Infrastructure as a (public) service
In fall 2023, we’ll launch a new registrar: a better way to get and manage a .gov domain. — via DotGov Registry
Github
Resources on Github
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An introduction to GitHub
Steps for managing website content in GitHub.
Tools and Services
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Federalist
A publishing platform that helps federal partners launch, maintain and manage Government websites.
News and Events on Github
41 posts
This month’s topic: Community, Connection & Contribution. How can our community help teams solve problems together?
Hosted by Digital.gov and the U.S. Web Design System
2021
Intro to GitHub for Content Creation with Malaika Carpenter
Intro to GitHub for Content Creation with Malaika Carpenter — In this live training, Content Strategy and Design Specialist for GSA’s Technology Transformation Services (TTS), Malaika Carpenter, breaks down how to use GitHub into easy, practical steps and demonstrates ways to use this tool to create, manage and publish website content. — via Digital.gov
Vets.gov: A Modern Software Development Environment in Government
When people think of government software, they often think of COBOL and PowerBuilder 5, with manual software deploys every three to six months on a fixed number of machines in a government-run data center. This perception is sometimes justified, but sometimes entirely wrong. Regardless, the perception makes many developers reluctant to work for the government
Fractal and Federalist Join the U.S. Web Design Standards
We’ve recently added two powerful tools to the U.S. Web Design Standards development workflow that allow us to preview, test, and publish the Standards code more quickly and easily. Fractal Fractal is a powerful and flexible framework for building interactive component libraries. It’s similar to Jekyll (which we use to publish the Standards site) in
The New FEC.gov
Last week, the Federal Election Commission (FEC) unveiled their new website at FEC.gov. This new site is the result of a years-long collaboration with GSA’s 18F and features completely revamped tools for exploring campaign finance data. It provides user-centered content for understanding the reporting and compliance requirements for people participating in federal elections, redesigned tools
The Data Briefing: The Department of Education Needs Your Help with their First Developers’ Site
The Department of Education (ED) launched its first developer site. The developer site is built on GitHub which will make it easier for ED to centralize their code and Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). Currently, ten APIs are on the developer site: The Civil Right Data Collection (CRDC) APIs: These three APIs give information on public
New Trademark App Open Source Code on GitHub
Improving the way the government delivers information technology (IT) solutions to its customers isn’t just a goal, it’s our mission. We at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office know that by publishing our open source code, the public can help us come up with new and better IT solutions. In advance of the new Federal
Open Source Micro-Purchasing: An Experiment in Federal Acquisition
18F is an open-source team. We currently have hundreds of publicly available repositories, with dozens under active development. We’ve had numerous contributions from colleagues within government, and contributions from members of the public. But in the next few weeks, we are going to run an experiment: we want to contract for contributions. And we want
Announcing the Agile BPA Awards: A Conversation About the Process
In January, 18F Consulting announced a new kind of process for vendors to compete for software acquisition contracts. The Agile Blanket Purchase Agreement (BPA) process would be open to existing vendors on Schedule 70, and require vendors to submit a working prototype based on a public dataset—and then show their work in a publicly available
Communicart Tool Will Streamline Purchase Card Process
We’ve all been there. You walk into a meeting, set your things on the table, and sit down on the chair only to hit the floor instead. In a corporate office you might buy a new chair and get reimbursed, or maybe your company has a process for requesting new furniture. Regardless, that chair needs
18F’s Style Guide for Open Source Project Documentation
We routinely publish our best practices in the 18F Guides, and today we’re happy to launch a new one: the 18F Open Source Style Guide. The Open Source Style Guide is a comprehensive handbook for writing clear, accessible, and user-friendly documentation so that
What Labor Department Data Do You Want?
Four years ago, we released our Labor Department-wide API—that is, an Application Programming Interface—with the hope that anyone who wants to build an
NASA APIs: Opening Data Assets
Data is one of the most important assets at NASA. We have data on comets, measurements of Mars, and real-time imagery of Earth. But what good is data if you can’t access it? Not good at all! We’re in the process of building a site (at api.nasa.gov) to catalog NASA APIs that structure access to
Why Your APIs Need Design Help
Anything built should be built right. It doesn’t matter if it’s built of wood, carbon nanotubes or code. So it’s encouraging that the practice of User-Centered Design—getting customer feedback at every stage of a project—is catching on with
Data, Code, and API Event Round Up
DigitalGov University has hosted some great events over the last year in partnership with Data.gov, the MobileGov Community and 18F to bring you information on opening data and building APIs. This month we’ve rounded up the events over the past year so that you can see what’s
U.S. Public Participation Playbook Open for Coders and Designers on GitHub
We released the United States Public Participation Playbook this week, a new open resource agencies can use to evaluate and build better programs that give a voice to the people they serve—and the response was fantastic. Public servants and citizens around the world have shared it, and already are contributing new ideas that build from
Keeping Peace Corps Volunteers Healthy, One Text at a Time
Today, refilling your medicine cabinet with bandages and over the counter medicine from your local drugstore may seem like a trivial task, but for Peace Corps volunteers working in remote villages around the world, this task can be much more challenging. As we take steps to forge a 21st century
USGS Picture Puzzle: Do You See Changes to the Coast?
If you are a coastal resident, go to the beach, or are interested in digital volunteering, you can be a tremendous help in identifying and classifying changes that storms make to our coast after severe storms. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has launched iCoast, a Web application where you can view aerial photographs and help classify
The Contributor’s Guide to 18F: Code for the Common Good
Introduction Transparency in coding makes code more secure. Open-source development is development in the light, sometimes a harsh light, that shows every blemish. At 18F we strongly believe this improves the rapidity of our coding and the quality and security of the code. We keep the code open to each other, which allows us to
