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A revised and expanded guide for de-risking government technology projects
on September 12, 2024
New content on vendor management and a streamlined structure make one of 18F's most popular guides even more useful for government staff.
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First, do no harm: mistakes to avoid in creating accessible user experiences
on September 5, 2023
Accessible design and development practices help us build inclusive experiences. But we can lose sight of the people we serve if we don’t steadily work to better understand our users. To create accessible experiences, avoid these mistakes.
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Seven tips on facilitating unplanned topics in meetings
on August 22, 2023
Facilitating a workshop can feel like a daunting task. Here at 18F, we’ve identified seven tips to keep your workshop organized and flowing, despite unplanned scenarios.
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Am I doing it right? A check up for agile teams
on March 23, 2023
Even on the best teams, things need to be monitored and adjusted. If you are doing this for the first time, it can be even harder. In this article, I share some signals of what success looks like and what to do if you are stuck in one of the many common pitfalls.
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Architecture Decision Records: Helpful now, invaluable later
on July 6, 2021
An Architecture Decision Record is like a journal entry for the life of your software
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Building distributed teams
on January 12, 2021
At 18F, we’ve seen that remote work can make teams happier, more productive, and more inclusive. Organizing ourselves in a remote-first way has improved our morale and allowed us to recruit and retain talent from all across the country. But building great distributed teams takes real work.
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A federal guide to de-risk government technology projects
on September 9, 2020
Announcing the federal field guide to de-risk government technology
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Design & research in critical times
on June 2, 2020
18F staff is distributed across the country and the majority of our research has been and will continue to be facilitated remotely. We are sharing our experience to help guide designers and researchers as they adapt to new ways of working and provide some additional considerations to keep in mind while conducting research in critical times.
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Ask 18F — What’s the difference between a Contracting Officer’s Representative and a Product Owner on agile software development projects?
on March 10, 2020
Ask 18F is an advice column that answers questions sent in by federal employees. In this edition, we’ll talk about the difference between a Contracting Officer’s Representative and a Product Owner on agile software development projects
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Long-term teams, not sudden handoffs
on December 3, 2019
Don’t let your agency waste knowledge and opportunity. Instead of planning for a handoff to operations and maintenance, plan for a long-term team. Instead of launching your project and then keeping it running, plan for ongoing development.
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Building product management capacity in government part 2 – Interview with a product manager
on November 19, 2019
This is part two in a series of posts about building product management capacity in government agencies. For this post, we chatted with Jerome Lee of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services about his experience as a product manager on our current project
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Building product management capacity in government part 1 – Our coaching philosophy
on August 22, 2019
This is the kick-off post in a series about building product management capacity in government agencies. The series explores the process of helping agency staff transition into product management roles, from both an 18F and partner agency perspective
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Keeping your accounts secure
on August 15, 2019
login.gov helps over 15 million people keep their information safe across dozens of government applications online. Over the past few years, we’ve learned a lot about keeping information safe. Here are a few ways you can make sure your online interactions stay secure.
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Announcing the State Software Budgeting Handbook
on August 5, 2019
We’re proud to announce the release of our state software budgeting handbook, a 40-page guide for executives, budget specialists, legislators, and other decision makers who fund or oversee state government technology projects.
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The value of cross-functional teams
on June 18, 2019
A core concept of agile is that teams are cross-functional: the team collectively possesses all of the skills necessary to get the job done. We embrace that at 18F, and take it a little farther, and not just on agile teams.
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You might not be as agile as you think you are
on May 29, 2019
The mandate to be agile is everywhere. But agile isn’t an on-off switch. It’s a skill and a mindset that is developed over time, through dedicated work, open teams, and lots (and lots) of practice
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Human-centered design for IT centralization, part 5 - Centralization gone right: A case study on the U.S. Web Design System
on May 21, 2019
This is part 5 and the last post in a series on the importance of human-centered design when evaluating IT centralization. Learn through a case study how The U.S. Web Design System came together to create a centralized design tool that allows agencies to build consistent digital experiences quickly and at a reduced cost.
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Human-centered design for IT centralization, part 4 - What happens after you centralize
on May 9, 2019
This is Part 4 in a series of posts on the importance of human-centered design when evaluating IT centralization. In this post, we’ll share some helpful recommendations for navigating how to be an in-house IT service provider in a user-centered way
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Human-centered design for IT centralization, part 3 - Working with vendors to build a centralized solution
on May 7, 2019
This is part 3 in a series on the importance of human-centered design when evaluating IT centralization.In this post, we’ll share some helpful tips on how to effectively work with vendors.
