News and Updates

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) just released the OpenFDA Research Project. At the heart of the project is the OpenFDA API, which allows developers to perform searches on FDA’s drug information database. Coming soon is the ability to search FDA information on medical devices and information about food. Visit the

With the recent growth of smartphone and tablet ownership, it’s no surprise that U.S. consumers are spending more time on mobile devices than PCs. Mobile usage will rise to nearly three hours per day in 2014, according to eMarketer. So how does mobile compare to other major media: Mobile usage will rise to 2 hours 51

This morning I was walking down 18th Street, crossing Pennsylvania Avenue by the World Bank when I heard what sounded like “a test from the

On June 19, the Obama Administration will continue the conversation on big data as we co-host our fourth big data conference, this time with the Georgetown University McCourt School of Public Policy’s Massive Data Institute. The conference, “Improving Government Performance in the Era of Big Data; Opportunities and Challenges for Federal Agencies,” will build on

Structured content and open content models can help you create content that is platform-agnostic, format-free, and device-independent.

Facebook is now the first social media platform to start verifying all federal government pages with their signature blue checkmark using the Federal Social Media Registry API. The Federal Social Media Registry provides the singular source that allows social media platforms to quickly collect real government accounts—emphasizing the critical need to ensure the trust, quality and

The Consumer Action Handbook is a guide to making smarter decisions with your money. It’s print and online formats, available in English and Spanish, include a compilation of buying tips from across government agencies, updates on the latest scams, and a robust consumer contact directory.

As government innovators, we work to improve public services every day. In essence we are already in a public private partnership. But how can your agency capitalize on existing public private partnerships to engage citizens and enhance services? Four panelists from across government shared their public private partnerships success stories at the DigitalGov Citizen Services

During the DigitalGov Citizen Services Summit last Friday, customer service experts from across government came together on a panel to share what customer service means to them and their organization and specific ways they leverage it. The other panels were on performance analysis, public private partnerships, and inter-agency work. The panelists spoke about the strategies

Ask, and you shall receive. That was the strategy behind the new homepage from The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The new CDC.gov homepage debuted last month with a responsive design that offers a “one-site-fits-all” experience based on feedback from you, the public.

Application programming interfaces (APIs) can be confusing when people first hear of the concept. There are the many acronyms like REST (Representational State Transfer) and JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) that further obscure what APIs do. The idea behind APIs is quite simple: APIs are how computer programs share information between themselves. You can experience this for

Are you measuring Twitter followers and press release downloads without any clue as to what people are doing with your agency’s products and information? Or do you not even know what to measure, never mind whether that measurement would be meaningful? Fear not, fair government communicator—there is hope! On May 15, top government communication measurement

At the DigitalGov Citizen Services Summit last Friday, Jacob Parcell, Manager, Mobile Programs at the General Services Administration led a panel on the challenges and benefits of Inter-Agency work. The other panels were on performance analysis, customer service across channels, and public private partnerships. “The challenges are real,” said Parcell, who quoted President Obama’s famous salmon

At the DigitalGov Citizen Services Summit last Friday, more than 200 innovators across government and industry came together to share how digital services can improve citizen services and reduce cost. Four panels convened to share information on performance analysis, customer service across channels, public private partnerships and inter-agency work. We have a recap of the

Since 2001, Mary Meeker has developed a knack for highlighting what’s currently happening on the Internet and how this information may impact technology and business in the future. Last week she released her 2014 Internet Trends and it reveals some interesting digital trends. Here are the highlights: Marketing: Social messaging is changing

openFDA launched today and with it the first publicly available dataset—Drug Adverse Reaction and Medication Error Reports—that covers more than 4 million records from 2004 to 2013. The openFDA team compiled 10 things to help developers use this dataset more effectively, including: Interactive examples created by the openFDA team to give perspective to the data. The

Last June, President Obama launched a Climate Action Plan to cut carbon pollution, prepare communities for the impacts of climate change, and lead international efforts to address this global challenge. The plan recognizes that even as we act to curb the carbon pollution that is driving climate change,

Bing, Google, and Yahoo have all rolled out major redesigns to their search results pages in the past year. The last time DigitalGov Search did a major redesign of their results page was in January 2012. It was long overdue for a facelift. So, our team redesigned our search results page. We’ve kept an eye on best

We had a GREAT DigitalGov Citizen Services Summit today. There were more than 200 digital innovators from across government and industry working to build the 21st century government the public expects.

Our fabulous colleague Jeanne Holm is ready for the #hackforchange events this weekend and summarized some tips, notes and links to resources on Data.gov. Great things will happen this weekend! Remember, if you hear about great uses of government data, let