Software Engineering

Hack-to-Learn at the Library of Congress

When hosting workshops, such as Software Carpentry, or events, such as Collections As Data, our National Digital Initiatives team made a discovery—there is an appetite among librarians for hands-on computational experience. That’s why we created an inclusive hackathon, or a “hack-to-learn,” taking advantage of the skills librarians already have and pairing them with programmers to

Jaime Mears

Jun 28, 2017

As the nation’s primary platform for sharing and improving government software, Code.gov can help the government save millions of taxpayer dollars. It’s no secret that the federal government spends billions of dollars a year on software transactions. So, in an effort to cut excessive spending, the

Code.gov Team

Jun 27, 2017

Fractal and Federalist Join the U.S. Web Design Standards

We’ve recently added two powerful tools to the U.S. Web Design Standards development workflow that allow us to preview, test, and publish the Standards code more quickly and easily. Fractal Fractal is a powerful and flexible framework for building interactive component libraries. It’s similar to Jekyll (which we use to publish the Standards site) in

Shawn Allen

Jun 13, 2017

Federalist Is out of Beta and Open for Business

If you’re a program manager or a federal web developer you’ve probably been given a seemingly simple task: Create a basic website as part of a new initiative at your agency. The hardest part is often not crafting the content or designing the prototype, but getting the security and privacy compliance in order to launch

Will Slack

Jonathan Hooper

Jun 05, 2017

Steps Towards SEO: Meta Descriptions on MedlinePlus

MedlinePlus is a consumer health website produced by the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM), available in both English and Spanish. As part of our Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategy, we recently added meta descriptions to our health topic pages.

Kate Masterton

Katie Chan

Apr 14, 2017

Inspiring Data Forum at the Canadian Space Agency

Last [month], NASA Open Innovation Program Manager Dr. Beth Beck and her team traveled to the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) near Montreal, Canada to attend the Inspiring Data Forum graciously hosted by our Open Data neighbors to the North. The goal of this gathering was to bolster the working relationship between the two Space Agency’s

Jason Duley

Apr 10, 2017

Engineering the Chaski Relay: A Touchscreen Game at the National Museum of the American Indian

The interactive team at the National Museum of the American Indian saw the chaski story as as a candidate for interactivity and gamification, and an opportunity to bring additional engagement to the museum gallery. With a more focused idea and funding from the Electronic Software Association, the team set out on prototyping and development.

Benjamin Bloom

Mar 31, 2017

New ITIF Report Inspires a Closer Look at Website Performance and Security—Here Is Where to Begin

The Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF) recently published a report, Benchmarking U.S. Government Websites, that looks at the performance, security, and accessibility of the top 297 government websites.

Digital.gov Team

Mar 24, 2017

Buzzwords for 2017

Along with the New Year comes new buzzwords. Here are some that you are certain to hear about and see this year.

Christen Geiler

Mar 16, 2017

The Data Briefing: Why and How to Attend Your First Hackathon

December 9, 2016, will be the 110th anniversary of Admiral Grace Hopper’s birthday. Admiral Hopper was a pioneer in computer programming who created the first compiler and whose ideas lead to the creation of COBOL. An apocryphal legend also credits Admiral Hopper with coining the terms “bug” and “debugging.” The GSA’s IT Digital Service Team

Bill Brantley

Nov 30, 2016

Curate the Best Thinking Available

When I joined the code.gov project, I had just over a month to make an impact on the project. The most pressing work seemed to be defining a software metadata schema — a way for agencies to format the details of the software they’ve built. In August of this year, the Federal Source Code Policy

Theresa Summa

Nov 30, 2016

GSA Presents: Grace Hopper Day Hackathon!

The U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) Digital Service team is excited to be hosting our next agency hackathon on December 9, 2016. Join coders from across the region as we come together in celebration of Grace Hopper’s birthday.

Sara Cope

Nov 28, 2016

Mobile Development and Testing with Chrome Developer Tools

Around Q3, I was looking for way to test the HTML and CSS of an online application that was to be public-facing. At first, my office’s plan was to connect mobile devices to the network owned by federal employees on a volunteer basis for testing.

Angela Y. Smithers

Nov 21, 2016

New Trademark App Open Source Code on GitHub

Improving the way the government delivers information technology (IT) solutions to its customers isn’t just a goal, it’s our mission. We at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office know that by publishing our open source code, the public can help us come up with new and better IT solutions. In advance of the new Federal

David Chiles

Nov 18, 2016

FEMA’S Syndicated Content: Digital Assists in Moments of Disaster

I recently interviewed Daniel Kuhns, Web Manager at FEMA, about the site widgets and the FEMA app his organization has been developing. The widgets currently available include: FEMA App, Preparedness, Severe Weather, Private Sector, Kids Fire Safety, and Are you a Disaster Survivor. The FEMA App offers

Christen Geiler

Nov 17, 2016

Meeting Patients Where They Are: Liberating Clinical Trials Data Under the Cancer Moonshot

Cancer clinical trials are a critically important step on the pathway for new or improved treatments to make their way to patients in clinics and hospitals in towns and cities across the country. Patients and their loved ones are relying on these rigorous studies to determine whether promising new therapies and approaches might extend how

Sheila Prindiville

Michael Balint

Nov 16, 2016

NASA Addresses OMB M-16-21 Federal Source Code Policy

In August 2016, OMB released M-16-21, which seeks to ensure that new custom-developed federal source code be made broadly available for reuse across the federal government.

Jason Duley

Nov 10, 2016

The People’s Code – Now on Code.gov

Summary: Today we’re launching Code.gov so that our Nation can continue to unlock the tremendous potential of the Federal Government’s software. Over the past few years, we’ve taken unprecedented action to help Americans engage with their Government in new and meaningful ways. Using Vote.gov, citizens can now quickly navigate their state’s voter registration process through

Tony Scott

Nov 07, 2016

New API Brings EPIC Earth Imagery to Developers

Daily imagery data taken by the Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera is now accessible via a RESTful API available from the NASA API Portal. The Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC) is an instrument aboard NOAA’s DSCOVR satellite, which orbits at Earth’s Lagrange point, the sweet spot in space where the gravitational tug of the Earth and

Veronica Phillips

Nov 04, 2016

Take a look at how we plan to preserve and pass on the digital history of the Obama administration. President Obama is the first “social media president”: the first to have @POTUS on Twitter, the first to go live on Facebook from the Oval Office, the first to answer questions from citizens on YouTube.

Kori Schulman

Nov 02, 2016

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