Content Strategy

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

Trends on Tuesday: Pokemon Go-es Away Slowly

According to a recent report in Bloomberg, the wildly popular augmented reality game we reported on a few weeks ago—and the focus of a piece about government agencies using it to engage citizens—appears to have hit a ceiling and is slowly losing active fans in August.

Will Sullivan

Aug 30, 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

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

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

CSAT, NPS, and CES: 3 Easy Ways to Measure Customer Experience (CX)

Have you ever wondered how to measure a customer’s experience? I’ve thought about it, specifically about how to measure the experience with services from government agencies. This is a complex topic because government services can be vastly different from each other.

Craig Chavez

Aug 05, 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

Build Empathy With Stakeholder Interviews, Part 2: Conversation

How to run user-interviews and synthesize and integrate the results into the teams shared understanding

Andrew Maier

Jul 29, 2016

Widgets, Mobile Apps, and SMS: Essential Agency Tools for Summer Heat Safety, Hurricane Season, and Emergency Preparedness

A review of mobile apps, tools, and websites from federal agencies created to help the public with weather and emergency preparedness– and how organizations can help share that information.

Toni Bonitto

Jul 28, 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

The Content Corner: Quality Over Quantity—a Case for Long-Form Content

Content can be categorized in many ways. While breaking down your website analytics, pay a bit of extra attention to the difference between your short- and long-form content; you may find some interesting discoveries. Let’s first define the two terms: Short – Content that is generally created quickly, and consumed just as fast; e.g., tweets,

Kyle S. Richardson

Jul 25, 2016

The Data Briefing: “PreparedGo” – The Federal Emergency Management Agency Mobile App

While you are outside hunting Pokemon or helping your children hunt Pokemon, consider adding another mobile app to your smartphone or tablet. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) mobile app alerts you about severe weather and other natural disasters. The app is also a great information resource on surviving disasters and connects you to FEMA

Bill Brantley

Jul 20, 2016

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