News and Updates

New Kid in Town: The Customer Experience Community

Cross-Agency Priority (CAP) Goals prioritize activities that all agencies must tackle each year. An important CAP Goal for 2015 addresses customer service and compels federal agencies to improve the quality of service the public receives from the federal government.

Jacqueline Snee

Rachel Flagg

Jul 31, 2015

USGS is Asking If You Felt It: Latest Earthquakes

Having experienced everything from little tremors to violent shaking, I know what it is like to live in an earthquake zone. Hiding below a large table or under the sturdy doorframe, and at times with the

Nirmala Ramprasad

Jul 30, 2015

Community Rock Star Round Up

Around this month’s Communities Theme, the DigitalGov team thought we’d round up your community rock stars. These are people in your communities who’ve gone above and beyond, who’ve contributed content, organized events, participated in developing toolkits and more.

Alycia Piazza

Jul 30, 2015

Picking Up the “Slack” for Team Communication

You have a question about a project. You ping a coworker, who texts another colleague, who emails a listserv and receives 3 responses. And the problem is: where will your supervisor find the answer next month, when someone else asks the same question? Corralling

Ashley Wichman

Jul 30, 2015

Challenge Module 1: Prize History, Prize Theory and What Makes a Good Prize

Two powerhouses in the Challenge and Prize community came together at GSA for the first in a seven-part learning series recently. Chris Frangione, Vice President of Prize Development for the XPrize and Alexis Bonnell, Innovation Evangelist at USAID offered insights

Judy Romano

Jul 29, 2015

Solve Federal IT Problems Through Cross-Collaboration

39 participants. 17 agencies. 6 months. Earlier this year, the CIO Council launched the IT Solutions Challenge, an initiative to engage GS 9-13 level rising stars in the IT and IT acquisition community. Participants identify shared challenges, those challenges where you might say to yourself, “if only we could [x], life would be so much

Kendrick Daniel

Jul 28, 2015

Trends on Tuesday: People Over 55 Soon to Be Mobile-Majority Users

In July, comScore released a research paper, The Global Mobile Report: How Multi-Platform Audiences & Engagement Compare in the U.S., Canada, UK and Beyond, covering a lot of areas from smartphone penetration to Android vs. Apple preferences.

Will Sullivan

Jul 28, 2015

The Content Corner: Supporting Your Content

This column revolves mostly around content creation and strategy, but an overlooked part of the content lifecycle is helping people find your content. Your content is made to be seen and without planning for promotion, it may never be found. The methods available to you may vary (wildly) at your agency, so remember your mileage may

Tyrus Manuel

Jul 27, 2015

Free the Data: FEMA’s New Data Visualization Tool

FEMA collects data from disasters. We look at various hazards over time, and a question we get a lot when we’re trying to talk about what can happen is what has happened previously? Providing

Craig Fugate

Jul 24, 2015

CIO Council Releases IT Policy Library

The CIO Council recently published an IT Policy Library database in order to provide agency innovators with a searchable, comprehensive collection of IT reporting and action requirements for federal agencies.

Kendrick Daniel

Jul 24, 2015

Explore Space with Smithsonian’s Chandra X-Ray App

We continue our celebration of American history and legacy this July 2015 with the New Horizons spacecraft’s dramatic flight past the icy dwarf planet Pluto and its moons—momentous in space exploration. Just think about it—New Horizons, a NASA space probe traveled over 3 billion miles to

Nirmala Ramprasad

Jul 23, 2015

PDFs: A Digital Content Detour

The Portable Document Format, or “PDF” file, is one of the staple productions of many communications professionals. It’s compact, prints exactly as formatted, and allows for clean, multiplatform distribution. However, it’s the old “U.S. Route” on the Digital Interstate. Let’s take an average user of a U.S. government website: a 45 year old PC user

Mark Urban

Jul 23, 2015

DigitalGov Summit Recap: How “We, the Techies” Can Effect Change

Who do you need to bring to the table to make a better world? In May, Megan Smith, Chief Technology Officer of the United States, delivered the keynote address at the 2015 DigitalGov Citizen Services Summit. She encouraged attendees to find ways of unlocking potential through collaborations from both within and outside of government. “We

Ashley Wichman

Jul 22, 2015

How the Nationals’ Customer Experience Principles Can Be a Home Run for Agencies

In June, the new Customer Experience Community of Practice (CX-COP) hosted Jonathan Stahl, Executive Director of Ballpark Operations and Guest Experience of the Washington Nationals, to share best practices on how to deliver a great customer experience.

Jacqueline Snee

Rachel Flagg

Jul 22, 2015

An Introduction to HTTPS, by 18F and DigitalGov University

18F uses HTTPS for everything we make, and the U.S. government is in the process of transitioning to HTTPS everywhere. As part of this effort, we’ve recently partnered with DigitalGov University to produce a two-video series introducing the why’s and how’s of HTTPS. In an Introduction to HTTPS for beginners, we cover what happens when

Eric Mill

Gray Brooks

Jul 21, 2015

Trends on Tuesday: GOV.UK Weighs in on Mobile User Habits

England’s Government Digital Service (similar to our own U.S. Digital Services and 18F) did a study of how content on their websites is consumed on mobile and non-mobile devices and learned several key points for a future-focused and

Will Sullivan

Jul 21, 2015

The Content Corner: Determining Your User’s Needs

I recently wrapped up a series of user interviews as part of a review of our judiciary-wide intranet in order to provide better digital services to our customers (and yes, our internal users are our customers, not just the general public).

Tyrus Manuel

Jul 20, 2015

Accelerating the Use of Prizes to Address Tough Challenges

Later this year, the Federal government will celebrate the fifth anniversary of Challenge.gov, a one-stop shop that has prompted tens of thousands of individuals, including engaged citizens and entrepreneurs, to participate in more than 400 public-sector prize competitions with more

Tom Kalil

Jenn Gustetic

Jul 20, 2015

DigitalGov Podcast: Leaders Come and Go, But Your Customers Will Remain

To provide great customer service, bring your agency’s customers to the table. This is one of many insights recently offered by Stephanie Thum, Vice President of Customer Experience at the Export-Import Bank of the United States.

Ashley Wichman

Jul 17, 2015

Is It Time to Try Medium? New Federal-Friendly Terms of Service

What is Medium? Good question. Is it a publishing platform, a social network, a distribution channel, a 21st century version of the op-ed page, or something else? With a continuously evolving feature-set, Medium defies simple classification. Perhaps it is best to think about Medium in terms of what you can accomplish with it. With a

Dana Allen-Greil

Jul 17, 2015