News and Updates

Agile Assessment Guide - Best Practices for Agile Adoption and Implementation

Agile Assessment Guide: Best Practices for Agile Adoption and Implementation—Agile is an approach to software development in which software is developed incrementally and is continuously evaluated for functionality, quality, and customer satisfaction. Agile can reduce the risks of funding a program that fails or produces outdated technology. This GAO guide released in September 2020 presents federal auditors and others with best practices to assess the adoption and use of Agile in federal agencies and elsewhere. It is available in two files: a 268-page PDF, and a 290-page PDF that is accessible.— via Government Accountability Office

Dec 29, 2020

Become a DAP Certified Analyst

Become a DAP Certified Analyst—The Digital Analytics Program (DAP) now offers the opportunity to become a DAP Certified Analyst. Prospective analysts must complete the DAP Certification Exam with a score of 80 percent or better. The exam is 50 questions and is multiple choice. Prospective analysts can take the exam more than once.— via Digital Analytics Program

Dec 28, 2020

How to Build an Analytics Strategy

How to Build an Analytics Strategy—The Digital Analytics Program (DAP) recently partnered with Digital.gov to help set up an analytics strategy to monitor their website and overall platform performance. DAP provided a start-to-finish approach for assessing, reporting, and taking action using this strategy in a 3-part series.— via Digital.gov

Dec 23, 2020

Join the U.S. Web Design System team as we look at what’s in our latest release: USWDS 2.10.0!

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Dan Williams

A Dashboard for Privacy Offices

A Dashboard for Privacy Offices—Through work funded by 10x, a team from 18F investigated how technology can help busy privacy offices manage your PII, and make their work more accessible and understandable for the public.— via 18F

Dec 15, 2020

Transition Post 4: President-Elect Transition Team Materials

Transition Post 4: President-Elect Transition Team Materials—Here is a fourth post in GAO’s series on records management during presidential transitions; it is related to questions concerning the records management responsibilities related to Transition Teams.— via National Archives and Records Administration

Dec 14, 2020

COVID-19 is Complex, as is COVID-19 Open Data

COVID-19 Is Complex, as Is COVID-19 Open Data—HHS recently released granular Covid-19 Hospital Data in order improve data sharing to accelerate scientific and public health insights.— via Data.gov

Dec 14, 2020

TTS Bug Bounty Program: 3 Year Review

We’re reflecting on our Bug Bounty program for the last 3 years and highlighting some lessons learned.

Alyssa Feola

Aidan Feldman

Dec 14, 2020

2020 has been an unprecedented year for challenges and opportunities in social media. SocialGov’s Federal Social Media Week 2020 will bring you some interesting perspectives on how to keep social media moving and successful for 2021.

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Victoria Bitzer-Wales

Tanner Iskra

Customer Experience

Federal Student Aid’s New Virtual Assistant Offers Model for Improved Customer Service in Government

Aidan, Federal Student Aid’s new virtual assistant, gives customers instant responses to questions about financial aid, loan balances, repayment plans, where to find pages on StudentAid.gov, how to identify their loan servicers, and more, without having to contact a call center.

Abraham Marinez

Dec 07, 2020

In this talk, we’ll focus on content creation and how accessibility supports multilingual work.

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Willa Armstrong

Laura Godfrey

Wendy A F G Stengel

Archivist Memorandum to Agency Heads on Presidential Transition

Archivist Memorandum to Agency Heads on Presidential Transition—On Monday, November 30, the Archivist of the United States sent a memorandum to agency heads reminding them of the importance of records management during a presidential transition. In this memo, the Archivist emphasizes that in order to have a successful transition, it is crucial that agency heads work with their Senior Agency Official for Records Management and Agency Records Officers to ensure that this message is communicated within the agency and that all agency officials and employees are properly briefed on their records management responsibilities. Review the resources posted on their website for additional information about federal records management during transition.— via National Archives and Records Administration

Dec 01, 2020

Deceptive Design: How to Identify and Combat Consequence Design

Deceptive Design: How to Identify and Combat Consequence Design—Consequence design is part of everyday life. Deceptive techniques like “dark patterns” and “hostile design” trick people into taking unintended actions—learn how to prevent them from sneaking into our design work.— via Digital.gov

Dec 01, 2020

Robotic Process Automation

State of Federal RPA Report: Adoption and Impact of Robotic Process Automation in the Federal Government

The report describes the maturity and growth of RPA programs to convey agency progress in digital transformation and automation.

Jim Geoghegan

Nov 30, 2020

Join U.S. Web Design System Product Lead, Dan Williams, to hear about what’s next for the design system as we come to the end of 2020.

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Dan Williams

This presentation lays out USPS.com’s continuous improvement approach and how it combines analytics and customer feedback with iterative heuristic reviews, design, and usability testing to monitor, improve, and evolve the USPS.com CX.

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Jeff Pass

Alexander Turgeon

Matt Petrowski

Panelists will discuss the challenges of transitioning and the benefits of transitioning from military to civilian service in the IT field.

Renata Spinks

Donna Roy

In this webinar, experts from the National Institute of Standards and Technology provide an overview of their key artificial intelligence initiatives including responsible, trustworthy, and explainable AI.

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In this webinar, we will discuss GSA’s incremental investment program, 10x, which is modeled after modern venture capital best practices and start up studios.

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