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When we talk about "innovation" in government tech, what do we mean? 18F surveyed multiple digital innovation groups in cultural heritage institutions and federal agencies on this very question. As an innovation group ourselves, the results both challenged us and strengthened our confidence in the importance of trying new approaches in the government space.

Building cross-system interoperability is long-term work, but the tech talks became an early step in establishing shared understandings and contexts for OHS.

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.

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

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

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.

Designing the workplace is one of many services offered by GSA's Public Buildings Service. In Lakewood, Colorado, the team approaches the task as consultants working with agencies to change their space and the culture to go with it.

Last month, content strategist and UX designer Natalie Kurz from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau presented at 18F. Prior to her presentation, we had the chance to chat with Kurz via email about her experience working with different types of content, her predictions for the field, and the collaborative approaches she recommends.

Natalie Kurz, a content strategist at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, recently spoke at 18F about some best practices for creating and promoting digestible, user-friendly content.

At 18F Consulting, we experiment with ways to empower agencies to build cost-efficient, excellent digital solutions. Recently we partnered with the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division to run a two day “Design/Dev Agile Sprint” to help them modernize their Field Operations Handbook.

How does the Bechdel test, originally designed for evaluating works for fiction, apply to technology projects? To pass, a function written by a woman dev must call a function written by another woman dev.

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!

18F has begun collecting and publishing team member "snippets," short lists summarizing what you worked on the previous week and what you plan to work on during the upcoming week. Team members submit their snippets each Monday, and they are published internally for all to peruse. Snippets foster transparency and team cohesion, spark productive interactions, and can be cultivated right away using tools already at-hand.

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.