Signal

AGL, which has since evolved into Technologists for the Public Good, was the testing ground for an experiment in what I now call an open civic community of practice.

July 28, 2022

A meta tag on USAJOBS posts could substantially increase the visibility of federal government job opportunities

One simple piece of code to the U.S. government's employment website could go a long way in increasing social media reach.

July 1, 2022

How California gets a return on its $25 million innovation investment

Time for Alpha 2.0.

March 21, 2022

Father-son civic hacking: Open Data Day 2022

Kickstarting USA.GovFresh, beginning with Federal Register open data.

March 10, 2022

Government open data in 2022

Once thriving, now barely surviving. Ideas on how we can breathe more life into it.

March 4, 2022

Time for government to stop using Medium

A publishing platform that says it's an environment open to everyone doesn't provide equal access to all.

February 17, 2022

Civic hacking for '100% .gov'

Re-imagining the government domain name registry experience.

January 21, 2022

Hacking the chief data officers playbook

Making it more accessible, and suggestions for the CDO Council.

January 14, 2022

Coding a COVID-19 dashboard (with my 13 year-old son)

Adventures in father-son civic hacking.

January 11, 2022

What government can learn from Olay

Olay’s Open to Change advertising campaign is something government should take note of.

November 15, 2021

Public service bravery: Michael Lewis' The Premonition shows what it takes to fight a pandemic

In The Premonition, as he tends to do, Michael Lewis turns everyday people willing to tell us what we need to hear at a critical societal moment into a cast of characters we can't help but cheer on, but also leave wishing the world had more brave voices such as these.

July 6, 2021

Open security controls: NIST officially releases OSCAL 1.0.0

The National Institute of Standards and Technology officially released Open Security Controls Assessment Language 1.0.0, a federal government effort to standardize authorization packages and streamline security reviews using a common machine-readable language.

June 8, 2021

Register for the government 2021 User Experience Summit

The U.S. federal government's user experience community of practice is hosting a three-day virtual UX summit June 22-24.

June 7, 2021

Buy this book: 'A Civic Technologist's Practice Guide'

Cyd Harrell's "A Civic Technologist's Practice Guide" is the book we've always needed, but wouldn't have been possible until now thanks in no small part to the unparalleled experience she's accrued over the years working at Code for America, 18F, California Administrative Office of the Courts, and other service design-focused environments inside and outside of public service.

May 15, 2021

Space Force outlines its vision for a digital service

The U.S. Space Force has outlined its vision for a digital service.

May 6, 2021

In-Q-Tel wants to talk to people interested in open source software and national security

In-Q-Tel, the innovation and venture arm of the U.S. intelligence community, has published several open source themed posts recently, including "Toward Secure Code Reuse" and, most recently, one about GitGeo, a tool it developed that analyzes the geography of developers associated with a GitHub repository.

April 28, 2021

The federal government is giving away free .gov domains to all official U.S. government entities

The DotGov Program, which administers .gov top-level domain assignments to official U.S. government entities, now offers the service for free.

April 27, 2021

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.

April 19, 2021

Biden nominates Robin Carnahan to be next GSA administrator

President Biden has nominated digital government innovator Robin Carnahan as the next administrator of General Services Administration.

April 6, 2021

Backpacks, bean bags and blue jeans: My take on 'tech titans,' 18F and USDS

Apparently, in 2021, there are people who still refuse to recognize the holistic, energetic and sustainable impact 18F and the U.S. Digital Services has -- and continues to have -- on keeping the federal government digital services industry and profession relevant and attractive to highly-qualified designers, developers, product and project managers and anyone generally interested in well-functioning U.S. Government technology.

February 22, 2021

Working in public

February 17, 2021

Roadmapping government websites

What's great about about the public roadmap, particularly for large government institutions, is that they show there is a plan, but they are also a powerful demonstration of civic openness.

February 1, 2021

Virtual queuing and appointment startup Whyline raises $1.25M from e.Republic Ventures

Virtual queuing and appointment startup Whyline has completed a $1.25 million pre-series A round led by e.Republic Ventures.

January 28, 2021

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.

January 13, 2021

GSA: Distributed work makes government teams happier, more productive and inclusive

The U.S. General Services Administration's 18F has a great post on why distributed government is critical to highly-functioning public service teams, emphasizing a 'distributed first' approach to work.

January 12, 2021

Facebook announces Roy Austin will lead new internal civil rights organization

Facebook announced that Roy L. Austin, Jr., will join the company as vice president of civil rights and deputy general counsel to establish the company’s new internal civil rights organization.

January 11, 2021

Mozilla: Here's how to proactively manage social media bad actors, including politicians

In the aftermath of the deplatforming of Donald Trump, Mozilla offers concrete advice on how to best deal with bad actors -- including heads of states and politicians -- on social media platforms, beyond just suspending or permanently removing them.

January 10, 2021

Twitter permanently suspends @realDonaldTrump

Twitter announced it has permanently suspended Donald Trump's Twitter account.

January 8, 2021

Terms of use: Applying a human rights framework to social media platforms

To better demarcate the lines between freedom of speech and censorship, the Electronic Frontier Foundation calls for social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram to apply a human rights framework to their terms of use.

