News and Updates

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

Summary: How to leverage your resources to reach Spanish-dominant Hispanics online. A recent DigitalGov University (DGU) webinar provided an introduction to the intersection of two teams with different audiences reaching consensus on goals to maximize insight and outreach effectiveness. Social Media Outreach Goals What does social media outreach success look like? Success is when agencies

Victoria Bitzer-Wales

Nov 17, 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

Are Chatbots the Next mHealth Frontier?

In April, Facebook made it possible for organizations to use chatbots to send and receive messages from users of Facebook Messenger. That’s a big deal. Facebook Messenger is now used by 900 million people every month. As the name implies, it’s a messaging platform that people use to send short messages to each other through

Lindy Dreyer

Torey Vanek

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

Congress.gov Homepage Highlights, Alerts, and More Enhancements

This has been an exciting and successful year for Congress.gov. We accomplished a major milestone when we retired THOMAS in July. Over the course of 2016, we completed a number of enhancements to Congress.gov. In April we expanded quick search to include the Congressional Record, Committee Reports, Nominations, Treaty Documents, and Communications. In May we launched several new RSS feeds and

Andrew Weber

Nov 16, 2016

Trends on Tuesday: Americans’ ‘Digital Divide’ on Tech Savviness and Digital Learning

The Pew Internet and the American Life Project released a report recently that analyzed the use of digital tools for different groups of tech literacies.

Will Sullivan

Nov 15, 2016

Hualapai Public Safety Meet Old and New Challenges Through Technology

How can a place be remote and virtually unpopulated, yet constantly full of thousands of people and teeming with activity? It certainly seems impossible, but that is exactly the situation at Grand Canyon West (GCW), home of the Hualapai indigenous Indian Tribe and the famous Skywalk.

Lesia Dickson

Nov 14, 2016

“For Those Who Serve” App Collection Provides Mobile Resources for Veterans

In honor of Veterans Day, several VA mobile apps are featured this week in the Apple App Store. In the “For Those Who Serve” collection of resources, Veterans can find the latest military news, essential health and wellness information, and other valuable tools for everyday life. The highlighted VA apps are designed to help Veterans manage their

Melissa Heintz

Nov 10, 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 Data Briefing: Four Steps to Becoming a Data-Driven Organization

As the Federal government agencies begin the digital transformation journey, becoming a data-driven organization is even more vital. What does it mean to become a data-driven organization? According to one definition, “[a] data-driven company is an organization where every person who can use data to make better decisions, has access to the data they need

Bill Brantley

Nov 09, 2016

Challenge.gov Launches One-Click Reporting for Annual Prizes Data Call

This year, the deadline for agencies to submit their reporting of incentive prize competitions and challenges for FY16 comes earlier than most. Roughly two weeks from today, by Nov. 18, federal agencies are required to submit their accounts of every prize, competition, or challenge that launched, ran or completed in FY16 via email.

Tammy White

Nov 09, 2016

Why World War I Matters for Your Agency

I recently asked some friends—a group of intelligent, successful individuals—what they knew about World War I. The responses I received included, “Ummm…..it was in the 1910s?” or “Started in Europe when the archduke was killed?” Beyond this, it’s mostly blank stares and shoulder shrugs. People who consider themselves history geeks might mention President Woodrow Wilson’s

Sarah Herrmann

Nov 08, 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

Writing for the Web Is Easy. Writing for Users Is Not.

We all do it. Whether on Twitter, Facebook, or the comment section on a news article, it’s easy to get our writing on the internet. Many of us have personal websites or contribute to blogs. We work at organizations with content management systems that allow us to publish pages with a single button click. The

Chris Goranson

Emileigh Barnes

Phoebe Espiritu

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

Celebrating Nanotechnology With a Day, a Dash, Some Nuggets, and a Plan

Summary: The release of an updated National Nanotechnology Initiative Strategic Plan caps a month of activities highlighting nanotechnology. The Federal government continues to play a key role in the success of the U.S. nanotechnology enterprise through the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI)—as was

Lloyd Whitman

Lisa Friedersdorf

Nov 04, 2016

Applying Customer Service Metrics to Improve Customer Experience (CX)

Lately, I’ve looked at how a government agency measures a customer’s experience. It’s such a complex topic that I would need more than one blog to discuss the nuances behind it. In my last blog, I examined and brokedown three types of customer service metrics: customer satisfaction (CSAT), Net Promoter Score (NPS), and Customer Effort

Craig Chavez

Nov 03, 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

The Data Briefing: Learning from the U.S. Cities on How to Implement Big Data Initiatives

A recent study of big data initiatives in 65 cities has interesting guidance for Federal big data initiatives. The researchers studied how data is collected and then used for decision making in what they called “the framework for Big Data initiatives.” There are two major cycles in the framework: “The data cycle governs the tools

Bill Brantley

Nov 02, 2016