Best Practices

C-SCRM Acquisition Community of Practice (ACoP) Interact Site

C-SCRM Acquisition Community of Practice (ACoP) Interact Site—Since the launch of the Cybersecurity Supply Chain Risk Management (C-SCRM) Acquisition Community of Practice (ACoP), GSA and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) have been co-leading an effort to broaden the level of awareness and develop agency maturity in the areas of acquisitions, supply chain risk management, and cybersecurity across the federal government for information communication technology and services (ICTS). To increase C-SCRM awareness and adoption government-wide, the C-SCRM ACoP launched an online collaborative space for the federal government’s IT community and industry to share best practices, ideas, guidance, tools, and expertise needed to implement C-SCRM requirements. Working together as a community and sharing information will help us improve our cybersecurity posture across all levels of government. — via General Services Administration

Jun 30, 2022

Announcing Data Governance Charter Templates

Announcing Data Governance Charter Templates—As a part of our Resources and Advisory Support collection, the Data and Analytics (DA) team in the Centers of Excellence (CoE) has released three charter templates that can help federal agencies set up data governance groups and an Office of the Chief Data Officer. We developed these charter templates based on our experiences working with chief data officers (CDOs) and data practitioners across the federal government. These charters are designed to help federal government agencies set up data governance bodies to better use agency data securely and strategically. Although the charter templates don’t represent or constitute official guidance, they’ll help jump start your effort to build data governance structures within your agency. Tailor them to meet your agency’s specific needs. — via The Centers of Excellence

Jun 08, 2022

Finding Post-award Balance With Quality Assurance

Finding Post-award Balance With Quality Assurance—If you’re one of the many federal employees carrying out your mission through contracting, you might have an important question: how do I know if my contractor is doing a good job? Even if you don’t have a strong technical background, there are steps you can take to build your confidence in the project’s maintainability and sustainability. — via 18F

May 02, 2022

Learn How to Create an Accessible Meeting

Learn How to Create an Accessible Meeting—The GSA Government-wide IT Accessibility Program publishes guidance on how you can plan your next meeting—from selecting your venue or online platform, planning for and scheduling accommodations, ensuring the accessibility of meeting documents and materials, meeting management techniques, and more. — via Section508.gov

Nov 02, 2021

The Weekly Ship: What It Is, Why Useful, and How To Create Your Own

The Weekly Ship: What It Is, Why It’s Useful, and How To Create Your Own—The weekly ship has been a staple of 18F projects for years. It is a way to engage partners, inform teammates, and reflect on our work. — via 18F

Oct 21, 2021

Navigating ATOs

Navigating ATOs—Authority to Operate (ATO) processes work differently at different federal agencies. As a technology and design consultancy inside the United States government, 18F has worked on ATOs at many of them. We are still learning and experimenting, but there are definite patterns we have seen work well across multiple agencies. — via 18F

Oct 19, 2021

Robotic Process Automation

5 Tips for Implementing Citizen Development in Your RPA Program

The Robotic Process Automation (RPA) Community of Practice highlights five key points for implementing RPA citizen developers, as shared by federal subject matter experts James Gregory (General Services Administration), Frank Wood (Defense Logistics Agency), and Russ Kuehn (Social Security Administration) during their recent webinars with the Federal RPA Community of Practice.

James Gregory

Aug 16, 2021

USPS

Customer Experience & Continuous Improvement: The USPS Digital Approach

This presentation lays out USPS.com’s continuous improvement approach and how it combines analytics and customer feedback with iterative heuristic reviews, design, and usability testing to monitor, improve, and evolve the USPS.com CX.

Jeff Pass

Alexander Turgeon

Matt Petrowski

Nov 12, 2020

Acquisition

Discovery BPA Evaluation Process: How to Operationalize this Practice

This guide provides acquisition professionals the steps and resources needed to operationalize the evaluation process developed for the Discovery BPA.

Bridget Fields

Omid Ghaffari-Tabrizi

Michelle McNellis

Ashley Owens

Rebecca Refoy

Oct 26, 2020

A Federal Guide to De-risk Government Technology Projects

A Federal Guide to De-risk Government Technology Projects—Written for cross-functional teams delivering IT services to their users, the Federal Field Guide to De-risk Government Technology offers guidance to federal agencies on how to structure software development teams, write contracts, and oversee agile software activities to reduce risks and improve outcomes for end-users. — via 18F

Sep 09, 2020

Acquisition

Experimenting with the Micro-Purchase Threshold

Through the use of an open-source procurement process, we created an experiment others can replicate to encourage Agile thinking.

Omid Ghaffari-Tabrizi

Apr 24, 2020

Have You Critiqued Your Critique Process?

DEMO Whenever I hear someone complain about the process of a design critique, I’m always a bit surprised. Blame it on the fact

Meghan Lazier

Jul 31, 2017

‘Cybersecuring’ the Internet of Things

I recently had the chance to talk with the legendary Vint Cerf, one of the founding fathers of the internet. We had a wide-ranging discussion about the past, present and future of the internet, network security and what it would take to successfully, safely and reliably merge the digital and physical worlds, a concept known

Donna Dodson

Jun 29, 2017

Four Challenges of Adopting Team Structures (And How Leaders Can Mitigate Them)

If you’re considering “going agile,” one of the critical components of such a transformation will be adopting team structures. In your current, pre-teaming state, your developers are probably working by themselves, and may be engaging directly with stakeholders. Agile will place your developers into teams. Teaming is important, as it will enable your development staff

Brian Fox

Jun 15, 2017

The Data Briefing: Design-Driven Enterprise Architecture Creating the New Federal Government Agency

It’s been a while since I’ve checked in on enterprise architecture (EA). My last in-depth work with EA was around 2011 when I was on detail to the Office of Personnel Management’s Open Government Team. The EA model I worked with was the top-down organizational design of information technology assets, data assets, and business processes.

Bill Brantley

Jun 07, 2017

Webinar Recap: Measuring Your Mobile Users

In November 2016, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued Memorandum M-17-06, “Policies for Federal Agency Public Websites and Digital Services,” which requires federal websites to incorporate the DAP’s JavaScript code for website analytics.

Lisa Bari

May 15, 2017

The Data Briefing: How to Best Prepare Federal Government Datasets for Chatbots

Forbes magazine recently ran an article showcasing six handy mobile apps that were built using federal government open data. The apps range from the Alternative Fueling Station Locator to ZocDoc (a doctor locator). What I especially like about the Forbes article is that the author describes the federal government data sets behind each app. There