January 8, 2021

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.

January 7, 2021

2021 GovTech 100 list highlights key companies helping power local government, but there's still a lot of room for open innovation

Government Technology released its annual GovTech 100 list for 2021 and, while there are newcomers to the list, there is still a lot of room for new innovation.

January 6, 2021

U.S. Air Force is doing a brand review 'to ensure an inclusive and professional environment'

The Department of the Air Force has directed commanders to conduct a comprehensive review of official and unofficial unit emblems, morale patches, mottos, nicknames, coins and other forms of unit recognition and identity to ensure an inclusive and professional environment within 60 days from Dec. 23, 2020.

January 5, 2021

New DOTGOV Online Trust in Government Act gives governments easier access to official .gov domains

I've been an advocate of U.S.-based government organizations having .gov domains for quite sometime, so it's great to see Congress has made this easier and potentially cheaper to achieve.

January 5, 2021

Cori Zarek named new executive director for Georgetown's Beeck Center for Social Impact + Innovation

The Beeck Center for Social Impact + Innovation at Georgetown University today announced that Cori Zarek will take over as executive director.

January 5, 2021

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.

January 4, 2021

GAO publishes agency data governance assessment, recommendations to Chief Data Officers Council

The U.S. Government Accountability Office published a report on data governance progress across four federal agencies.

January 4, 2021

The Government We Need: How government can make public budgeting more participatory

Shari Davis talks with The Government We Need about building a more inclusive, democratic public budgeting process.

August 5, 2020

The Government We Need: How government can support climate action

The Government We Need talks with Rick Cole about local government's role in sustainability.

July 27, 2020

Defense Department has more than one million personnel working remotely, have 'increased their productivity'

The U.S. Department of Defense is publicly sharing its gradual transformation to distributed government teams and said there are more than one million personnel working remotely.

July 27, 2020

How to watch the historic SpaceX NASA flight launch

Liftoff for the much-hyped SpaceX test flight of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program is scheduled for Wednesday, May 27, at 4:33 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time.

May 26, 2020

Good government services

In their new book "Good Services: How to design services that work," former UK Government Design Director Lou Downe offers the public sector an invaluable playbook to delivering government services that are in inclusive and intentional.

May 26, 2020

Rethinking bail

TED Radio Hour host Manoush Zomorodi's conversation with The Bail Project's Robin Steinberg is incredibly insightful and inspiring. Steinberg shares her work supporting those who can't afford to pay cash bail, which ultimately leads to a downward spiral of injustice.

May 12, 2020

NASA will host a virtual COVID-19 hackathon in partnership with European, Japanese space agencies

NASA will host a virtual COVID-19 hackathon May 30 to 31, 2020, in partnership with the European Space Agency and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.

May 11, 2020

RAND report offers insights into second generation open source intelligence

The RAND Corporation published Defining Second Generation Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) for the Defense Enterprise, a thoroughly informative report on how the intelligence community can better define and leverage technology to improve its approach to open source intelligence.

May 6, 2020

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.

May 5, 2020

Defense Department launches digital COVID-19 symptom checker

The U.S. Department of Defense has launched an online COVID-19 symptom checker at MySymptoms.mil.

May 4, 2020

U.S. intelligence community releases annual transparency report

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence released its annual transparency report.

April 30, 2020

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)."

April 27, 2020

USAID seeks chief technology officer

The U.S. Agency for International Development is looking for a new chief technology officer.

April 17, 2020

Governments now have access to a centralized resource of open source coronavirus projects

New America has launched the Pandemic Response Repository that will serve as a centralized location for open source projects aimed at helping governments respond to the coronavirus pandemic.

April 7, 2020

Free webinar: 'Quickly Shifting to Distributed Teams in Government'

To support government teams quickly shifting to distributed work during the COVID-19 pandemic, CivicActions will host a free webinar — repeated daily the week of March 16 — to share best practices and answer questions from the government community at large. Topics to be covered include operations, communications, security and productivity in a distributed work environment.

March 12, 2020

Distributed teams are critical to the future success of digital government services

We’re at the point in the organizational and civic evolutionary cycle where distributed teams can and should play a critical role in building highly-effective digital government service teams.

February 26, 2020

GitHub opens up about its relationship with ICE

In a post on the GitHub blog, CEO Nat Friedman publicly addressed the company's business relationship with U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement, its opinion on the current administration's immigration policy and "the principles by which we make decisions in these areas."

October 9, 2019

TSA seeks chief innovation officer

The U.S. Transportation Security Administration is looking for an executive-level chief innovation officer.

October 8, 2019

NSF will fund $120 million to advance artificial intelligence innovation

The National Science Foundation announced $120 million in funding for a new organization -- the National Artificial Intelligence Research Institutes -- "that will significantly advance research in AI and accelerate the development of transformational, AI-powered innovation."

October 8, 2019

The Government We Need: How government can find its purpose

The Government We Need talks with Brian Elms about how government can ask the right questions and find its true public service purpose.