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Human-centered design for IT centralization, part 2 - Deciding whether or not to centralize
on April 11, 2019
This is Part 2 in a series of posts on the importance of human-centered design when evaluating IT centralization. In this post, we’ll help you decide if IT centralization makes sense for your agency. After interviewing several folks who’ve been through a centralization initiative, we’ve developed some best practices for navigating this big question in a more user-centered way.
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Human-centered design for IT centralization, part 1 - Why prioritizing users is important during IT centralization
on April 3, 2019
At 18F, we believe directly engaging users while evaluating IT centralization will result in services that work better for the people they serve. As part of a 10x project, we’ve talked to users who understand how centralization has impacted their day-to-day work and gathered lessons learned and best practices.
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When to use Commercial Off-the-Shelf (COTS) technology
on March 26, 2019
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.
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Cloud is not a virtue
on February 7, 2019
Federal agencies, like every other industry, are moving to cloud computing for their infrastructure. The economies of scale lead to a number of benefits, but unfortunately, having a server launched in the cloud does not magically make infrastructure better. Government should leverage cloud wisely to yield benefits
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ETL: Extract, Transform, Learn
on August 9, 2018
Providing government data to the public almost always requires building a data processing pipeline between its place of origin and the systems that will serve it. Data must be copied, transferred between digital storage formats, reshaped to meet the needs of reporting systems, groomed for readability, and cleansed for accuracy.
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Why your agency (likely) doesn’t need a mobile app
on February 13, 2018
Building products for the public requires a lot of listening and finding the right balance of value, cost, and user needs to build the best product. With that approach, we find most of the time that building a highly-optimized mobile-friendly website almost always trumps building native mobile apps.
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The life-changing magic of writing release notes
on January 17, 2017
A key part of agile development is constantly shipping new features. With so many changes happening to the product, it can be hard to keep track of how the product is growing and improving. Release notes help keep everyone on the team in the know about what’s shipping, give a clear list of features to check, and help always frame our work in terms of the value it delivers to users.
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How to run an efficient meeting
on December 14, 2016
Many people spend a significant percentage of working time in meetings. This blog post digs into how to make that time productive and useful (which sometimes means cancelling a meeting that doesn’t need to happen). We cover time management, room management, presentation style, note taking, preparation, next step management, and more.
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Get the most juice out of the squeeze
on October 11, 2016
Through analytics and moderated sessions, we can learn what user goals are and enhance the platform to help them achieve those goals. By creating universal search across legal resources, people will be able to locate information more efficiently. This tool will allow them to better understand and comply with campaign finance laws, thus helping advance the FEC's mission.
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What is static source analysis?
on October 4, 2016
Static source analysis is a way to quickly gauge the quality of source code and identify areas of high technical debt. But what IS static source analysis, and how is it useful?
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Pro tips for data-friendly regulations and proposals
on September 27, 2016
We launched the eRegulations Notice and Comment pilot this summer, and in the process saw some patterns in how our partner agencies write their regulations. In response, the eRegulations team prepared a guide to help agencies write regulations in a more data- and human-friendly format that would be easier to parse — thus saving time and money.
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DATA Act prototype: Simplicity is key
on August 29, 2016
To ensure that agencies could focus on the important work of joining their internal systems without unnecessary technology distractions, we (the 18F and Treasury prototype team) sought to deliver the simplest possible interface that would accept agency data using the simplest possible format for that data.
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Micro-purchase’s design philosophy: Do one thing well
on August 25, 2016
Rather than wait for knowledge to naturally diffuse through team changes, we try to kick-start the process through shared interest groups, tech talks, and documents highlighting some of the more interesting design decisions our developers make. Today, we'll focus on some of the core architectural philosophiesbehind the Micro-purchase project.
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Patterns for managing multi-tenant cloud environments
on August 10, 2016
When 18F started, deploying government services into a public cloud was still fairly uncommon. However, everything 18F has built has been deployed into Amazon Web Services (AWS), including cloud.gov. Over that time, our AWS account has grown in size and complexity and we needed a new approach to make sure it remains manageable.
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Live streamed demos for exponential transparency and information sharing
on July 29, 2016
This spring, the eRegulations Notice & Comment team began building out a new feature set for the platform. To demo the work as we iterated on it, we faced a challenge of finding a way to do connect frequently with the dozens of interested parties. We settled on live streaming our demos through a video website that is accessible by most government agencies, doesn’t require extraneous plugins to operate, allows you to easily stream, but also automatically creates a viewable file afterwards at the same URL.
