Blogs
Government teams are improving digital experiences every day. Gain insights from their stories, case studies, and innovations.
USAGov Content Design Team: 2021 Highlights
USAGov Content Design Team: 2021 Highlights—Our mission at USAGov and USAGov en Español is to make it easy for anyone to find and understand the government information they need. We’re excited about what we accomplished in 2021; we connected with the public 117 million times through our websites, social media, email, and phone and chat contact center support. And with our “data first” mindset, we’re more confident that our content is addressing our users’ needs. — via USA.gov

Two Years of Federal Student Aid’s Virtual Assistant Lead to Lessons Learned and a Clear Vision of the Work Ahead
Education’s FSA team behind Aidan® shares what they’ve learned over the past two years to help drive improvements and expand the product to a wider range of users.
Finding Post-award Balance With Quality Assurance
Finding Post-award Balance With Quality Assurance—If you’re one of the many federal employees carrying out your mission through contracting, you might have an important question: how do I know if my contractor is doing a good job? Even if you don’t have a strong technical background, there are steps you can take to build your confidence in the project’s maintainability and sustainability. — via 18F

Finding post-award balance with quality assurance
If you’re one of the many federal employees carrying out your mission through contracting, you might have an important question: how do I know if my contractor is doing a good job? Even if you don’t have a strong technical background, there are steps you can take to build your confidence in the project’s maintainability and sustainability. — via 18F

Optimization Case Study: Performance, SEO, and Accessibility with CFPB
Why We Created a Troubleshooting Guide
Why We Created a Troubleshooting Guide—The Open Data, Design, and Development team at the U.S. Department of the Interior added a troubleshooting guide to accompany contact information on onrr.gov. This is their process. — via Office of Natural Resources Revenue

Celebrate Public Service Recognition Week with the #GovPossible Toolkit
Celebrate Public Service Recognition Week with the #GovPossible Toolkit— Our first #GovPossible campaign for Public Service Recognition Week (PSRW) last year was a success and now we’re back! From Sunday, May 1 (the start of PSRW) through Friday, May 13, let’s celebrate public servants and the impact they have across federal, state, and local governments. Let’s show them their hard work has not gone unnoticed! — via Performance.gov

How USAGov Engaged With the Public in 2021: 3 Examples
3 Examples of How USAGov Engaged With the Public in 2021—USAGov is the official guide to government services and information for the public. Its outreach team connects people to that information through USA.gov and USAGov en Español social media, email, and other delivery channels. 2021 was a busy year for the outreach team; here are a few highlights. — via USA.gov

Spotlight Chat on the CDC Open Epidemic Forecasting Community
Change the Way Digital Work Gets Done
Sunshine Week: How GSA Supports Open Government Principles
Sunshine Week (March 13-19, 2022) celebrates the Government in the Sunshine Act, which promotes greater transparency in government activities. Our mission at GSA is to deliver effective and efficient government services for the American people. To do so, we have to be transparent and accessible—by opening meetings to the public, ensuring that federal buildings and facilities are fully accessible to all people, and making information on documents or pages (web pages, PDFs, newsletters, etc.) open and accessible. Learn about some of our initiatives that best display these principles.
USWDS Monthly Call - March 2022
Creating a New Way for People To Discover Government Benefits
Creating a New Way for People To Discover Government Benefits—To make it even easier for everyone to find services and benefits without needing to understand government structure, we’re developing a new digital tool in partnership with 10x, GSA’s incremental technology fund. BEARS, the Benefits Eligibility Awareness Resource Service, is an important step forward in providing an integrated, simple solution for federal benefits to improve the customer experience and will eventually cover all federal benefits from all agencies. — via USA.gov

Lessons from the 2021 Federal Plain Language Report Card
During the Digital.gov and Plain Language Community event, Results of the 2021 Federal Report Card, speaker David Lipscomb gave examples of web content that received both high and low scores in the 2021 Plain Language Report Card. Here’s what we learned.

GSA Highlights Progress on Citizen-Facing Digital Services, Cybersecurity in First Year of American Rescue Plan
GSA Highlights Progress on Citizen-Facing Digital Services, Cybersecurity in First Year of American Rescue Plan—Ahead of the first anniversary of the signing of the American Rescue Plan, legislation which has been the key driver of a strong economic recovery, provided the tools needed to fight the pandemic, and made long-term investments to revitalize the local economy in communities around the country, the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) highlighted some of the key ways these investments are driving progress on technology modernization and making digital services simpler and more secure across government. — via General Services Administration

Plain Language + Compassion Help People in Crisis
From Fellowship To Full-time: How a CFPB Software Engineer Helped Protect Consumers and Built a Career in Civic Tech
Anselm Bradford, a front-end engineer at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), is using his tech skills to protect American consumers.