October 7, 2019

NSA launches new cybersecurity directorate to 'prevent and eradicate threats to national security systems and critical infrastructure'

The National Security Agency announced the creation of a new fifth domain-focused internal organization that will "work to prevent and eradicate threats to national security systems and critical infrastructure, with an initial focus on the defense industrial base and the improvement of our weapons’ security."

October 1, 2019

Winning 'The Shadow War'

Whether it's online, on land, underwater or in space, CNN national security correspondent Jim Sciutto's "The Shadow War: Inside Russia's and China's Secret Operations to Defeat America" offers ominous insights into how the United States' key adversaries are changing the dynamics of national security.

September 29, 2019

UK will pilot AI government procurement guidelines co-designed with World Economic Forum

The United Kingdom Government announced it will pilot newly-developed artificial intelligence procurement guidelines it co-designed with the World Economic Forum.

September 25, 2019

NSA challenges students to test their cyber skills in mock national security exercise

The National Security Agency will host a “cyber-challenge similar to those that regularly threaten national security,” open to students at any U.S. based academic institution. The exercise will run from September 20, 2019 to January 10, 2020.

September 23, 2019

Food Safety 2.0: FDA shares its vision for a digital, transparent food safety system

In an interview with the agency, the Food and Drug Administration Deputy Commissioner Frank Yiannas discussed its latest efforts to "leverage new and emerging technologies to prevent contamination and rapidly trace the origin of a tainted food to its source."

September 17, 2019

'The woeful state of government technology'

San Francisco Chief Digital Services Officer Carrie Bishop published an excellent commentary piece that touches on several issues we in the digital government industry don't talk much about, or at all.

September 16, 2019

White House adds 'agile and responsive' security practices to trusted internet connections updates

The White House announced updates to the federal government Trusted Internet Connections initiative with the intent to empower agencies with security practices that aim to remove barriers to modern technology adoption.

September 12, 2019

New center wants to help Congress grok deep space, deep fakes

The U.S. Government Accountability Office launched a new Center for Strategic Foresight to help Congress better understand issues related to emerging notorious technologies, such as deep space and deep fakes, that impact a well-functioning democracy.

September 12, 2019

GAO tells Defense Department to 'fully implement' open source pilot program

The U.S. Government Accountability Office released a report assessing the lackluster status of the Defense Department's open source pilot program, saying that until the agency effectively implements this, "the department will not be positioned to take advantage of significant cost savings and efficiencies."

September 10, 2019

United Nations digital economy report gives comprehensive insight into global emerging tech trends and the future impact on us all

The United Nations published its 2019 Digital Economy Report that is a comprehensive must-read for civic leaders who want to understand how emerging technologies will impact the global labor market, security, privacy, economy and more.

September 6, 2019

Policy hackathon in SF to address U.S., European city challenges

A policy hackathon will be held in San Francisco on September 24 to "tackle problems brought by cities from the U.S. and Europe."

August 27, 2019

How civic hackers helped California's DMV get digital momentum

CivicDMV and the Code for America Brigades helped inspire DMV to "unlock" California’s DMV Web Services.

August 26, 2019

The Government We Need: How we can code a better government

The Government We Need talks with Code for America founder Jen Pahlka about how technology can be a force for civic change.

August 22, 2019

Intelligence community names privacy, civil liberties leaders

ODNI and CIA named new leaders of their respective privacy, civil liberty units.

August 21, 2019

New GovPress update

After a long hiatus, GovPress -- the WordPress theme for government -- has been updated.

August 19, 2019

A playbook for government as a platform

There seems to be a playbook for all things digital government, and now there's the "Government as a Platform Playbook" that provides deeper insight into the wonky word technologists often use to describe a more exponential approach to government service delivery.

August 9, 2019

Democracy and 'The Great Hack'

The new Netflix documentary, The Great Hack, is an eye-opening account of how voter and social media profile data, particularly from Facebook, combined with a sophisticated, incendiary digital media campaign, can undermine democracy, as we saw happen with Brexit and the 2016 presidential campaign.

July 27, 2019

The Government We Need: How we can bring more diversity into elected office

The Government We Need talks with Run for Something’s Sarah Horvitz about the changing face of local politics and how we can bring more diversity into elected office.

July 26, 2019

In-Q-Tel explains explainable artificial intelligence

The intelligence community's venture capital arm, In-Q-Tel, published a helpful primer on explainable artificial intelligence.

July 26, 2019

Pineapple or pepperoni? Homeland Security's pizza analogy hopes to educate the public on foreign interference of elections

Because "responding to foreign interference requires a whole of society approach," the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has published resources that help educate the public on ways hackers can impact U.S. elections.

July 23, 2019

Government-funded report on government-funded research not accessible to the people who funded it

A federally-funded grant that researched the impact of government-funded research on innovation, such as private-sector intellectual property and inventions, is inaccessible to most of the people who funded it.

July 22, 2019

Intelligence community creates executive role to lead U.S. election security efforts

The Director of National Intelligence announced the creation of a new DNI executive position focused specifically on election threats. The new position will be led by Shelby Pierson, who previously served as DNI election security crisis manager during the 2018 midterm elections.

July 19, 2019