This month’s topic: Community, Connection & Contribution. How can our community help teams solve problems together?
2021
News and Updates
Innovative work, news, and ideas from people and teams in government
The Weekly Ship: What It Is, Why Useful, and How To Create Your Own
The Weekly Ship: What It Is, Why It’s Useful, and How To Create Your Own—The weekly ship has been a staple of 18F projects for years. It is a way to engage partners, inform teammates, and reflect on our work. — via 18F
Navigating ATOs
Navigating ATOs—Authority to Operate (ATO) processes work differently at different federal agencies. As a technology and design consultancy inside the United States government, 18F has worked on ATOs at many of them. We are still learning and experimenting, but there are definite patterns we have seen work well across multiple agencies. — via 18F
Hispanic Heritage Month & Social Media
How To Best Connect With Your Spanish-speaking Audience During an Emergency
The Multilingual Community of Practice is hosting a panel to share some successful social media strategies that you can use to connect with your Spanish-speaking audience during emergencies.
2021
Open Data
Census-Led Prize Challenge Incentivizes Using Open Data for Good
The Open Data for Good Grand Challenge is now welcoming submissions from technologists and collaborators focused on deploying products with federal open data, as well as recruiting for qualified judges to score the submissions and help select winners!
Civic Tech
Building a Tech Career in Government
Starting a civic tech career in government is not as unusual as you think. Current GSA employees share how they are building theirs.
Multilingual
USAGov en Español Celebrates Hispanic Heritage Month
Since 2003, one program in GSA’s Technology Transformation Services (TTS) has been leading the way in which the government serves the Spanish-speaking community in the U.S. That program is USAGov en Español, the official guide to government information and services in Spanish.
Strategy
Digital Meets Culture: Getting Your Culture in Line With Your Digital Strategy
Learn how digital service teams in government navigate through the currents of organizational culture and implement change at their agencies.
Plain Language
2021 Federal Plain Language Summit
On 9/21/21, PLAIN’s Fourth Federal PL Summit showcases federal employees’ plain language projects. Topics include COVID-19 agency responses, accessibility, user experience, and career enhancement.
2021
Let’s peer into the crystal ball and look into the future of USWDS.
2021
Document Accessibility: Getting From 5,000 to 0
Document Accessibility: Getting From 5,000 to 0—Our approach to making 5,000 documents on onrr.gov accessible. We’re steadily making progress towards getting all of our documents 508 compliant. It seemed like an insurmountable challenge, but with a little bit of prioritization and coordination, we’re chipping away at the incompliant debt we had accumulated. — via Office of Natural Resources Revenue
Challenge.gov
Spotlight Chat: Planning a Federal Prize Competition
Leaders of the Lab-to-Market (L2M) Inclusive Innovation Ecosystem Prize Competition share their experience running a federal prize competition.
User Experience
Building a Bureau-Wide Usability Collaboration Group: Lessons Learned from the U.S. Geological Survey
Learn about the U.S. Geological Survey’s Usability Collaboration Area in this short interview with the group’s organizer.
In this second part of our analytics case study series, we’ll address how to pull reporting and conduct analysis through the lens of your analytics strategy.
2021
Introducing the U.S. Digital Corps
Introducing the U.S. Digital Corps—GSA, with the White House, Office of Personnel Management (OPM), and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), has launched the U.S. Digital Corps, a new two-year fellowship offering a new path to public service for early-career technologists. To build a highly-skilled U.S. Digital Corps that represents the diversity of the United States, the U.S. Digital Corps will recruit passionate, mission-driven technologists from undergraduate programs as well as alternative training pathways such as apprenticeships, bootcamps, and certificate programs. — via General Services Administration
Social Media
SocialGov Summer Sessions 2021
If you’re a federal employee, join us to learn about both intellectual property (8/25) and rules of conduct (8/26) in your agency’s social media.
2021
GSA Future Focus: IT Innovation
GSA Future Focus: IT Innovation—Federal IT innovation programs can improve mission effectiveness and also reduce long-term risk and cost. In this month’s post from the Emerging Technology Office at GSA, learn more about creating a successful IT innovation program for your agency. — via General Services Administration
Social Media
Key Insights from the White House Director of Digital Strategy, Robert Flaherty
This article highlights unique tips related to digital content, audience reach, video posting, and strategic communication, that were shared by Rob Flaherty, the Director of Digital Strategy at the White House, during the Digital.gov event, Digital Strategy at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Robotic Process Automation
5 Tips for Implementing Citizen Development in Your RPA Program
The Robotic Process Automation (RPA) Community of Practice highlights five key points for implementing RPA citizen developers, as shared by federal subject matter experts James Gregory (General Services Administration), Frank Wood (Defense Logistics Agency), and Russ Kuehn (Social Security Administration) during their recent webinars with the Federal RPA Community of Practice.
Research
Involving End Users at All Stages To Create Actionable Science Products for Complex, Real-World Issues
How co-production methods increase the usefulness of scientific results, products, and tools
