DigitalGov Citizen Services Summit: Reflections from Our Livestream Host, and Full Recording Now Available!
The second annual DigitalGov Citizen Services Summit was held at GSA headquarters in Washington, DC on May 21, 2015.
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#SocialGov Round Up 2015
The #SocialGov Community is coming up on three years of hard work and pushing the boundaries on using social tools across the federal government. I’d like to start this round up by taking a look at the event we hosted last year, State of the #SocialGov 2014: 2 Years of Smashing Silos + Elevating Citizen
Taking the Pulse of the Federal Government’s Web Presence
The U.S. federal government is launching a new project to monitor how it’s doing at best practices on the Web. A sort of health monitor for the U.S. government’s websites, it’s called Pulse and you can find it at pulse.cio.gov. Pulse is a lightweight dashboard that uses the official .gov domain list
USA.gov in Beta: Tell Us What You Think
Thirteen years in digital is an eon, and on the eve of its 13th birthday, we at USA.gov found ourselves reckoning with a mid-life crisis. In the thirteen years since Firstgov.gov was launched (and ten years for FirstGov en Español), the sheer volume and sophistication
Mobile-Friendly Park Websites on NPS.gov
Park websites on NPS.gov from A (Acadia) to Z (Zion) are now mobile-friendly. Visitors using phones and tablets to visit national park websites now have a user-friendly experience to enhance their virtual visits. Previously, visitors using mobile devices saw a smaller version of the website scaled to
Meeting Customer Needs Through Social Media
Social media tools can amplify your agency’s message, but they are also a meeting space for two-way conversations. They can be a key tool to resolve user issues and deliver excellent customer service. This is true for agencies in every corner of the government space. In honor of our monthly contact center theme, we reached
Using a Hypothesis-Driven Approach in Analyzing (and Making Sense) of Your Website Traffic Data
At the Digital Analytics Program (DAP), some of the most frequently asked questions we get are “how can I get access to the DAP data?” and “what do I do with all this data?” We all know that data is knowledge, and knowledge is power, but once we have access to it and realize that
Updated: Live Blogging the Analytics Dashboard on #TaxDay
2 a.m. EDT, April 16 Looks like the traffic peak for #TaxDay was around 3:00 pm when 194,301 people were on government sites. We’re now less than one-quarter of that traffic, and the more regular patterns of top sites are reasserting themselves. We’re talking about YOU, NASA astronomy picture of the day and that wonderful
Social Sharing Buttons: Location, Location, Location
DigitalGov has seen posts from members of the community who land on opposite sides regarding social sharing buttons. There are those who find social sharing buttons useful (When Sharing Buttons
Multiple Languages, Single Platforms: the World Digital Library
Multilingual does not always mean multiple accounts or websites. Increasingly, multilingual content is delivered in an integrated way, with two (or more!) languages delivered on the same website, app, or social media platform. The World Digital Library (WDL) is one example of how multiple languages can be incorporated on single platforms. The WDL is a
Why Your Social Traffic Looks Low in Analytics Tools
Part of my job as an analyst on the Digital Analytics Program (DAP) team is to help agency users try to make sense of digital analytics data by using web analytics tools. I
Using Personas to Better Understand Customers: USA.gov Case Study
Personas are fictional characters that describe an organization’s customer behaviors, emotions, attributes, motivations, and goals. They are an important tool to share customer insights and understanding across an organization. Personas also serve as a check to make sure your organization’s actions meet the needs of the majority of customers, including visitors to your website, contact
Trends on Tuesday: Smartphone Market Growth Makes Mobile-Friendly a Must
ComScore reported last week that smartphones now make up a whopping 75% of the mobile market. That’s up from 65% just one year ago. This means three-quarters of Americans over the age of 13 now have smartphones, and they are accessing government services with them more and more. This is an undeniable fact because earlier this
On the Spot: Must-Have IFTTT Recipes for Government
Ever since we announced IFTTT was available for federal use, dozens of ideas have been shared for how program managers can use the tool to increase their productivity. I asked some API enthusiasts in the SocialGov community which of their
HTTP vs HTTPS: Is it Time For a Change?
Data. Security. Privacy. These are the cornerstones of many discussions concerning technology. The security of citizen information when interacting with the federal government will be increasingly important as we progress into the future. A few agencies have begun to use Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) in lieu of the standard HTTP. For these agencies,
Trends on Tuesday: Big Data Equals Big Challenges
According to an article from Readwrite, the amount of money going to big data projects is steadily increasing despite widespread failure to achieve many results. For big data-related projects in global organizations, a total of $31 billion was spent in 2013 and that amount is expected to top $114 billion by 2018. The recognition that
Turning Government Data into Better Public Service
Every day, millions of people use their laptops, phones, and tablets to check the status of their tax refund, get the latest forecast from the National Weather Service, book a campsite at one of our national parks, and much more. There were more than 1.3 billion visits to websites across the federal government in just
Trends on Tuesday: More Time-Consuming, Complex Tasks on Mobile Platforms
One of the leading mobile app analytics companies, Flurry, released their annual mobile app growth report with some interesting data showing how audiences are changing the way they engage with mobile applications. Overall, mobile app usage grew 76% in 2014, and the top app categories included: “Lifestyle & Shopping,” growing 174%; “Utilities & Productivity,” growing
The Content Corner: Performing a Content Audit
Audit. It’s a word that generally has no positive connotations whatsoever. We hear the word audit and we think of tax audits or timesheet audits, etc. The word normally strikes fear or dread in the hearts of most mortals. But it is also a task that all websites will need to perform from time to
What is the Digital Analytics Program (DAP)?
The Digital Analytics Program (DAP) is a cornerstone of the 2012 Digital Government Strategy’s mission to improve the citizen experience by streamlining the collection and analysis of digital analytics data on a federal government-wide scale.
