Professional Development

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More News and Events on Professional Development

73 posts

How OSTP Crowdsourced A Crowdsourcing Toolkit

To promote crowdsourcing, one effective tool is, well, crowdsourcing. Today, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and the Federal Community of Practice for Crowdsourcing and Citizen Science (CCS) unveiled the Citizen Science and Crowdsourcing Toolkit. The toolkit contains information, resources, and best practices federal agencies can use to harness the power
Sep 30, 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.
Jul 31, 2015

Progress with Open Opportunities: Notes from the Field

As a task creator with an ambitious agenda and limited resources, I’ve got a great deal of incentive to make the most use that I can of Open Opportunities. And indeed, Open Opportunities participants have made a concrete and positive difference in the operations of our office, the Advanced Manufacturing National Program Office, part of
May 01, 2015

Hiring For Your Digital Needs

The increasing presence of big data and all things digital will require the federal government to hire more techies. The skills brought by techies will help the federal government, but we also must consider that success in the federal government will require more than the skills they bring.
Feb 09, 2015

Reaching Out To Deliver Within: Crowdsourcing Internal Agency Projects

Crowdsourcing has created new paths for public interaction with the government, as we’ve been highlighting on DigitalGov with this month’s theme. However, crowdsourcing can also be used to harness support for internal agency projects. The Department of State is using crowdsourcing to find talent within and outside of government to support agency activities. Through the
Dec 19, 2014
Open Opportunities

From Taste-Testers to Explorers: Developing Personas for Open Opportunities

Being customer-focused means doing the gumshoe work of research and rounds of analysis to find gold by understanding user goals. For the task-based innovation network, Open Opportunities for DigitalGov, that meant developing personas in order to overcome our own biases and learn about the different motivations of our participants. In this article, we’ll talk about
Dec 08, 2014

DigitalGov University is Making Changes Thanks to You

DigitalGov University took the pulse of our participants this spring and found that our audience wants more information about events, wants us to better communicate the value of programs and wants more access to our programs. DigitalGov University (DGU) is a platform for feds to share ideas, experiences and techniques to meet 21st century public
Nov 07, 2014

Use Metrics to Drive Success

Would federal employees work on tasks outside their agency in order to support DigitalGov? That’s the question we wanted to answer as we created the Open Opportunities program. We had a built-in test case. When the Digital Government Strategy was released in May 2013, agencies were tasked with building APIs, launching mobile products, establishing digital
Oct 24, 2014

Hacking the Bureaucracy One Task at a Time

Are you having trouble getting training or professional development opportunities? Federal employees can gain access to a variety of professional development opportunities and work on digital projects across the government through the Open Opportunities program.
Jun 23, 2014