If government truly wants to transform digital services and effectively serve the public at scale, it must start with how it attracts and retains top technology talent.
For and with the people: An introduction to government digital service
As the general public increasingly expects the civic user experience to be as refined as the ones we have with our consumer electronics, digital service delivery has become a priority for governments locally and globally.
Benchmarking U.S. government websites
Earlier this year, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation published an assessment of federal government websites that includes rankings around page load speeds, mobile friendliness, Domain Name System Security Extensions, Secure Sockets Layer and accessibility.
Advice to Jared Kushner and the new White House Office of American Innovation
With the help of GSA and the brand power of USA, the opportunity to truly scale impact is endless.
Presidential Innovation Fellows made permanent through bipartisan TALENT Act
As of 20 January, President Obama signed the TALENT Act of 2017 (H.R.39) into law as one of his last acts as President.
White House makes open source official, will launch Code.gov to share U.S. government software
The White House released an official Federal Source Code policy that green lights the use and free distribution of software code developed for and by the U.S. Government.
Government IT lobbyists play key role in blocking federal technology innovation
Government Technology’s Jason Shueh finally brings to light the core impetus surrounding backlash against 18F efforts to fix federal government technology development and procurement practices.
If Clinton is president, she’ll expand USDS, federal open source and open data efforts
Hillary Clinton released her technology and innovation agenda that promises to expand the U.S. Digital Service and agency-specific digital teams, encourage the continued adoption of open source and open data and bring a more user-friendly approach to federal government operations.
GAO needs a better digital strategy. Here’s how 18F and USDS can help.
The U.S. Government Accountability Office released a report on the fiscal and administrative state of 18F and the U.S. Digital Service, both established to make federal government websites work better for users, and it appears the agency could use some help from the two on its own site, gao.gov.
Substantive feedback on White House open source policy as comment period extended
The White House extended the Federal Source Code Policy comment period to April 18 and, to date, there there are 147 comments with much of the discussion centered around licensing and security.
U.S. government releases federal open source policy
The White House has published a federal source code policy that requires custom code paid for by the U.S. government be made available to all federal agencies, and a portion be released to the public.
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.
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.
White House joins with 11 cities for ‘Startup in a Day’ initiative to help businesses launch faster
In an effort to help entrepreneurs get businesses legally established without the red tape hassle, the White House, Small Business Administration and National League of Cities are rallying cities to provide simpler online tools and processes for those applying for licenses and permits.
Re-thinking the whitehouse.gov homepage
Starting with its homepage, the White House is moving to a more mobile-friendly design.
How federal agencies can use a little funk to get moving on citizen engagement
The most brilliant viral video of the week is of First Lady Michelle Obama dancing to “Uptown Funk” to promote the fifth anniversary of her childhood obesity “Let’s Move” campaign, and it’s a great opportunity for federal agencies to both support this initiative and promote engagement around their respective citizen services.
Ideas for the new White House chief digital officer
In his announcement Goldman asks citizens (using the hashtag #socialcivics) to share their answers to the question, “How can we — our government and you and your communities — better connect online to make America better?”
The 4 most popular .gov websites aren’t mobile friendly
Despite a digital strategy issued by the White House two years ago calling for more mobile-friendly citizen services, the top four most-visited federal government websites over the past 30 days fail this test according to new analytics numbers released by the General Services Administration.
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. Digital Service opens itself up to the public
After getting some grief for not having a strong public presence, the U.S. Digital Service is beginning to open itself up with a new website, video and Twitter account.
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.
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.
Civic hackers: The White House wants you
The White House is now accepting applications for the 2014 Presidential Innovation Fellows program.
An API strategy for the U.S. government
I was asked to provides some thoughts on what is next for the U.S. government’s application programming interface strategy. I’ve put a lot of thought into it during my work and travels over the last couple months since I’ve left Washington, D.C., and I keep coming back to one thought: strengthen what we have.
Darrell Issa may have just lost the open government vote
With a single subpoena to one of the most admired public servants in America, Congressman Darrell Issa has managed to rankle the ire of open government leaders and alienate a key constituency in a movement he co-founded his own organization around.
White House opens huge opportunity for designers, developers to increase We the People engagement
The White House will soon open a limited beta test to developers on a new We the People Write API that allows third-party applications to submit information to official petitions.
We the People petitioners want access to healthcare.gov source code
A new We the People petition opened Sunday calling for the federal government to make the healthcare.gov source code publicly available “so we may help fix any found issues.”
White House new media team featured on PBS NewsHour
PBS NewsHour features the White House New Media team in a segmented titled Wired White House Looks to Harness New Media.
How open was Obama’s YouTube interview?
Earlier this week, President Obama took questions from YouTube via CitizenTube. The event was part of an effort to crowdsource citizen questions to the president after his State of the Union speech. According to YouTube, 772,350 votes were cast on 14,456 questions from 64,969 people.
5 government sites using Drupal effectively for open government initiatives
By now, most people in the Gov 2.0 community have heard of Drupal, the popular open source social publishing system powering close to 500,000 websites ranging from big government to Britney Spears. Drupal has seen steady growth from its inception as a Belgian grad student’s experiment in 2001 to one of the most heavily used open source content management systems in the world, downloaded by a quarter million people per month. A growing trend the Drupal community is following closely this year is government interest in the platform to further open government initiatives and broaden adoption across government.