United States Census Bureau

Open Data

Census-Led Prize Challenge Incentivizes Using Open Data for Good

The Open Data for Good Grand Challenge is now welcoming submissions from technologists and collaborators focused on deploying products with federal open data, as well as recruiting for qualified judges to score the submissions and help select winners!

Haley Ashcom

Oct 08, 2021

Multilingual

2020 Census Language Support in 59 Non-English Languages

How the Census Bureau provided language assistance in 59 non-English languages for the 2020 Census.

Jun 18, 2020

The Data Briefing: The Census Business Builder—Mashing Up Census Data to Help Build Businesses

The Census Bureau conducts more surveys than just the Constitutionally-mandated Decennial Census. There is also the American Community Survey, the Economic Census, the County Business Patterns series, statistics on Nonemployer businesses, and the Survey of Business Owners and Self-Employed Persons. On their own, each survey is full of useful information for researchers, local and state governments, and entrepreneurs.

Bill Brantley

Jul 27, 2016

Census Bureau Releases Key Statistics in Honor of Independence Day

On July 4, 1776, the Continental Congress approved the Declaration of Independence, setting the 13 colonies on the road to freedom as a sovereign nation. This most American of holidays [is] marked with typical festivities ranging from fireworks, parades and concerts to more casual family gatherings and barbecues across the country. In honor of our

The Commerce Blog

Jul 05, 2016

The Data Briefing: Introducing the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s New Open Data Portal

My first column when I came back from last year’s summer sabbatical was on the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s (USPTO) PatentsView project.

Bill Brantley

May 18, 2016

How Can Civic Hacking Help Micro-businesses?

National Day of Civic Hacking on June 4th, D.C. Edition The fourth installation of the National Day of Civic Hacking aims to be another stellar event, bringing together civic-minded innovators in cities across the nation under one big tent. Just as in years past, it will be powered by the passion of citizens to improve

Jack Bienko

May 18, 2016

The Data Briefing: What Makes a Great Federal Government App?

USAGov recently released a list of six great federal government mobile apps. There were many apps released by the federal government over the last 5-6 years on a wide range of topics and services. Many are well-designed and useful to the American public. So, what are the outstanding federal government apps for 2016?

Bill Brantley

May 11, 2016

Agile Transformation at Census

The agile transformation at the Census Bureau started several years ago after GAO recommended Census implement a standard Systems Development Lifecycle (SDLC). Around the same time came the newly released Digital Services Playbook as well as a general shift in the industry to using a more agile approach in software development to improve product delivery

Angela Bell

Apr 28, 2016

Recap: How to Overcome Cultural Resistance to Agile in Government

Armed with the knowledge that ‘most studies suggest that losses are twice as powerful, psychologically, as gains,’ federal change agents can better prepare for possible cultural resistance as they begin to implement agile practices at their agencies. There are a variety of resistant-to-change personas (change is painful for most of us, but we dislike it

Andrea Sigritz

Apr 22, 2016

How Agile’s Being Done in Government

The concepts of agile may not be new, but there is a renewed push across government to embrace this customer-feedback driven methodology, in everything from software development to project management. A government community has even sprung up to help feds learn from one another what it takes to incorporate agile into more efficient and effective

Andrea Sigritz

Apr 08, 2016

Moving from Open Data to Open Knowledge: Announcing the Commerce Data Usability Project

Opening up government to better serve the American people has been a key priority of this Administration from day one. On his first full day in office, President Obama signed the Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government, ushering in a new era of open and accountable government. Since then, the Administration has continued to take

Jeffrey Chen

Tyrone Grandison

Kristen Honey, PhD

Jan 29, 2016

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

Data Delivers: Challenge Culminates in National Demo Day Event Slated for Thursday

VISIT EVENT PAGE REGISTER NOW The U.S. Census Bureau this week will showcase some of the most innovative data-driven apps soon to spark change in cities from coast to coast during its first-ever National Demo Day. On Thursday, Aug. 13, from 2 to 3 p.m. EST, five teams that participated

Eric Beidel

Aug 10, 2015

Community Rock Star Round Up

Around this month’s Communities Theme, the DigitalGov team thought we’d round up your community rock stars. These are people in your communities who’ve gone above and beyond, who’ve contributed content, organized events, participated in developing toolkits and more. Let’s kick it off with the DigitalGov Summit Sounding Board. DigitalGov Summit Sounding Board For the 2015 DigitalGov Summit we pulled

Alycia Piazza

Jul 30, 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 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

The API Briefing: Make It an API – the Census Bureau’s Census of Governments

Serendipity can be a wonderful tool for discovery. I was looking through the Census Bureau site for some business census data when I came upon the 2012 Census of Governments. According to the official description: “[t]he Census of Governments identifies the scope and nature of the nation’s state and local government sector; provides authoritative benchmark

Bill Brantley

Jun 03, 2015

The API Briefing: How Essential Is Government Data to the American Economy?

I grew up when home computers were first being introduced to the general public. I bought my first computer, a Commodore 64, after spending a summer of mowing lawns and saving up my birthday and Christmas money. It was not until I entered college that I became an infopreneur. Infopreneurs are entrepreneurs who used computers

Bill Brantley

Apr 15, 2015

Persona Development Case Study: NCI and Spanish Language Outreach

Government websites need to address the needs of diverse audiences. Although translations are a first step towards engaging non-English speaking audiences, the intended audience may be alienated if information is not presented in a culturally relevant way. The

Ashley Wichman

Mar 02, 2015

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