Data / Digital.gov

The Data Briefing: The Federal Data Cabinet—Promoting Data Literacy, Cultural Change, and the Federal Data Applications Ecosystem

Oct 5, 2016 | Bill Brantley

Last Wednesday, the White House held the first Open Data Summit to showcase the open data accomplishments of the Obama Administration. One of the highlights was the formation of a government-wide “data cabinet.” Announced by Chief Data Scientist DJ Patil, the data cabinet is essentially a community of practice comprising the Federal agency’s data professionals. As Read »

Exploring Data Portability

Oct 4, 2016 | Alexander Macgillivray, Jay Shambaugh

Summary: We’d like to hear from you on whether and how to increase your ability to get and use your data. Many of us store our email and photos with cloud services companies or track our finances on bank websites instead of in a checkbook register. Our medical records are stored electronically at hospitals and Read »

Vendors and Government Strengthen Partnership at Technology Industry Day

Sep 30, 2016 | Andre Francisco

On September 8th, the General Services Administration (GSA) held a Technology Industry Day to talk to industry leaders about the products and solutions developed by our agency and to hear feedback on how we can better engage industry. We’re thrilled that more than 300 members of the technology industry in person and via the live Read »

NASA: Open Gov Plan 2016 Outline

Sep 29, 2016 | Beth Beck

Here is the outline for our 2016 Open Government Plan. Let us know what you think. We’ve also posted this on GitHub/NASA for your comments: https://github.com/nasa/Open-Gov-Plan-v4. NASA and Open Government NASA is an open government agency based on the founding legislation in the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958, which calls for participation and sharing Read »

The Data Briefing: A New Perspective on the Digital Transformation of Government

Sep 28, 2016 | Bill Brantley

One day, at an unnamed agency, the Outlook server crashed. The server stayed down for the rest of the afternoon. Deprived of email and meeting calendars, employees wandered around trying to remember what meetings they had to attend. Other employees went searching for people who they ordinarily would email. There was confusion that made people Read »

GSA Hosts First-Ever Technology Industry Day in Washington, D.C.

Sep 26, 2016 | GSA Blog Team

Private industry and government came together to find best ways to deliver 21st century technology to federal agencies. On September 8, 2016 Administrator Denise Turner Roth of the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) hosted the first-ever Technology Industry Day to provide a better understanding of GSA’s path to improve the government’s outdated technology systems. The Read »

Our New Center for Enhanced Analytics

Sep 22, 2016 | GAO WatchBlog

Analytics and “big data” seem to be the next frontier in a number of arenas. Data researchers can use the large, real-time data sets that are available today to facilitate scientific discovery, improve the flow of traffic, and increase energy efficiency, among many other things. Last year, the White House appointed the first federal Chief Read »

The Data Briefing: Should U.S. Federal Employees Become Data Science Literate?

Sep 21, 2016 | Bill Brantley

The United Kingdom’s (UK) Digital Service has researched ways to increase data science literacy among the UK public service. Data science literacy goes further than data literacy, in that civil servants will know how to apply data science concepts and methods in their everyday work. I thought it would be useful to share the UK Read »

Analytics Success Series: Health Resources & Services Administration

Sep 20, 2016 | Christy Choi, Mackenzie Cummings, Richard Morey

Health Resources and Services Administration’s Analytics Success: Using Analytics to Reduce Content and Improve User Experience Unlike out-of-town guests, you want your web visitors to stick around. So, if your site continues to see a bounce rate that stubbornly refuses to drop—it’s time to make some changes. That’s exactly what happened to the Health Resources Read »

How Do You Redesign a ‘Dinosaur’? Redesigning an Intranet Site: the Beginning Stages

Sep 19, 2016 | Karla Blaine

Many content managers in the digital world understand the irrepressible desire to improve, fix, edit, add, and move things around. Indeed, it’s our job to nurture this ongoing process to create, update, test, update again. And, repeat! But, what about those sites or pages that seem to never crawl up to the ‘high-priority’ list and Read »

How Much Does It Cost to Go Through FedRAMP?

Sep 16, 2016 | Matt Goodrich

One of the questions we get asked the most at FedRAMP from our vendors is: “How much will it cost me to get through FedRAMP?” One of the reasons this is a hard question to answer is that comparing cloud providers to each other isn’t even like trying to compare apples to oranges – those Read »

Analytics Success Series: USAJOBS

Sep 15, 2016 | Cory Benavente, Dywane Boyd

USAJOBS’ Analytics Success: using analytics to create accurate testing strategies. Accurate testing strategies are crucial to ensure quality products. Hi-fidelity approaches ensure QA efforts are testing in a true-to-life manner, similar to real-world users. Inaccurate, lo-fidelity testing can miss situational bugs that become showstoppers in production. USAJOBS is leveraging the Digital Analytics Program (DAP) to Read »

No Longer an Idea of the Future, Artificial Intelligence Is Here and You Are Probably Already Using It

Sep 15, 2016 | Christen Geiler

It might surprise some of you to know that artificial intelligence (AI) is already in use and a routine part of our daily lives, but we leverage this technology when we use our smartphones or other devices to ask Apple’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana, Google Now, or Amazon’s Alexa a question to get the facts or data we Read »

Analytics Success Series: Federal Trade Commission

Sep 14, 2016 | Chris Noonan Sturm

FTC’s Analytics Success: Making mission-related tasks easier for the user to find In the summer of 2015, members of the Federal Trade Commission’s Office of Public Affairs (OPA) Web team worked with their FTC colleagues to analyze Digital Analytics Program (DAP) Google Analytics data (onsite search queries, landing pages, pageviews, etc.) for FTC.gov. We found Read »

The Data Briefing: Harnessing the Internet of Things and Synthetic Data to Provide Better Flood Warnings and Prevent Veterans Suicides

Sep 14, 2016 | Bill Brantley

Two significant items in federal government data in the last few weeks: The Department of Commerce releases the National Water Model. The National Water Model provides a comprehensive model of river flows so local communities can better prepare for possible flooding events. What is especially amazing about the National Water Model is that it pulls Read »

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