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5 lessons in object-oriented design from Sandi Metz
on June 24, 2016
Last month, I completed Sandi Metz's object-oriented design course. It was three intense days of working through refactoring exercises and discussing code as a group with my class of 30 students. I got a ton out of the class and returned to my work at 18F excited to practice what I'd learned. I've rounded up my top lessons from the course for you to enjoy.
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The user-centered redesign of IdentityTheft.gov
on May 24, 2016
IdentityTheft.gov is user-friendly and intentional. We talk to the team behind the redesign about the user research that went into content and design decisions for the site.
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Making a distributed design team work
on April 27, 2016
There are now over 30 of us on the Experience Design team. Often, designers on the same project are not in the same location. Here are some techniques we’ve developed to help us work effectively when we aren’t in the same room or even the same times zone.
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The teams, they are a changin’
on April 18, 2016
To truly harness the power of agile practices, you need a stable team. But people leave under normal circumstances for a variety of reasons. While recognizing the need for stable teams, there are things our team does and should do to be resilient in the face of change.
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How we get high availability with Elasticsearch and Ruby on Rails
on April 8, 2016
If you’re already using Ruby on Rails and Elasticsearch, check out our replacement Rake tasks for the Elasticsearch Rails gem.
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Developing the Draft U.S. Web Design Standards’ UI components
on April 1, 2016
We’ve received many questions about the UI components that are in the Draft U.S. Web Design Standards. In this post, we’ll talk about how we built the components to be accessible so anyone can use them, the structure of our CSS and JavaScript stacks, and how it’s being adapted to work with other frameworks, like WordPress and Drupal.
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Best practices for building an accessible website using the Draft U.S. Web Design Standards
on March 29, 2016
When you work for the federal government, accessibility isn’t simply a nice-to-have — it’s the law. That’s why the Draft U.S. Web Design Standards set developers on the path of creating websites that anyone can use. The Draft Standards feature documentation that can help you keep your websites accessible, even after you make modifications.
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How design consistency helps users navigate federal websites
on March 25, 2016
We launched the Draft U.S. Web Design Standards last September, and over the next month, we plan to explore various topics related to design standards. In this post, we detail how our user research informed the decision decisions we made.
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Making the Draft U.S. Web Design Standards better through your feedback
on March 16, 2016
Since our launch of the Draft U.S. Web Design Standards last September, hundreds of people have provided feedback on the project through GitHub issues and via email. We’ve received dozens of feature requests as well as over 400 contributions from the open source community.
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Designing services that are accessible, transparent, and easy for all to use
on March 11, 2016
We're publishing a full report to better understand the public's overall experience interacting with the federal government and their attitudes about sharing information with government agencies. Today we end the series with a look at what we’ll focus on in the next stage of research.
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What people think about before deciding to share personal information with the government
on March 10, 2016
Over the next two weeks, we’re publishing a full report with findings from our research to better understand the public's overall experience interacting with the federal government and their attitudes about sharing information with government agencies. In today’s installment, we'll share what people think about before deciding to share personal information with the government.
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Trust as a two-way street between the government and the people it serves
on March 9, 2016
Over the next two weeks, we’re publishing a full report with findings from our research to better understand the public's overall experience interacting with the federal government and their attitudes about sharing information with government agencies. In today’s installment, we'll detail when people decide to trust the federal government and how they view the federal government vs. private companies.
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Too many options make complicated decisions harder
on March 8, 2016
Over the next two weeks, we’re publishing a full report with findings from our research to better understand the public's overall experience interacting with the federal government and their attitudes about sharing information with government agencies. In today’s installment, we'll talk about how choice overload affects decision-making.
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Transparency within government helps build public trust
on March 7, 2016
Over the next two weeks, we’re publishing a full report with findings from our research to better understand the public's overall experience interacting with the federal government and their attitudes about sharing information with government agencies. In today’s installment, we detail the need for transparency in government so that the public can “see” the process they’re undergoing when they’re interacting with federal agencies and programs.
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How people use proxies to interact with the federal government
on March 4, 2016
Over the next two weeks, we’re publishing a full report with findings from our research to better understand the public's overall experience interacting with the federal government and their attitudes about sharing information with government agencies. In today’s installment, we detail how people interact with the government using proxies.
