Digital Government

18F wants to experiment with design standards

The federal government's in-house design and usability consultancy would like sites to be clean and consistent but not necessarily uniform.

Digital Government

GSA unifies tech groups into single service

18F, the Office of Citizen Services and Innovative Technologies and the Presidential Innovation Fellows program are being combined into a single technology office.

Digital Government

Godbout exits for software startup

Federal digital services pioneer and Federal 100 winner Greg Godbout is leaving the Environmental Protection Agency for the private sector next month.

Digital Government

18F pushes for an even more open 'open source' rule

"Open source by default" ought to apply not only to code developed by government agencies, but also to virtually all code that vendors supply the government, a developer with GSA's startup urged.

Digital Government

18F to fill two new leadership positions

18F has two new leadership job openings, to oversee chapters and custom partner solutions.

Digital Government

Are federal web sites too subtle?

Agency websites sometimes offer too many choices, and can be hard to distinguish from private-sector sites, according to public feedback gathered by 18F's design team.

Digital Government

FedRAMP takes agile BPA for a test drive

The cloud services vetting office wants to open its process to the public via a dashboard built under 18F's agile blanket purchase agreement.

Digital Government

Tech teams aim to upend procurement

Teams of techies will bring new acquisition models to seven agencies as part of the Digital Acquisitions Pilot.

Digital Government

Obama warns against 'absolutist' positions on encryption

The White House had said Obama would not weigh in on the Apple case, but he spoke at length on the issue of encryption in the first visit by a sitting president to the South by Southwest festival.

Digital Government

When agile development is change management in disguise

The current and former heads of 18F agree that when it comes to digital services, the tech is often secondary at best.

Digital Government

18F's procurement hack could guide DHS bug bounties

Cross-agency collaboration might lead the Department of Homeland Security to dodge the acquisition process while paying hackers to find vulnerabilities.

Digital Government

18F lends the contracting community a hand

Steve Kelman points to GSA's CALC tool as an example of what smart collaboration can accomplish.

Digital Government

Office etiquette? There's a bot for that.

Slackbots offer a new way for agencies to guide employees' workplace conversations, but there are limits to bots' ability to save people from uncomfortable confrontations.

Digital Government

Getting back on the $3,500-or-less horse

18F is retrying the micro-purchase reverse auction format that netted a $1 code project last year, though the outfit plans to shake things up eventually.

Digital Government

A bot named for a 'West Wing' character helps onboard 18F's new hires

18F developed a Slack bot named Dolores Landingham that's helping to ease the transition for new employees.

Digital Government

Protests resolved, GSA launches agile BPA

GSA has resolved protests around its agile Blanket Purchase agreement, added a vendor and can now begin awarding work.

Digital Government

What's coming from FedRAMP, 18F and USAJobs

GSA's Phaedra Chrousos discussed a wide range of possible revamps at a recent gathering of contract professionals.

Digital Government

18F hacked procurement and got code for $1

GSA's in-house startup tried a reverse auction micro-purchase approach to buying code, and it turned out one techie was willing to work for far cheaper than anyone had imagined.

Digital Government

Is the revised A-130 already obsolete?

A new top-level federal IT policy document, years in the making, is out for review. But did it neglect to incorporate lessons learned from big changes in IT management?

Digital Government

GSA Hackathon 2: twice as big and open to govvies

In a sequel to its spring hackathon, GSA awarded thousands in prizes to outside techies, and looked to bring some participants on board full time.