Blog posts by Mark Headd:

18F can help agencies with the process of developing an effective data strategy. Our principles of user-centered design, agile, and iterative delivery can increase your agencies’ chance for success in using data more effectively.

A roundup of steps that federal agencies, and other government entities, can take right now to improve the resilience of their websites and serve information more efficiently to the people that need it

18F is launching a new National Security and Intelligence Portfolio to deepen our impact working with agencies working on national defense issues.

Modular contracting is an acquisition strategy that 18F uses with many of our partners and our internal programs. So, why do we love modular contracting and how does it make procurement better?

Here are five procurement hacks — both in the context of our Agile Blanket Purchase Agreement (BPA) and in general — that we’ve made in the past few years to make the procurement process a bit more joyful and effective.

The process of developing and issuing RFPs is often viewed as a one off - a special activity that occurs infrequently and in isolation. What if we applied the principles of iteration and continuous improvement to the way that RFPs are developed?

Adopting this “smaller is better” mindset as a way to overhaul a large, complex legacy system can feel counterintuitive. But the notion of smallness — of distilling complex, interdependent tasks into achievable units of work — is fundamental to building modern software in both the private and public sector.

In product development, we often use prototypes to understand user needs and reduce risk. Prototypes are a great way to test out ideas or approaches before you actually commit to building anything, but governments are not always set up to develop and use prototypes efficiently before building digital services.

Monolithic procurement — large, complex, multi-year contracts, which are common in government IT procurement — can appear compelling to agencies that use them. The Technology Transformation Services (TTS) is a strong advocate for an alternative approach known as modular contracting (aka modular procurement).

Our recent work with state government agencies in California and Mississippi provides some powerful examples of how 18F’s commitment to working and learning in the open can provide enormous benefits — even to states that are not yet working directly with 18F.