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How people learn to navigate government services
on March 3, 2016
Over the next two weeks, we’re publishing a full report with findings from our research to better understand the public's overall experience interacting with the federal government and their attitudes about sharing information with government agencies. In today’s installment, we detail how people learn to navigate government services and what barriers exist to accessing services.
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Strategies people use when interacting with the federal government
on March 2, 2016
Over the next two weeks, we’re publishing a full report with findings from our research to better understand the public's overall experience interacting with the federal government and their attitudes about sharing information with government agencies. In today’s installment, we detail the strategies people use when interacting with the government.
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What we learned after interviewing dozens of people about their interactions with the federal government
on March 1, 2016
Over the next two weeks, we’re publishing a full report with findings from our research to better understand the public's overall experience interacting with the federal government and their attitudes about sharing information with government agencies. In today’s installment, we detail our initial research questions and what we learned.
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Informing the future of the Federal Front Door
on February 29, 2016
Today, we’re publishing a full report with findings from our research on the Federal Front Door, as well as a microsite that will contain future research findings related to these topics. In the coming days, we’ll also be publishing the complete report on the 18F blog.
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Happy Valentine's Day from the U.S. Web Design Standards team
on February 12, 2016
This Valentine’s Day, we’re sharing some love from the Standards, which include a library of open source UI components and a visual style guide for U.S. federal government websites. These tools — and these Valentine’s Day cards — follow industry-standard web accessibility guidelines and use the best practices of existing style libraries and modern web design.
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How user story estimation helps my team deliver value
on January 25, 2016
At 18F, we believe that employing agile practices is the most effective way to build digital services. User story estimation is one of the most useful agile tools, and in this post, I’ll talk about how and why my team has been using it.
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Turning learning up to 11: Knowledge sharing
on January 5, 2016
The internal knowledge-sharing initiatives we’re working on are also of immediate benefit to other organizations, and will maximize our impact on government IT beyond product delivery.
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Turning learning up to 11: Transparent internal operations
on January 4, 2016
In the second post in this series on how transparency, autonomy, and collaboration produce organizational culture change, I describe a few of the initiatives we’ve undertaken to increase transparency into 18F’s internal operations.
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Turning learning up to 11
on December 30, 2015
The feature that distinguishes high-performing organizations across all industries is their ability to facilitate knowledge sharing across the entire organization. This is the first post in a series about the tools and processes we use at 18F to facilitate knowledges sharing.
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Is your project using “agilefall”?
on December 29, 2015
At 18F, we’ve spent a lot of time working with federal agencies and coaching them through the transition to agile, but on first blush it’s not always easy to tell who’s really adopted agile versus those who just say they’re agile because they know they’re supposed to.
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How we test 18f.gsa.gov
on December 11, 2015
As our blog got more complicated, we started making mistakes that were hard to catch before publishing. So we came up with a way to catch many of those errors, before they end up in your browser.
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An open source government is a faster, more efficient government
on December 9, 2015
Regulation 479 is the first Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) regulation on the eRegulations platform. This collaboration is an excellent example of how open source development helps 18F deliver valuable services to our clients and the American public.
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What exactly do we even do all day?
on December 7, 2015
We've always been open about our code, but we decided to experiment with being open with our project management as well. We've opened up the Trello board for a project we're working on with the Environmental Protection Agency to the public, and the results have been fantastic.
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How we dramatically improved 18F’s onboarding process in 3 months
on December 1, 2015
Over the past three months, we’ve released several products that help new hires acclimate to our organization. In this blog post, we’ll detail what we did and why it works really well.
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How we use a lean approach to product design
on November 20, 2015
Here at 18F, several product teams (including CALC, Discovery, and EITI) have been experimenting with a lean product design approach to building software, often called “lean UX.” In a nutshell, it is a set of ideas about design and project management that help us focus not just on what we build, but on the outcomes our tools enable.
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Automating easy government decisions with machine learning
on November 18, 2015
Machine learning is a subfield of computer science that focuses on the problem of learning from data. We think there’s a big opportunity to make government more efficient by using the massive paper trail that government agencies have been creating over the decades as datasets for machine learning algorithms.
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Choose design over architecture
on November 17, 2015
Conventional wisdom often encourages engineers to start with a big architectural overview, but this kind of a grand plan usually leads to technical-debt. Instead of using an architecture-first plan, you should focus on user experience design and software design to help your project avoid technical debt.
