Blogs

Government teams are improving digital experiences every day. Gain insights from their stories, case studies, and innovations.

GitHub for Government Recap

As the definition of “developer” has grown and expanded, GitHub has become a place where anyone can do simple collaboration. It’s a free social network that tracks changes to any data, not just code, where stakeholders and developers can work on the same data simultaneously. Project Open Data, a cross-agency initiative developed by the White House,

Mar 05, 2014

Global mobile data traffic almost doubled in 2013 according to Cisco’s recent Traffic Forecast Update. There are a number of other mobile data traffic trends in the report, but here are five trends we wanted to highlight today: Global mobile data traffic grew 81 percent in 2013. Global mobile data traffic reached 1.5 exabytes per

Mar 04, 2014

DigitalGov Search: Cache Me If You Can

Slowness Hurts Web Pages Have you ever been frustrated when visiting a Web page that doesn’t load quickly? Have you ever left a slow Web page before it finished loading? You’re not alone. Several recent studies have quantified customers’ frustration with slow Web pages. Customers now expect results in the

Mar 03, 2014

Mobile Code Sharing Catalog Snippet: BioZen

Interested in building an app that incorporates biofeedback data from multiple wearable body sensors? Check out BioZen, available on the Mobile Code Sharing Catalog, one of the first mobile applications to provide users with live biofeedback

Feb 28, 2014

Mobile Tester: Usability Short Reads: Learning from others’ mistakes

Over the last 18 months, the intrepid Mobile Gov team has worked with you to prioritize a set of guidelines and recommendations for good mobile user experience; categories are ranked by priority and tagged by user experience concepts such as information architecture, content, functionality, design, trustworthiness, and user context. The primary purpose of this set is

Feb 28, 2014

DigitalGov Search is Now Responsive

We’ve redesigned our mobile search results page. It now uses a card-based design and is responsive. This design gives searchers a more consistent user experience and access to the results anytime, anywhere, and on any device. Take a sneak peek of the new responsive results page.

Feb 27, 2014

Finding Inspiration Through Design Constraints

If you could only communicate through a business-card sized screen, what would you say and how would you say it? In which ways could people respond to your message? These are some of the questions constraints lead us to ask, and the reason why constraints are so great

Feb 27, 2014

Double Digit Crowdsourcing Competitions Launch in February

This is a phenomenal month for federal challenge and prize competitions with 12 new programs launched in February. The challenge.gov platform usually averages four to six new challenges a month, so we’re excited to see the year start off with a big push to engage citizens in creative

Feb 26, 2014

Department of Education goes responsive (again) with FSA’s new Financial Aid Toolkit

Money for college? It’s never too early — or too late, for that matter — to start schooling oneself in the possibilities of federal financial aid. Following in the footsteps of their StudentAid.gov website, the digital team at Ed.gov’s Federal Student Aid (FSA) closed out 2013 with the launch of FinancialAidToolkit.ed.gov, a “sister” site featuring

Feb 26, 2014

Open for Innovation in DigitalGov!

There’s tons of great work and innovations happening in federal agencies, and it is happening fast. They are embracing the 21st-century citizen expectations and working to deliver anytime, anywhere, any device services and information to the public.

Feb 26, 2014

Welcome to the Future of Census.gov

If you have ever visited census.gov, you know that sorting through the vast array of information about America’s people, places and economy can be daunting. Based on customer research and feedback we collected and analyzed over time, we heard loud and clear

Feb 24, 2014

Tumblr: A Flexible Social Media Platform

When HHS’s Katie Gorscak was looking for a way to share Stopbullying.gov’s information with teenagers, she looked at her options on social media. New reports seem to come out regularly talking about how teens are fleeing “traditional” social media sites, but Gorscak knew her target audience

Feb 24, 2014

Lights, Camera, Action! 7 Tips to Run a Successful Video Challenge

Not sure how to craft a video challenge that will result in the creative solutions your agency is looking for? Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered. Jason Crusan from NASA and Tammi Marcoullier from Challenge.gov joined a recent DigitalGov University webinar to share best practices and hurdles in running video competitions. We’ve recapped their advice and key

Feb 20, 2014

IRS Offers Updated ‘IRS2Go’ App

There’s no way to sugar-coat it. It’s that time again. Tax time. And just in (tax)time, the Internal Revenue Service has updated its handy IRS2Go Mobile App for iPhone/iTouch and Android phones. The 2014 version of the app offers a more elegant and streamlined visual experience — and a

Feb 20, 2014