18F Blog

Often, when government looks to recompete or start a new IT project, they’re presented with a Commercial Off-the-Shelf (COTS) solution that promises to do exactly what is needed out-of-the-box. The decision whether to use a COTS product or build a custom software product should always be based on the needs and assets of your users and current infrastructure. No situation is exactly the same, but here are some general considerations to help you in choosing whether COTS is right for your project.

To continue our birthday celebrations, we’re saluting those projects and partners that inspired our team to do their best to improve the user experience of government. We asked staff from acquisitions to strategy to share what project they loved working on during the past year.

It’s been five years since we launched 18F, and we’ve grown a lot since that day — in size, in focus, and in impact. We wanted to celebrate our fifth birthday with a look back at what we’ve accomplished, what we’ve learned along the way, and where we’re headed next.

The U.S. Data Federation Project is an initiative of the GSA Technology Transformation Services 10x program, which seeks to address the need for knowledge sharing, repeatable processes, and reusable tools for federated data efforts.