News and Updates

Automatic HTTPS Enforcement for New Executive Branch .gov Domains

HTTPS is a necessary baseline for security on the modern web. Non-secure HTTP connections lack integrity protection, and can be used to attack citizens, foreign nationals, and government staff. HTTPS provides increased confidentiality, authenticity, and integrity that mitigate these attacks.

Eric Mill

Marina Fox

Jan 19, 2017

The Life-Changing Magic of Writing Release Notes

A key part of agile development is constantly shipping new features. The team behind the Federal Election Commission’s (FEC) beta website ships new features at least once every two weeks. Sometimes the features are big, noticeable changes, such as the new home page we recently launched. And other times they’re small (a copy edit, an

Noah Manger

Jan 19, 2017

DigitalGov University in Review: 2016 Training Trends

Thanks to your participation, DigitalGov University (DGU), the events platform for DigitalGov, hosted over 90 events with 6,648 attendees from over 100 agencies across federal, tribal, state, and local governments.

Janelle Thalls

Jan 11, 2017

The Smithsonian’s IPOP Exhibition Framework: Lessons for a Human-Centered Content Approach

The Smithsonian Institution’s Office of Policy and Analysis has another tool to consider for your UX toolbox: IPOP. Though created specifically for museums and physical exhibitions, IPOP is useful for anyone wanting to widen appeal and engagement.

Benjamin Bloom

Dec 08, 2016

Five Lessons Learned During a Content Audit

As part of USAGov’s efforts to provide our audience with the reliable and quality information that they need, this summer, the Health, Education & Benefits (HE&B) topic desk completed its first content audit. Methodology and Results Data informed every step we took. In order to determine which areas to focus on first, the desk gathered

Andrea M. Castelluccio

Dec 05, 2016

In a Marketing Minute: Connecting Teams, Promotions, and Ideas

Every first week of every month, USAGov’s marketing team sends an office-wide email newsletter to give an update on past and current marketing efforts and campaigns. It’s how we try to help keep the rest of the office in the know. The monthly newsletter can spur a content idea, a future marketing endeavor, and act

Victoria Bitzer-Wales

Dec 05, 2016

FIPNet Digital Imaging Partner Guidance Now Available

Guidance for Contributing Digital Content to FDsys (govinfo) is now available on FDLP.gov. Federal Information Preservation Network (FIPNet) digital imaging partners now have guidance documentation for creating and contributing digitally-imaged U.S. Government content to Federal Digital System (FDsys)/govinfo*. The guidance specifications are based on current best practices from the Federal Agency Digitization Guidelines Initiative and

Federal Depository Library Program

Dec 02, 2016

The Future of Technology at GSA

The potential to transform government and impact the lives of Americans is tremendous. Our country needs the government to work well, and technology is the key to that.

GSA Blog Team

Dec 02, 2016

Lessons Learned: Evaluating Video Content

If you were to perform research on the value proposition of training videos, you would notice that opinions are split on their efficacy. Despite all the tools that are out there that can help you evaluate video quality, views, and drop-off, there are some things that should be considered in the analysis of your organization’s

Tim Jakubowski

Dec 01, 2016

I’m taking a break from sorting through dozens of concepts from federal agencies about how they want to use artificial intelligence and virtual reality for citizens in the coming months in order to share with you just some of these groundbreaking initiatives of tomorrow that can be explored at a DigitalGov University workshop this week.

Justin Herman

Nov 30, 2016

The Data Briefing: Why and How to Attend Your First Hackathon

December 9, 2016, will be the 110th anniversary of Admiral Grace Hopper’s birthday. Admiral Hopper was a pioneer in computer programming who created the first compiler and whose ideas lead to the creation of COBOL. An apocryphal legend also credits Admiral Hopper with coining the terms “bug” and “debugging.” The GSA’s IT Digital Service Team

Bill Brantley

Nov 30, 2016

Curate the Best Thinking Available

When I joined the code.gov project, I had just over a month to make an impact on the project. The most pressing work seemed to be defining a software metadata schema — a way for agencies to format the details of the software they’ve built. In August of this year, the Federal Source Code Policy

Theresa Summa

Nov 30, 2016

Health IT Services SIN — Ready to Serve Agencies

This summer I announced the the release of our new Health IT Services Special Item Number (SIN 132–56) on IT Schedule 70. Now, I am happy to report that the SIN has been awarded to 65 highly qualified industry partners — with that number continuing to grow daily as new contracts are being awarded. With such a

Mary Davie

Nov 29, 2016

GSA Presents: Grace Hopper Day Hackathon!

The U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) Digital Service team is excited to be hosting our next agency hackathon on December 9, 2016. Join coders from across the region as we come together in celebration of Grace Hopper’s birthday.

Sara Cope

Nov 28, 2016

Understanding Twitter Quality Filters for Content Strategy

In a move to win back users and improve the company’s image, Twitter introduced quality filters in August. They followed this move in November with an option to mute certain words. These changes will have larger ramifications for federal agencies, who will need to focus on quality of content in order to retain their audience

Julia Jackson

Nov 25, 2016

The Data Briefing: It Takes an Online Community to Digitally Transform an Organization

The open source movement has changed how we develop software, create content, and even do science. Using a community to help complete projects and bring about change has become so ubiquitous in the last ten years that it has even earned a name — crowdsourcing. Crowdsourcing is a powerful tool and is now being used to help

Bill Brantley

Nov 23, 2016

White House Electric Vehicle Datathon: Unlocking New Opportunities through Data

The White House is hosting its first-ever Electric Vehicle Datathon, and nominations for participation are now open. Don’t miss your chance to join the discussion!

Austin Brown

Candace Vahlsing

Nov 22, 2016

Mobile Development and Testing with Chrome Developer Tools

Around Q3, I was looking for way to test the HTML and CSS of an online application that was to be public-facing. At first, my office’s plan was to connect mobile devices to the network owned by federal employees on a volunteer basis for testing.

Angela Y. Smithers

Nov 21, 2016

A New Prize Challenge for Virtual and Augmented Reality Learning Tools

The Administration has launched a new competition for virtual and augmented reality developers to create learning tools to support career and technical education.

Erik Martin

Albert Palacios

Nov 18, 2016

Digging Deep Using the Core Model

The core model is a thinking tool that can be used to get team members from different perspectives (stakeholders, developers, editors, etc.) to start thinking collaboratively. The end goal is that the group will have a common understanding of user needs, business goals, and how different pages should be connected.

Christen Geiler

Nov 18, 2016