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Connecting culture change at 18F and PBS
on December 12, 2016
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.
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What 18F is thankful for this Thanksgiving
on November 25, 2016
Like all federal employees, we don't work on Thanksgiving. We do work on the day after, though, and this year we thought we'd pause to take a moment and reflect. Here are a few things that we're thankful for, what brings meaning to our lives, and what brings us to work every day.
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Iterative workplace design at the Denver Federal Center
on October 14, 2016
Not long ago, the General Service Administration’s regional headquarters on the Denver Federal Center campus looked like a stereotypical office space; today, it is a modern workplace thanks to the iterative work of the Denver GSA’s design team.
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Mississippi brings agile and modular techniques to child welfare system contract
on September 20, 2016
The State of Mississippi is about to upgrade its child welfare management system, a system used by about 1,800 state employees in 82 counties, supporting the wellbeing of about 5,000 children across the state. The system was built in the early 2000s, and the employees who use it are stymied by an inefficient interface and aging infrastructure.
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A conversation about static and dynamic websites
on July 11, 2016
Our blog uses Jekyll, a static file generator with a basic templating system, as the backend software. Deploying our blog posts this way has simplified our publishing process.
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Prototype early, prototype often: A lesson from the DATA Act
on June 14, 2016
The DATA Act is a “tremendous undertaking …[to] standardize how federal agencies report their spending data.” It has the potential to provide unprecedented insight into how the federal government spends money, and it comes with a statutory deadline. Any delay in implementation is a delay in cost savings and transparency, so we’re trying to help the government deliver on the promise of the DATA Act in a timely manner.
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Why we’re moving 18f.gsa.gov to Federalist
on May 18, 2016
We want 18f.gsa.gov to be an exemplar of what 18F can do for partner agencies. One way to do that is to host it the way we’d host a similar site for a partner agency, and that means moving to Federalist.
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A visit to the National Earthquake Information Center’s open source team
on April 4, 2016
I visited the Earthquakes team at their office on the Colorado School of Mines campus in Golden, CO, to learn about this open source team’s role in public service.
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18F year two: By the numbers
on March 18, 2016
18F turned two years old this past Saturday, and we thought we’d take the opportunity to reflect on how our organization has grown and progressed in the last 12 months. Our team, our work, and even this blog have grown and diversified since March 19, 2015. Here are a few key statistics to show how.
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What’s in the first U.S. Extractives Industries Transparency Initiative report
on December 16, 2015
Just a few months ago we wrote about the next phase of the United States Extractives Industry Transparency Initiative (USEITI), one of our oldest projects with the lofty goal of educating and informing public debate around natural resources produced on public land. This week, the U.S. Department of the Interior released the first report from the United States, a major step toward becoming fully compliant with the global EITI standard.
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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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A look at complex data in USEITI
on November 30, 2015
We've been working with the Office of Natural Resource Revenues on implementing the global Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) standard, which includes all kinds of data. One new data point we have this year is the federal production number: The amount of a given resource produced on federal lands.
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USEITI: What we learned and where we’re headed
on November 2, 2015
During Sunshine Week, we wrote about our progress on the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, or EITI, an international coalition organized here by the U.S. Department of the Interior and a multi-stakeholder group that includes representatives from nonprofits, academia, industry and local governments. Since March, the 18F team has worked with the USEITI team to process research on the current state of the project as well as the next steps for the U.S. as a candidate country for the global initiative.
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Communicart tool will streamline purchase card process
on August 6, 2015
Our hope is that our new Communicart tool will streamline the purchase card approval process so government employees can spend more time performing their essential work and less time on the paperwork required to buy a new chair.
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Sunshine week: extractive industries transparency initiative event
on March 18, 2015
Today, 18F joins the Departments of the Interior and State at General Assembly DC to and the progress we made together in shedding light on public data.
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UX lessons learned from a procurement project
on March 6, 2015
How user research better informs the products 18F builds.
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Making procurement easier: questions for developer [Curious Mole]*
on March 5, 2015
We recently sat down with Developer [Curious Mole]* and asked her a few questions about Discovery, a new product designed to make government procurement more efficient.
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How to use GitHub and the terminal: a guide
on March 3, 2015
At 18F we hire people from many different backgrounds and each new employee brings a different level of comfort with the specific tools we use on our various projects. The team that runs the 18F website recently started writing down the tools and processes that we use to update the blog and the code that runs the site. We're sharing that with you today.
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Taking control of our website with Jekyll and webhooks
on November 17, 2014
How we moved our website to Jekyll, left Tumblr behind, and set up automatic deployment with webhooks.
