18F Blog

We recently kicked off a new project with the Department of the Interior’s Office of Natural Resources Revenue (ONRR). Three weeks into the project, we decided to hold a design studio to solve the problem of how to convey complex revenue data. We needed to better understand the difference between onshore revenue (revenue from natural resources extracted from land) and offshore revenue (revenue from resources extracted from Federal offshore or the U.S. outer continental shelf) as it relates to our system. What is a design studio, you ask...

Over the last six months, 18F has embarked on a mission to transform the way the U.S. Government builds and buys digital services. We’re currently working with more than half a dozen agencies to help them deliver on their missions in a design-centric, agile, open, and data-driven way.

In 1986 a nuclear reactor known as Chernobyl released harmful radioactivity which spread over much of the western USSR and Europe. The core of this reactor remains a glowing, ineradicable mass of deadly radioactive lava in the middle of a large Exclusion Zone unfit for human habitation.

As demand for information continues to grow, it is important to continue iterating the ways we refine the FOIA request process. Our effort is one of a number of commitments towards creating a more open, transparent government. We will explore how to supplement the work that has already been done by creating tools to improve the online FOIA requests process by designing for the user.