The U.S. federal government’s user experience community of practice is hosting a three-day virtual UX summit June 22-24.
How NASA and the open source community helped a helicopter achieve lift-off on Mars
GitHub has a great write-up of how open source community contributions played a key role in helping NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter achieve lift-off on Mars.
Center for Plain Language publishes 2020 federal government plain language report card
The Center for Plain Language published its 2020 federal website plain language report card.
Making government research more inclusive
Canadian Digital Service design research team members Martha Edwards and Anne-Marie Mulumba share great insights into how people in government are making their research more inclusive.
Veterans Affairs publishes ‘government’s first-ever employee experience journey map’
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs published what it says is the government’s first-ever employee experience journey map.
Design thinking in the intelligence community
The NavalX Centers for Adaptive Warfighting hosted a discussion on design thinking with Office of the Director of National Intelligence Director of Lateral Innovation Katherine Tobin. Tobin shared her design thinking journey and how ODNI incorporates it into its work.
U.S government publishes human-centered design evaluation and buying guide
The U.S. General Services Administration published an Evaluation and Buying Guide to “help federal agencies seeking Human-Centered Design (HCD) services to improve Customer Experience (CX).”
Rethinking personas in government
Effective use of personas must be taken seriously when designing truly inclusive public services.
Serving California: Angie Quirarte
Angie Quirarte is a behind-the-scenes hero for the state of California, leading on issues such as public sector workforce recruitment and retention, public data, creating a user-friendly government, improving internal government processes and more.
A few ways to fix a government
IBM Research Manager Charity Wayua’s “A few ways to fix a government” talk is an inspirational example of how government (and its partners) can — when tasked with goals and measurable results — leverage user and data analytics research to successfully create better results for those it serves.
Telling Detroit’s stories
Aaron Foley is Detroit’s first chief storyteller, appointed by Mayor Mike Duggan in April 2017, to help the city go beyond formalized bureaucratic communications and public relations and share the stories that don’t always get heard.
How to be a ‘Start-Up City’
Former Chicago and District of Columbia transportation head Gabe Klein highlights eight lessons leaders should follow when building innovative approaches to better cities in his book “Start-Up City.”
California seeks chief data officer
The state of California is looking for a chief data officer to “promote the availability and use of data in state government.”
Insights from federal digital design leaders
Ethan Marcotte and Karen McGrane have been on a roll lately featuring federal government design leaders on their Responsive Web Design Podcast.
Say hello to ProudCity
Today, I’m excited to announce a new civic startup, ProudCity, founded by me and three others, committed to making it easier for cities to stand up and manage municipal digital services.
9 reasons why Vets.gov is the future of federal government websites
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs released a beta version of Vets.gov, and it’s the future of federal government digital development.
California commission wants the state to design a better government
A California bipartisan oversight committee, the Little Hoover Commission, has issued recommendations on how the state can bring a more customer-centric government to residents and visitors.
Romulus wants to make constituent relationship management more delightful
Seneca Systems CEO Chris Maddox shares the inspiration behind the new constituent relationship management system, Romulus.
Elon Musk as government innovator
After reading Ashlee Vance’s new Elon Musk biography, I find myself wondering whether we should really worry about bad government websites, and instead chalk them up as inspiration for those who will change the world.
USDS publishes design standards for federal government websites
The U.S. Digital Service has soft-launched new U.S. Web Design Standards to “create consistency and beautiful user experiences across U.S. federal government websites.”
What should governments require for their open data portals?
My fundamental suggestion is that government-run open data platforms be fully open source. There are a number of technical and procurement reasons for this, which I will address in the future, but I believe strongly that if the platform you’re hosting data on doesn’t adhere to the same licensing standards you hold for your data, you’re only doing open data half right.
White House moves to a more integrated, mobile-friendly blog
The White House continues to roll out a better mobile experience with a newly-designed White House blog.
San Francisco publishes year two plan, continues to lead on open data
San Francisco’s DataSF team continues to quietly and effectively demonstrate what an efficient, holistic and personable approach to open data looks like with the announcement of its year two plan and retrospective of the past year.
Re-thinking the whitehouse.gov homepage
Starting with its homepage, the White House is moving to a more mobile-friendly design.
USAspending.gov gets an official GitHub repo, feedback loop
For those unsatisfied with the recent USAspending.gov re-launch and would like to submit public feedback, there’s now an official GitHub repo for that.
It’s time for a national chief data officers council
As momentum around appointing public sector chief data officers grows, it’s time for the federal government to get ahead of the curve and create a formal chief data officers council similar to, but more inclusive, proactive and public than the already-established U.S. Chief Information Officers Council.