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Answering common questions about cloud.gov
on November 13, 2015
Four weeks ago, we announced cloud.gov, a new platform that will enable small federal teams to rapidly develop and deploy web services with best-practice, production-level security and scalability. Currently, we’re running a small pilot program to prepare to open up cloud.gov to all federal agencies. In the meantime, we’d like to lay out some more details about the project and answer some common questions.
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Complexity is the adversary
on November 4, 2015
What if we told you that most catastrophic digital security vulnerabilities had one common denominator? One overriding contributor to root causes? Would you believe that one factor is also the biggest impediment to great design and software? That one thing? Complexity.
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Preventing technical debt
on October 22, 2015
In the final part of our series on technical debt, we talk about ways to minimize accumulating bad or unnecessary technical debt in the first place.
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To always be shipping, you need a shipyard
on October 9, 2015
We’ve developed cloud.gov, a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), to tackle core infrastructure issues and enable our small development teams to improve the delivery of 18F products.
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Announcing 18F Consulting’s Digital Economy Practice
on October 7, 2015
We’ve come to realize that there may be opportunities to achieve high impact in targeted areas by aligning our subject expertise with our digital expertise. To test our hypothesis, we’re launching an alpha version of our first policy vertical (or niche market) within 18F Consulting: the Digital Economy Practice.
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Managing technical debt
on October 5, 2015
In the last post in this series, we talked about the potential consequences of having a lot of technical debt. Now, we’ll give you concrete steps to identify and then manage that technical debt so it doesn’t get out of hand.
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What is technical debt?
on September 4, 2015
In part two of our series on technical debt, we define what technical debt is and how it can negatively impact your organization or project.
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Don’t underestimate the danger of technical debt
on August 7, 2015
Technical debt is a financial metaphor that software developers use to talk to managers about the “hidden” costs associated with a system’s architecture and codebase. Over a series of upcoming posts, we’re going to explain what technical debt is, how to manage it, and some ways to prevent accumulating it.
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Avoiding cloudfall: A systematic approach to cloud migration
on June 22, 2015
18F has been working on reducing the costs of entry to the cloud and thinking about good practices for cloud migration. One good practice is to adopt a scaled approach to cloud migration to avoid cloudfall.
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The U.S. government is moving to HTTPS everywhere
on June 8, 2015
Today, the White House's Office of Management and Budget (OMB) finalized an HTTPS-Only Standard for all publicly accessible federal websites and web services. This standard is designed to ensure a new, strong baseline of user privacy and security across U.S. government websites and APIs.
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Taking the pulse of the federal government's web presence
on June 2, 2015
The U.S. federal government is launching a new project to monitor how it's doing at best practices on the web. A sort of health monitor for the U.S. government's websites, it's called Pulse, and you can find it at pulse.cio.gov.
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Pair programming: Why two heads are better than one
on May 4, 2015
At 18F, we frequently use pair programming, a technique where two developers work together on one screen. We asked two developers at 18F how they pair program and why they find it useful.
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Focus on accessibility
on March 31, 2015
Accessibility is central to our work here at 18F. Read more about our accessibility efforts and how you can get involved.
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Making Twitter images accessible
on March 24, 2015
To make our tweets more accessible, 18F has started responding to our Tweets containing images, with another tweet explaining what the image shows.
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For public comment: the HTTPS-only standard
on March 17, 2015
Today, the White House's Office of Management and Budget is releasing a draft proposal for public comment: The HTTPS-Only Standard, at https.cio.gov. This proposal would require all new and existing publicly accessible federal websites and web services to enforce a secure, private connection with HTTPS Feedback and suggestions during this public comment period are encouraged, and can be provided on GitHub or by email.
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New resources at CareerOneStop
on March 2, 2015
When the Employment and Training Administration’s CareerOneStop team set out to redesign the career, training, and job resources sections of the CareerOneStop site, they didn’t immediately begin rewriting code. Instead, they embraced a user-centered approach that focused on the user experience (UX). Read on to learn more about their findings.
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A story of an agile workshop
on February 11, 2015
The clock was ticking as I stated the single solitary rule: We will have a demo at 10:00, 11:00 and 12:00 no matter what else happens. No matter if we have to stand up and say we got nothing done this sprint!
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The first .gov domains hardcoded into your browser as all-HTTPS
on February 9, 2015
Every .gov website, no matter how small, should give its visitors a secure, private connection. Ordinary HTTP (http://) connections are neither secure nor private, and can be easily intercepted and impersonated. In today's web browsers, the best and easiest way to fix that is to use HTTPS (https://).
