News and Updates

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

The Content Corner: Work Smarter with Workflows

I noticed recently that I have spent a decent amount of time discussing or referencing content workflow, but I haven’t spent much time on how to actually create or use workflows. Developing content workflows can be a fairly painless process that can make your regular content creation a much smoother and efficient process. Content workflows
Dec 07, 2015

The Content Corner: The Balance Between SEO and the User

I always think of SEO like the dentist—no one really likes it, but you need to do it. Yet, despite my lack of excitement for the topic, this will be at a minimum my second post (here’s the first) about the relationship between creating good content and SEO practices. Today I want to dive a little
Nov 30, 2015

OPM Wants to Hear from You by December 9

The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) is looking for agency subject matter experts (SMEs) to participate in an occupational study of the Public Affairs Series 1035. OPM is accepting SME submissions until Wednesday, December 9th. The study will review the “current classification and qualification standards for public affairs work” and allow OPM to make any revisions
Nov 27, 2015

Government Product Managers Play a Key Role in UX

Government product managers sit at the intersection of three circles—business, design and technology. We play a key role in user experience (UX), because we are tasked with understanding users to build a product that is desirable and viable. This product could be a paper or online form, a website or a mobile app. Product management
Nov 27, 2015

The Content Corner: Good UX Needs Good Content

As DigitalGov focuses on user experience this month it is good to remember one harsh truth: You cannot have a good user experience with bad content. It is important to keep a “content first” strategy in place during any website redesign or new site development. It is so easy for the various disciplines involved in
Nov 23, 2015

UX vs. CX: What’s the Dif? Part 2

In honor of World Usability Day, which happened on November 12, we’d like to demystify two extremely important and oft-confusing acronyms—CX and UX. Customer Experience (CX) and User Experience (UX), while related, focus on different aspects of service delivery.
Nov 20, 2015

The Data Briefing: Innovating Health Data at the HHS IDEA Lab

By the time this is published, the United States, along with 160 other countries, will be celebrating Global Entrepreneurship Week 2015. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) IDEA Lab is an outstanding example of a federal agency using open data to foster economic growth through empowering federal employees with innovative ideas and opening health data to the private sector.
Nov 18, 2015

GSA.gov Refreshed with Eye Toward Mobile Users

GSA unveiled a refreshed GSA.gov website yesterday with a more crisp design layout, improved usability, and features geared more toward mobile users. Increasingly, website traffic is coming from mobile users. With this in mind, GSA unveiled a newly refreshed GSA.gov website on Nov. 16. “Our ultimate goal for the refresh
Nov 17, 2015

How to Use Remote Data Strategically in UX

One of the challenges UX practitioners can face is how to communicate much of the data that’s out there. The key word is “communicate.” Since many of us are used to qualitative findings, making the jump to “hard data” can be a challenge. There are tools out there that make this easier, but we still
Nov 17, 2015