U.S. Department of Energy has a new chief data officer
According to a U.S. Project Open Data GitHub pull request, it appears the U.S. Department of Energy has named Dave Dutton as its chief data officer.
Talk to the hand: New Covington logo breaks government convention
I’m a huge fan of government re-branding to modernize away from the antiquated look of the traditional seal, mostly because I believe it can play a huge role in citizen sentiment and how employees see themselves and their roles as public servants.
Philadelphia launches alpha city website
The new site, located at alpha.phila.gov, is powered by WordPress with a custom theme that hopefully the city will open source at some point in the future.
City icons and Vocativ’s livability index
Vocativ published its 2014 Livability Index of the 35 best cities for people 35 and under, and the best part of it is the montage of city icons they created for the piece.
With BlueLight, there’s a 911 app for that
BlueLight founder and CEO Preet Anand shares his vision for re-inventing 911.
A new way to write to the White House
The White House has officially released the write version of the “We the People” application programming interface that now allows developers to feed data back into the petition platform via third-party applications.
Jan. 10: Celebrate your city on CityCamp Day
To celebrate the fifth anniversary of CityCamp, we’re encouraging cities across the world to celebrate CityCamp Day on January 10, 2015.
Big IT vendors, civic hackers and the future of ‘Smart Cities’
Much like “green” has done for the sustainability movement, the term “smart cities” has brought as much skepticism as enthusiasm for an ambiguous, over-marketed term used to describe the end product of the new urbanist movement.
DHS report outlines challenges, opportunities of open source in government
The report emphasizes the importance of case studies to highlight open source execution within government, bringing more awareness to support and warranty options, simplify code release process and increase education around license guidance and procurement.
Help get USDA to lead with APIs when it comes to America’s parks
As part of this work I’m always on the look out for valuable public assets across city, state and federal government, and help make sure the conversations around these assets always include application programming interfaces, so that we aren’t just building web and mobile applications in silos, and limiting the potential for public access by individuals and small businesses.
Analytics and outcome-based government
Michael Flowers shares insights into his time as the former New York City chief analytics officer at the NYC Office of Data Analytics under Mayor Michael Bloomberg at the 2014 Code for America Summit.
Defaulting to open: A foundation for data-driven decisions
San Francisco Chief Data Officer Joy Bonaguro shares her vision for the city’s open data future at the 2014 Code for America Summit.
Doubling down on government technology
We’ve recently seen an uptick in venture capital interest around government and civic technology startups, but before we enthusiastically celebrate these investments, we must ask ourselves whether this potential bubble will truly reshape government IT or simply leave us five years from now in the same place we are today.
Register for Data Transparency 2014
The Data Transparency Coalition will host Data Transparency 2014 on Tuesday, September 30, in Washington, D.C.
White House wants feedback on its open government website
The White House is looking for input on how it can improve the open government section of its website, located at whitehouse.gov/open.
Got natural disasters? There’s an open source emergency preparedness toolkit for that
If you live in the San Francisco Bay Area and woke up at to a 6.1 earthquake at 3:30 a.m. this morning, now would be a good time for citizens and local governments everywhere to take a look at City72 Toolkit.
How you can help build a more agile government
Earlier this year, I began doing research work with CivicActions on agile development in government — who was doing it, how and what the needs were to successfully get it deployed.
Feds didn’t say agile development contributed to Healthcare.gov failure
A recent VentureBeat headline misleadingly suggests agile development practices were the cause of Healthcare.gov’s “failure.”
An open data blueprint for the U.S. Department of Commerce
U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker recently announced the Department of Commerce will hire its first-ever chief data officer. I wanted to make sure that when this new and extremely important individual assumes their role, they have my latest thoughts on how to make the Department of Commerce developer portal the best it possibly can be, because this will be the driving force behind the rapidly expanding API driven economy.
Dan Morgan starts first day as first U.S. DOT chief data officer
What has been known for weeks and already publicly celebrated by open data insiders was today formally acknowledged by the U.S. Department of Transportation in a Twitter retweet: Dan Morgan is the agency’s new chief data officer.
Two SF civic innovation programs now accepting fellowship applications
The San Francisco Mayor’s Office of Civic Innovation and Fuse Corps are now accepting fellowship applications for a total of five fellowship opportunities.
New GovFresh logo
Just an update that we’ve made slight modifications to the GovFresh logo.
San Diego seeks chief data officer
If you like open data and great weather, the city of San Diego is looking for a performance and analytics chief data officer.
With Screendoor, DOBT makes simple web forms key to better government
After Adam Becker and Clay Johnson completed their stints as White House Presidential Innovation Fellows working together on Project RFP-EZ, they were inspired to scale IT simplicity so that governments everywhere would no longer have to deal with traditional mediocre software solutions most legacy vendors provide.