News and Updates

So: You decided to purchase a car that takes advantage of more environmentally friendly fuel. Congratulations! Now, you need to find a place to fill the tank that offers more than just regular gas. The new Alternative Fueling Station Locator app from the folks at the Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory is a must-try. The new iPhone app will

While composing email on mobile phones is still a tricky feat, email reading is quickly shifting away from the desktop. According to data from the US Consumer Device Preference Report: Q4 2013 from Movable Ink, way more than half of all email — a full 65 percent — is now being accessed

SocialGov Summits bring together agencies from across government to share and learn how we can improve digital services to make services more effective and cost efficient.

Digital Marketing Evangelist and analytics guru Avinash Kaushik recently published a fascinating article on Six Visual Solutions To Complex Digital Marketing/Analytics Challenges. The article is especially relevant to government organizations, because it talks about the importance of dynamic vs. static content. Government agencies tend

On January 16th, the Federal Communicators Network gathered at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). The topic of the day was Driving Employee Engagement through a Social Intranet, and Kelly Osborn, NARA’s community manager for the Internal Collaboration Network (ICN) was the expert speaker. Kelly has been the driving force behind the project from

Mobile apps have the power to grant us access to data beyond our expectations, help us get things done easily and quickly, and have some fun, too. But what about apps that can potentially increase our personal and the greater public safety in our neighborhoods and

The Government of Canada (GC) is retiring the traditional news release format in favour of a more digital-friendly product that makes the key messages of announcements clearer, quick facts more accessible and integrates more effectively with social media channels. The old style

According to the IBM Digital Analytics Benchmark report, overall 4th quarter online sales were up 10.3% year over year. Here were some of the key drivers: • Mobile Traffic and Sales: Mobile traffic soared, accounting for nearly 35 percent of all online traffic, up

In September 2013, the Mobile Gov Community of Practice released user experience guidelines and recommendations for federal agencies to use in order to create good mobile user experiences. This article highlights private sector and government resources and tools to assist agencies in implementing those user experience guidelines. Mobile User Experience Resources and Tools From the

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is taking the well-known slogan, “See something, say something,” to the crowd. Consider it more “See something, submit something.” Harnessing the power of citizen intelligence to understand and respond to disasters, FEMA in late 2013 launched a new feature in

This infographic from Light Reading addresses recent trends in mobile data use. We are struck by how much data was transferred via a WiFi connection vs. cellular. People are using WiFi connections way more than cellular ones. Some other quick highlights: In Q2

Customer experience (CX) is an emerging area of focus within government. My role as Vice President of Customer Experience at the Export-Import Bank speaks to this reality. Our agency’s customers and partners consist of U.S. exporters, financial services institutions, insurance brokers and foreign buyers of U.S. products and services. All play a key role in

We’ve written a few times about the changes that we’ve been working on for Data.gov to make it easier for users to find, understand, and use government data. Today you’ll notice even more changes to Data.gov – here’s a quick rundown of some of the main changes you’ll see, and why.

Using contact centers to deliver digital services is an emerging area in government. Due to the growth of online services, centers receive more attention and represent an important touch point for customers. When you need to speak directly with someone to get help or resolve an issue, it must be a good experience. This reflects on

The difference between only distributing an online press release and opening up the benefits from a blogging community can be found in how your agency encourages and manages comments and engagement. An easily-referenced comment policy lets authors and contributors know what your agency’s guidelines are in order

It was a very good year, as Frank Sinatra sang, in the field of social media for the federal government. Advances were made not only in the technologies applied by agencies, but also the policies and strategies that unlock their potential to improve services and reduce costs. I’d like to share with you just some

Our team and a few other agencies had the chance to attend the 2013 TopCoder Open this year and meet the best of the best developers, coders, designers, data scientists, and innovative thinkers in crowdsourcing. This

Did this week’s polar vortex wreak havoc on your heating and cooling system? Maybe now you’re in the hunt for a new furnace or looking for more efficient ways to

A recent article in Mobile Marketing Watch suggested location-based sensor fusion would be featured on a billion mobile devices in 2016. Last year Mary Meeker said in 2013 that mobile would be wearable, sharable, drivable and flyable. We’ve gathered some other projections for the future functionality of mobile devices; • Indoor