos, hashtags, Vines, and more.” Now Twitter is offering additional enhancements to their service to

Jun 30, 2016