News and Updates

To Get Things Done, You Need Great, Secure Tools

To folks new to government, one of the most surprising differences between our work and work in the private sector are the barriers in accessing commercially available software, and commercially available Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) in particular. There are good reasons for these barriers: the government places premiums on considerations such as security, privacy, accessibility, license management,

Dave Zvenyach

Apr 11, 2017

Inspiring Data Forum at the Canadian Space Agency

Last [month], NASA Open Innovation Program Manager Dr. Beth Beck and her team traveled to the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) near Montreal, Canada to attend the Inspiring Data Forum graciously hosted by our Open Data neighbors to the North. The goal of this gathering was to bolster the working relationship between the two Space Agency’s

Jason Duley

Apr 10, 2017

HHS Offers Free Content Models and Drupal Features

Related Event: Create Once, Publish Everywhere Applied—HHS Content Models and Portability, Tuesday, April 18, 2017; register here. Create Once, Publish Everywhere (COPE) The U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) is sharing its content models and their related Drupal features for you to use on your sites. A content model is a representation of types of content

Christen Geiler

Apr 07, 2017

Color in Digital Design

How do we choose color in digital design? In print, we have the Pantone fan and what you see is what you get — as long as your printer is color calibrated. With computer monitors, one does not get such precision, even within one office. So how much time and effort do you spend on color selection?

Angela Y. Smithers

Apr 04, 2017

Engineering the Chaski Relay: A Touchscreen Game at the National Museum of the American Indian

The interactive team at the National Museum of the American Indian saw the chaski story as as a candidate for interactivity and gamification, and an opportunity to bring additional engagement to the museum gallery. With a more focused idea and funding from the Electronic Software Association, the team set out on prototyping and development.

Benjamin Bloom

Mar 31, 2017

A Complete Redesign with You in Mind

We’re excited to launch a complete redesign of USDA.gov featuring stronger visual storytelling components, a more modern user-experience with easy to find services and resources, and to top it off, a completely mobile-friendly design. Through careful planning, thoughtful design, and a primary focus on user experience and usability, we’ve taken the best of government and industry

Peter Rhee

Mar 29, 2017

NASA’s Journey With the U.S. Web Design Standards

The U.S. Web Design Standards were created by the government, for the government. They’re currently implemented on hundreds of government sites, with an audience of more than 26 million monthly users.

Julia Solórzano

Mar 24, 2017

New ITIF Report Inspires a Closer Look at Website Performance and Security—Here Is Where to Begin

The Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF) recently published a report, Benchmarking U.S. Government Websites, that looks at the performance, security, and accessibility of the top 297 government websites.

Digital.gov Team

Mar 24, 2017

Mythbuster’s Guide to Accessibility: What We’ve Learned About 508 Compliance That All Technologists Can Use

Too often, we’ve seen others neglect accessibility because of some common misconceptions that make things difficult. In this post, we’ll debunk these myths, so you can easily create universally accessible content.

Nick Heiner

Mar 22, 2017

Presenting Online Data to Wide-Ranging User Communities

Presenting data online that will serve a wide range of users can be challenging. It requires an understanding of the target users’ needs, interests, and familiarity with the use of data handling tools. This challenge can be especially daunting for government websites that present data for use by the general public. The audience for such

Rhonda A. Pretlow

Mar 20, 2017

Buzzwords for 2017

Along with the New Year comes new buzzwords. Here are some that you are certain to hear about and see this year.

Christen Geiler

Mar 16, 2017

The Data Briefing: Understand Serverless Architecture in Three Minutes

You may have heard of “serverless architecture” or Amazon Web Services (AWS) Lambda product and wondered what is unique about this new buzzword. As with many new digital cloud technologies, serverless architecture could mean two things. It may be applications that are built using third-party cloud applications. Or serverless architectures could be pieces of code

Bill Brantley

Mar 15, 2017

U.S. Web Design Standards Releases Version 1.0

The U.S. Web Design Standards are a library of design guidelines and code to help government developers quickly create trustworthy, accessible, and consistent digital government services. Last month, we announced the 1.0 release of the Standards, a milestone that signals the Standards are a stable, trustworthy resource for government designers and developers. By using the

18F Team

Mar 13, 2017

Letting Go of 85 Percent of Our Email Subscribers

Late last year, Business.USA.gov (BUSA) began transitioning its web presence to USA.gov and with its content, came its social media and email accounts. While transferring ownership of a Twitter account is fairly easy to do from a technical standpoint, transferring email ownership and tools is not. We had to tackle

Victoria Bitzer-Wales

Mar 13, 2017

How to Tell the World War I Story: Make it Personal

We naturally gravitate towards story-telling. It’s part of our human nature that began thousands of years ago, well before the written word. We want to pass down our history and cultures, and we do this by telling stories because they resonate with us. Stories tap into our emotions. They make us feel. They move us

Sarah Herrmann

Mar 09, 2017

The Data Briefing: Finding the New Federal Government Technologists

This week, I want to briefly discuss the human resources challenges in finding the new IT technology workers for the government. As agencies move toward microservices, artificial intelligence chatbots, and deep learning application programming interfaces (APIs), the demand for experts in these fields continues to grow fast. The universities and professional development programs are not

Bill Brantley

Mar 08, 2017

DigitalGov Readers and Subscribers: We Want to Talk to You (Again)

We at DigitalGov want to hear more about you – your job, your role, the challenges you face — all of it — as you work to deliver more secure, effective, and reliable digital services for the public.

Digital.gov Team

Mar 08, 2017

Becoming an Influencer with Your Audience: Quality vs. Quantity of Content

Regardless of the platform, industry or niche, you became a social media influencer in one of two ways: adopting early, or promoting great content.

Julia Jackson

Mar 06, 2017

Webinar Recap: Better, Faster, and More Flexible—U.S. Web Design Standards Update

The Road to Launch Version 1.0 You may have noticed a new, cleaner, and more modern look to some government websites over the last year—these are the web properties that were early adopters of the Draft U.S. Web Design Standards from 18F, the digital services agency which is part of the General Services Administration (GSA).

Lisa Bari

Feb 09, 2017

DigitalGov Year in Review: Our Top Blogs, Resources, and Writers for 2016

DigitalGov had a pretty great year in 2016, and that was largely due to a bevy of talented and dedicated writers from over 50 agencies and departments across all 3 branches of the federal government (Thank you!!!). Below, we’ll review some program highlights from the last year, including our top-viewed articles and resources, and tell you how you, too, can contribute to DigitalGov in 2017.

Toni Bonitto

Feb 03, 2017