Product and project management

A Domain by Any Other Name: CNAMES, Wildcard Records and Another Level of Indirection

This is post 3 in the 5-part series The Right Tools for the Job: Re-Hosting DigitalGov Search to a Dynamic Infrastructure Environment. “All problems in computer science can be solved by another level of indirection, except of course for the problem of too many indirections.” – David Wheeler The simplest of our four requirements was

Nick Marden

Sep 06, 2016

Quality, Speed, and Lower Costs: Yes, You Can Have It All

This is post 2 in the 5-part series The Right Tools for the Job: Re-Hosting DigitalGov Search to a Dynamic Infrastructure Environment. The last major infrastructure upgrade that DigitalGov Search had was in 2010. Not only has technology evolved significantly since then, but so have business models for right-sizing costs. Moving to Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Nick Marden

Dawn Pointer McCleskey

Sep 02, 2016

Emma: Friendly Presence and Innovative USCIS Resource Available 24/7

We are working hard to serve you and continue to make improvements to Emma, our Spanish-speaking Interactive Virtual Assistant. Help us improve Emma’s knowledge by continuing to ask your immigration-related questions on USCIS.gov/es from any device. This blog will help you understand a little bit more about how Emma works and how you can help

Andrea Sanchez

Limary Suarez Pacheco

Sep 01, 2016

On September 8, 2016, the General Services Administration (GSA) is hosting its very first Technology Industry Day. Sign up to hear about how GSA is transforming technology in the federal government, see demos of products and solutions developed by technologists and, last but not least, provide feedback on how we can work better with industry.

GSA Blog Team

Aug 31, 2016

Smithsonian Learning Lab: Designing for the Classroom

The Smithsonian’s mission statement is wonderfully simple: “The increase and diffusion of knowledge.” The “increasing” is arguably the straightforward part – the Smithsonian has amassed a collection of over 138 million objects and specimens, and the Institution’s curators and scientists obsessively add to the world’s knowledge base, publishing papers, creating exhibitions, and sharing their expertise.

Benjamin Bloom

Aug 29, 2016

In six years, you can get a lot done! If you are the International Space Station, you could have orbited the earth 35,040 times. If you are Apple, you could have released 10 new iPhones. If you are the National Archives, you have gone from zero social media accounts to over 100! It’s been six

Aug 26, 2016

How Creating On-The-Fly Digital Content Can Fill an Immediate Audience Need

When some U.S. athletes at this month’s Olympic Games started showing up at their events with dark red circles on their torsos, sports commentators and the media hungrily sought answers to what the marks could be. In less than a day after the spots were…spotted, the story of the mysterious circles was becoming clearer: they

Yasmine Kloth

Aug 25, 2016

What Happens When the Whole Team Joins User Interviews

The CALC team is an agile team of four — six if you count the Scrummaster and the Product Owner — building a simple means to load price data into the original CALC tool. They’re an Agile team, which means everybody pitches in on everything to some degree, and here, in their own words, is

Alan Brouilette

Aug 22, 2016

Making Modernizations and Migrations Successful

Summary: Today, we’re launching the M3 Framework to provide agencies with leading best practices for mission-support function modernizations and migrations. The government’s internal operations have a powerful impact on service to its citizens, and this Administration has made transformation of management practices within the Federal Government a key priority. By sharing and streamlining mission support services

Denise Turner Roth

David Mader

Aug 19, 2016

The Right Tools for the Job: Re-Hosting DigitalGov Search to a Dynamic Infrastructure Environment

This is the first post of a 5-part series. DigitalGov Search is a commercial-grade search engine provided as a shared-service by the United States General Services Administration. We power about 2,300 search configurations for hundreds of federal, state, and local government agencies. Using our platform, agencies can easily configure a search experience for the public that

Dawn Pointer McCleskey

Aug 18, 2016

The Data Briefing: DevOps and Containers and Why They Are Important to Transforming Federal Government IT

You may have heard about “DevOps” in the news or when meeting with IT professionals. What exactly is DevOps and what, if any, connection does it have with agile? Also, what do “containers” have to do with all of this? In this week’s column, I will introduce DevOps and a related technology: containers. Some DevOps

Bill Brantley

Aug 17, 2016

Celebrating the 18th Anniversary of the Section 508 Rehabilitation Act

August 8, 2016, marks the 18th anniversary of the amendment to the Section 508 Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which covers access to information technology in the federal sector. To recognize the importance of IT accessibility, we wanted to highlight some agency initiatives to improve accessibility across the federal landscape. As amended, the Act requires: …access

Alycia Piazza

Aug 15, 2016

Did We Do a Good Job? The Answer Is in Customers’ Business Outcomes

Earlier this week, I shared with my colleagues at EXIM the results of our 2016 export credit insurance customer survey. This is the third consecutive year that our largest customer segment has been asked to share their feedback with us.

Stephanie Thum

Aug 12, 2016

This spring, the eRegulations Notice & Comment team began building out a new feature set for the platform — adding the ability for agencies with proposed regulations to show the public more precisely the changes being proposed and allow agencies to receive more granular, contextual, and better-organized comments.

Will Sullivan

Aug 09, 2016

The People’s Code

Summary: Today, we’re releasing the Federal Source Code policy to support improved access to custom software code developed by or for the Federal Government. “If we can reconceive of our government so that the interactions and the interplay between private sector, nonprofits, and government are opened up, and we use technology, data, social media in order

Tony Scott

Aug 09, 2016

The Content Corner: On-The-Fly Content Strategies (Round-offs, Back Handsprings, & Double Twisting Layouts Not Required)

As effective marketers and communicators, we are constantly seeking new and improved ways to reach our audience or customer base. These days, our “online lives” intersect with every activity we are involved in, so timeliness is essential. With fresh ideas and engaging, perhaps interactive, content, we can literally make a difference in the lives of our

Kyle S. Richardson

Aug 08, 2016

That Six-Letter Word: Change

One of the biggest challenges in implementing a new technology or process is change. Change creates a multitude of feelings; for some it is apprehension and uncertainty, while for others it is excitement and acceptance. Change management is defined as “a systematic approach to dealing with change, both from the perspective of an organization and

Christen Geiler

Aug 04, 2016

Promoting the Use of Green IT

Summary: We’re taking action to accelerate efforts to increase the efficiency of Federal data centers, reduce costs, and improve the government’s overall IT security posture. Today, the Administration is taking action to accelerate efforts to increase the efficiency of Federal data centers, reduce costs, and improve the overall information technology (IT) security posture of the Federal

Tony Scott

Aug 03, 2016

Managing Federal Information as a Strategic Resource

Summary: Today, OMB is releasing an update to Circular A-130, the Federal Government’s governing document for the management of Federal information resources. Today the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is releasing an update to the Federal Government’s governing document for the management of Federal information resources: Circular A-130, Managing Information as a Strategic Resource.

Jul 27, 2016

Summer Health and Safety: A New Resource Brought to You by CDC and NIH

We have previously written about microsites in the federal government. A microsite is a small collection of web pages—a subset of an organization’s full website. Partners can embed microsites that present curated information on a specific topic or campaign directly within their own websites. And perhaps best of all, microsites that are API-enabled are maintained and updated

Christen Geiler

Jul 26, 2016

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