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An open source tool for easier database testing
on January 13, 2015
18F is dedicated to spreading modern software techniques like rigorous automated testing throughout the federal government; we want to showcase how solid testing enables rapid, high-quality development. When the product is based on a large relational database, this poses a dilemma: the full production dataset is too unwieldy to duplicate to the test and development environments.
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Large scale development culture change: Google and the U.S. government
on December 11, 2014
18F exists to demonstrate how Open Source and Agile-inspired methodologies are critical to an effective, efficient, modern delivery process. However, driving adoption of these tools and practices throughout the federal government will require more than setting a good example. My recent talk at the GSA, available on YouTube, connects the dots between grassroots automated testing adoption at Google and the challenges facing similar culture change across Federal IT development.
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How to use more open source in your next federal IT acquisition
on November 26, 2014
The history of open source software is a record of steadily turning tremendously expensive custom-built solutions into freely available infrastructure that you can simply take for granted. What once were astoundingly sophisticated, expensive human endeavors have become open source tools you can drop into place in your project on a whim.
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Why we use HTTPS for every .gov we make
on November 13, 2014
18F uses HTTPS in every .gov website we make, so that our users have a fast, secure, private connection.
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How to run your own three-sprint agile workshop
on October 21, 2014
You can’t learn agile software development from a book any more than you can learn to perform a one-handed jump shot without repeatedly tossing a basketball in the hoop. You can read a book about the basic idea, you can read a book to get started, and you can read a book about refining your technique, but in the end you have to practice.
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The encasement strategy: on legacy systems and the importance of APIs
on September 8, 2014
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.
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Working in public from day one
on July 31, 2014
Open source your code from day one. Don't wait for a milestone, don't wait for it to be stable — do it from the first commit.
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18F: an open source team
on July 29, 2014
At 18F, we place a premium on developing digital tools and services in the open. This means contributing our source code back to the community, actively repurposing our code across projects, and contributing back to the open source tools we use. For a variety of reasons, we believe that doing so improves the final product we create.
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Take a gander at our /Developer page
on July 23, 2014
A growing trend both inside government and outside is to have a simple welcoming page for outside developers who may be interested in your team’s efforts. This material is often located at website.gov/developer and points visitors to technical material that developers may be interested in, especially APIs. Collecting technical documentation in one place facilitates the developer experience, ensuring that they can find and begin using APIs with as little friction as possible.
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Hot off the press: 18F's API standards
on July 15, 2014
We recently released the first version of our API Standards — a set of recommendations and guidelines for API production. It is our intention that every 18F API meet these standards, to help us ensure a baseline quality and consistency across all APIs we offer now and in the future.
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Intro to APIs: Working with URLs, JSON, APIs, and Open Data — without writing any code
on June 25, 2014
June 27, 2014, from 9:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. Register now. GSA’s digital teams are offering a user-friendly intro course to APIs. Regardless of your skill level, you will walk away from this lesson understanding what APIs are and how developers use them.
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Packaging up API usability testing for agency reuse
on May 19, 2014
Over the past year, a GSA collaboration has seen a project that offers API usability testing to federal agencies go from the pilot stage to a regular, robust series. Already, 13 agencies and programs have participated, and several more participate with every monthly session that passes. The best examples from across the government have made clear that one of the most important tasks of API producers is to regularly engage their developer community and listen to what they have to say. But just encouraging agencies to do this only goes so far.
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With FBOpen API, 18F shows what's possible in government
on May 11, 2014
There has been some great coverage of the new group of tech specialists out of the GSA, dubbed 18F.
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Make government APIs better with user experience
on May 10, 2014
An API is a product just like a car, a website or a ballpoint pen. It’s designed to help someone do something. Products are either designed well—they meet expectations and deliver value—or they are designed poorly and create frustration and confusion. Inevitably, bad products are abandoned without a thought, like an old T-shirt with holes in it.
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How a pepperoni pizza inspires open government
on April 12, 2014
Easy access to detailed tracking of processes has become more and more popular. Whether using Amazon.com, UPS, Uber or United Airlines, people expect instant feedback. They want to immediately see the status of a process upon which they depend.
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Open source and terms of service = a better developer experience
on April 11, 2014
One of the important changes occurring across the federal government is the role of open source for non-code projects - using an open, iterative model of collaboration inherited from the coding community for all kinds of new purposes. Want to see a great example of this in action? In recent years, as more and more agencies offer public APIs, some have included a developer terms of service (TOS).
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