News and Updates

APIs and User Experience go together like gummi bears and ice cream. An API is a product just like a car, a website or a ballpoint pen. It’s designed to help someone do something. Products

Videographers in the federal government come from a variety of backgrounds—commercial television news, the armed services or broadcast/film school. Many of these individuals continue to hone their craft through the years, adopting new technology, taking training courses, learning new editing software,

I’ll be honest: When I had only heard the name of the new mobile app from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, I thought, “Interesting — another dieting app to add to my phone.” So wrong was I. In fact, the only way you’re going to lose weight with this traveler’s app is if you

On Thursday, July 17, the FCC’s Accessibility and Innovation Initiative will host a public event called “Accessing Social Media.” The purpose is to promote collaborative, cross-sector problem-solving on how to produce and consume accessible social media, considering authoring tools, client apps, and best practices for various

We are thrilled to share an update from our competition colleagues at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. The third annual comprehensive report detailing the use of prizes and

DigitalGov Search recently rolled out a new open source technology stack, which gives the team access to real-time analytics and dashboards to monitor search trends.

Two years ago, federal agencies were set on a fast track to create a 21st century digital government. The Federal Digital Strategy served up a heaping set of deliverables on a tight timeline.

Here’s a statistic that might surprise you: 28% of Chief Information Officer (CIO)s in the private sector admitted in a survey they don’t have a plan for mobile technology. They cited compliance issues as a factor preventing their organizations from taking

Smartphones, tablets, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, not to mention your agency’s desktop website, are all clamoring for information, but sliced and diced in different ways. How can you make your content adaptive for efficient delivery to all of these mediums? Structured content and open content models can help you create content that

This week the SocialGov Community took the step of recruiting a Digital Engagement Knowledge Manager, and I am excited to join the team through the innovative new Open Opportunities Program. At this point, though, you may be asking—is there really so much information out there that it needs to be

The National Day of Civic Hacking is actually a weekend. An awe-inspiring two days of collaborative work where coders, designers, writers, innovative thinkers,

It’s disturbing to think about, but essential for all of us to know about: The sexual abuse and exploitation of children. When it comes to rescuing those children and investigating, locating and arresting suspected child predators, “it’s a race against the clock,” says U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Acting Director John Sandweg. Luckily there’s

“In business, words are words, explanations are explanations, promises are promises, but only performance is reality.” Harold S. Geneen As government contact center managers, we dream of having contact center contractors who regularly exceed our performance expectations. One way to motivate your contractor to excel is by including financial incentives/disincentives directly into your contact center contract.

Government agencies are always looking for better ways to connect with their audiences while making more effective use of existing (or shrinking) resources. To that end, many agencies—including ours, the National Cancer Institute—have begun to use social media platforms to help serve the communications mission. As these tools have become more widely used, NCI’s Contact

AIDS.gov convenes and is guided by the Federal HIV/AIDS Web Council. The Council includes Web/new media leads, subject matter experts, and communication leads representing HIV programs across the U.S. government. Together we use new media to promote federal programs, policies and resources related to HIV.

It’s no secret, if you want to reach Millennials, mobile is a great way to connect. This generation of tech-natives is adept at accessing large amounts of information held in the palms of their hands. However, their information overload also poses a challenge for agencies

After leading a complex effort to crowdsource ideas to solve a problem facing your agency, the last thing you want to hear is that the innovative solutions you received don’t actually help remedy the issue. More than 20 federal innovators recently took part in

Communication professionals pride themselves on coming up with big ideas and big messages. But moving a great idea from conceptualization to execution can be challenging, especially when you want to keep your budget in check. Storyboards can greatly assist in this process, a strategy I found to be critical to the success of a new

The Architect of the Capitol’s new app gives users the ability to view the collection of statues donated by the 50 states in its Guide to the National Statuary Hall Collection of State Statues, available on iOS. Visiting the capitol? The app

At the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) we use sharing buttons on our website to help people share content from web pages with their colleagues and friends. With one click, a user can post a page’s link to popular social networking sites or send it via email. The article To Use