Content strategy

Improving the federal government’s ability to deliver digital information anytime, anywhere, on any device via open content is a key goal of the Digital Government Strategy. A content management system (CMS) can help your agency move to an open content model, making it easier for people to find, share, use, and re-use your information.

Setting measurable usability goals will help your team to assess the performance of your site throughout development. Whether your assessment is at the beginning of the process, throughout iterative wireframe testing, after release, or all of the above,

“Future-ready content,” “responsive design,” “create once, publish everywhere” are all buzzwords you hear when talking about the present and future of Web publishing. But how do we get there? We all know that technology is only part of the answer. Open content models and structured data are a big part of

Analyzing your visitors’ search terms can help you better understand their needs. It can provide valuable data about the content and organization of the content on your site. Create a Semi-Automated Report of Terms Here’s how to create a semi-automated report for analyzing large amounts of search data on a regular basis. A human still

A Twitter town hall, or Twitter chat, is an event where agencies invite public engagement for a scheduled time period during which users can ask questions or find out more information about a topic via Twitter, much like a webinar. The questions are tagged

Mobile First is the idea that web sites should first be designed for mobile devices, including only those tasks/items that website visitors use most. Then as screen real estate increases, add in tasks/features as needed based on user priority. This means the site

A few days ago a coworker asked me to look at a paragraph. He said it was on the top customer service priorities in our division. So I scooted my chair over and looked at it. Then I looked at him and asked, “But what

As non-lawyers peering into the legal world, be advised this post is not official legal advice from the Office of General Counsel. These are our impressions and what we took away from the Legal Learning Series session Social Media – Privacy, Records and Litigation.

Content refers to the various types of material in different formats, such as text, images and video, that provide information to the user (it also fits into a mobile product’s information architecture).

Guest post by Cheryl Hackley who works in the Office of Public Affairs at the Federal Trade Commission. From my early days of using email, sites like MySpace, and later getting my first smartphone, it was a common practice for me to

A sure way to annoy employees is to never share what executives discuss or decide until a new mandate lands on the organization’s collective head. While senior leaders should expect some privacy in decision-making and debate, they should also expect to openly hold themselves accountable and to make sure their employees know where the

From the time they can grasp an object in their hands, children are reaching for electronic gadgets of all kinds—particularly our smartphones and tablets. The early adoption of mobile is growing each year as evidenced by this infographic from EveryDayFamily.com. 30 percent of 2- to

See how a shift in consumer behavior during the last few years lead to the responsive redesign of USA.gov and GobiernoUSA.gov.

Security testing is used to ensure that a mobile product does not pose a threat to agency IT systems and databases. In addition, privacy testing ensures that an app does not put the user’s personally identifiable information into a compromisable position. This article was developed as part of the Mobile Application Development Program. See our

Thunderclap is the latest social media and crowd-sourcing platform available to federal agencies to better engage with the public, with a newly negotiated government-compatible Terms of Service (TOS) agreement. GSA collaborated with Thunderclap to negotiate the amended terms, which brings the total number of tools with federal-compatible agreements to 66.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has developed a responsive design website for the HUD Office of Inspector General. The website provides: news, the latest reports and publications, locations to

Plan and analyze. Write and design. Test and refine. As Web Manager for Usability.gov, I have found that taking a user-centered approach is vital each time you improve or build a digital product, especially when the content is about improving user

Wikipedia says that structured content refers to information that’s been broken down and classified using metadata. It can also refer to information that’s been classified using XML or other standard or proprietary forms of metadata. The National Institutes of Health’s National Cancer Institute (NIH/NCI) move to structured

Can you imagine how frustrating and confusing it would be to find several variations of the same agency name on different sites or even different pages or documents on the same site? This is what happens everyday to Spanish-speaking customers accessing the Spanish names of

Everyone wants to know how to provide outstanding customer experience in government. It can be difficult, because everyday our customers are also doing business with companies like Starbucks, Zappos, and Virgin America, that excel in customer service.