Open Data

The Data Briefing: Connecting the (Data) Dots—NASA’s NYSpaceTag App

OpenNASA has recently completed another redesign of their site. With over 31,000 data sets, 194 code repositories and 36 APIs, OpenNASA probably has the largest collection of open data of any of the federal agencies. An especially helpful feature is a set of icons devoted to five types

Bill Brantley

Sep 30, 2015

The Data Briefing: Surrounded by Fields of Federal Data—U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s PatentsView

Hello, everyone. My summer sabbatical was short but educational, and I am glad to be back in the federal government. I am also excited to again take up the weekly API article that is now expanded to include all things federal government data. Much has happened in the open data realm, and there is much

Bill Brantley

Sep 23, 2015

Under the Hood: Building a New College Scorecard with Students

How the U.S. Digital Service worked with students, families, schools, developers, and teams across the federal government to rebuild the new College Scorecard tool.

Lisa Gelobter

Sep 18, 2015

Caution: Your Web Analytics Might Not Be Human

A Digital Analytics Program (DAP) user recently contacted me with an observation/problem: The data he had from his website’s independent Web-analytics account was much, much higher than the data he was receiving in the DAP user interface. Theoretically, both tools (in this case, two separate Google Analytics accounts), were trying to measure the same thing,

Tim Lowden

Sep 09, 2015

How the CIO Council Made Our Open Data Prioritization Tool Kit More Open

The Open Data Prioritization Toolkit is categorized into phases of understanding, evaluating, and opening datasets.

CIO Council Operations Staff

Sep 04, 2015

Services Mean Success for Federal Challenges

Challenge.gov offers a number of services to help agencies create successful competitions. One challenge that recently wrapped up made use of the full range of these services to come up with some creative, useful apps that have nationwide implications. Presidential

Judy Romano

Aug 18, 2015

NIST Hosts Reference Data Challenge to Create Mobile Apps

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) wants YOU to help them build native apps. NIST launched the Reference Data Challenge to improve the way the agency shares scientific reference data. They want third party developers from around the country to build native apps that aggregate and improve the usability of free NIST datasets and resources.

Jacob Parcell

Aug 13, 2015

An Innovation Framework That Delivers: The SunShot Catalyst Program

Behind every great innovation is a team. And behind successful innovation teams are efficient tools, processes, and most importantly, people. The Department of Energy’s SunShot Initiative funds projects that make solar energy more affordable and accessible for Americans. As part of the initiative, the SunShot Catalyst open innovation program seeks to rapidly deliver solar solutions

Ashley Wichman

Aug 07, 2015

Need Actionable Analytics Reports? Here’s Help

The Digital Analytics Program (DAP) provides a wealth of standard Web analytics reports within its current Web analytics tool (Google Analytics Premium). Yet, navigating through big data with a standard report can be a challenge and definitely takes a few clicks. To quickly get to the insights of your agency websites’ traffic, building your own

Immanuel Lee

Aug 06, 2015

An Overview of Digital Communities

Digital communities of practice come in many stripes. DigitalGov communities span eight (and counting) focus areas and have thousands of members, but strong collaborations exist in all corners of government. In honor of this month’s communities theme, we are offering a list of communities that foster connections and strengthen the digital capabilities of federal agencies.

Ashley Wichman

Jul 31, 2015

Solve Federal IT Problems Through Cross-Collaboration

39 participants. 17 agencies. 6 months. Earlier this year, the CIO Council launched the IT Solutions Challenge, an initiative to engage GS 9-13 level rising stars in the IT and IT acquisition community. Participants identify shared challenges, those challenges where you might say to yourself, “if only we could [x], life would be so much

Kendrick Daniel

Jul 28, 2015

Analytics Prove People Care About Space (and Pluto!)

Despite the fact that Pluto has been downgraded to a “dwarf planet”, the analytics of federal government websites prove there are still a lot of people who want to get an up-close look. NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, a project over nine years in the making, flew by Pluto this morning at approximately 7:49 a.m. The

Tim Lowden

Jul 14, 2015

Safety and Transparency Through Data

You have the right to a safe workplace—and so do the employees at your favorite café, the local hospital and the construction company renovating homes in your neighborhood. But how can you tell if the businesses you patronize

Michael Pulsifer

Jul 01, 2015

As the World Churns: Earthquake Detection via Twitter

When one thinks of social media, usually it is thought of as a tool to keep in touch with friends and family. Behind all the social networking lies vast amounts of data that can be used in a multitude of ways. This data is an opportunity for government agencies to improve the services they provide

Kendrick Daniel

Jun 26, 2015

The API Briefing: Government APIs in a Post-Apps World

Take out your smartphone and count the number of apps that you have. How many of these apps do you use daily? What about the apps you use weekly? Do you have any apps that you installed but used only once? Any apps that you have never used? What kind of apps do you have?

Bill Brantley

Jun 24, 2015

CitySDK: Helping Civic Hackers Deliver Local Solutions

Civic hackers are a special breed—their primary motivation is closely tied to the social issues closest to their hearts. Most attend hack-a-thons, engage in civic meetups, and show up at city hearings to champion their cause and push solutions at the societal, technology, and policy levels. On the technological front, creating civic city-based solutions has

Tyrone Grandison

Jun 22, 2015

The API Briefing: the Challenge of Government’s Dark Data

By now, you are familiar with “big data” or datasets that are so large that they cannot be analyzed by conventional analytical methods. You may have heard of “long data” which is data that has a temporal context. I work with long data when I analyze hiring patterns over time in workforce data. There is

Bill Brantley

Jun 17, 2015

The Content Corner: Creating Engaging Content with Data

Over the last several years, continuing advances in computer processing power and storage have brought about the growth of what some call big data. Mobile and wearable devices now also generate large amounts of data via our

Tyrus Manuel

Jun 15, 2015

HTTPS For All

With the release of a new dashboard to measure best Web practices in the federal government and the establishment of a government-wide HTTPS Only Standard, the time to make the switch to HTTPS has arrived. Agencies have until December 31, 2016, to make the switch. The move to HTTPS is not only happening in government;

Kendrick Daniel

Jun 15, 2015

Visualizing BLS Data to Improve Understanding

If a picture is worth a thousand words, what’s the value of a striking, cool chart or map of some BLS data? At the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), we’re always thinking of better ways to help our users understand the information we produce. The global economy is complex, and the statistics to explain

Erica L. Groshen

Jun 05, 2015

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