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Three ways to write fearless spreadsheet formulas
on November 5, 2024
Spreadsheets are the world's most popular programming environment — and the most feared. But what if spreadsheet formulas were easy to read and change without fear? Learn how a few simple principles can make your spreadsheets a joy to work with.
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Working with Oracle databases in open-source projects
on July 17, 2024
Follow this step-by-step tutorial to gain access to data locked inside proprietary Oracle databases, so you can use it in your open-source project.
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Introducing the UX Guide
on August 4, 2020
At GSA’s 18F, one thing we do on every project is human-centered design. We use the broader term user experience (UX) design to refer to a set of human-centered methods and practices we use in our work. Our new UX Guide documents some of our practices and holds helpful resources.
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Implementing rules without a rules engine
on October 9, 2018
If you’re building a rules-based system, don’t assume that you need a separate business rules engine product. Rules can be implemented more easily and with less overhead by cross-functional teams working to describe the rules and policy directly in code using a general purpose programming language like Python, Ruby, etc.
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Shared infrastructure as code
on August 15, 2018
At many government agencies, a central IT team manages DNS directly. Other teams must request changes using help desk tickets, which can have inconsistent turnaround times, and are susceptible to human error. Having DNS records as code and doing changes through pull requests brought turnaround time down from multiple days to under ten minutes.
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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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Moving a legacy Microsoft environment to the Azure cloud
on February 1, 2018
Securely connecting Azure with an on-premises server environment provides the benefits of a modern, cloud infrastructure, while making it trivial for application developers to interface with an on-premises legacy environment.
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Getting stakeholder buy in for agile development
on December 14, 2017
Transitioning to agile development doesn’t need to be a big, sweeping, organizational change. Here are some tips to make it more approachable and less scary by introducing it in small chunks.
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Automated scanning for sensitive information in the development lifecycle
on September 26, 2017
Often when developing open source software, and especially software that relies on outside services, you’ll find that you have to manage sensitive information. While there are a large number of things that can be considered sensitive, open source developers often deal with sensitive items such as API tokens, passwords, and private keys that are required for the system to function. Here's how we approached keeping this information safe.
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Walking the talk: what went into the Method Cards’ tune up
on September 21, 2017
Recently, 18F released a new version of the Method Cards, a collection of tools that offer simple, “how-to” descriptions of research and design methods with a special emphasis on the use of those methods in government work. With this new release, the Method Cards have become easier to read and understand, as well as easier to print and circulate.
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Managing custom software development in government when you're not a software engineer
on September 20, 2017
As custom software development becomes integral to accomplishing any program’s mission, many managers in government find themselves faced with handling the unfamiliar: overseeing the design and implementation of a digital product that is functional and user-friendly.
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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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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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A guide to the 18F Writing Lab
on April 28, 2016
The guide is designed to equip 18F staff with the information they need to quickly and easily request writing and editing help from the Lab, and also to provide our Lab editors with guidance on editing styles and workflows so we can provide a smooth experience for staff who request the Lab’s help.
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A clear audience makes for a good blog post
on April 20, 2016
The most important advice I give 18F staff while they’re working on a blog post is to define their audience as clearly and as narrowly as possible. This focus has helped us overcome numerous hurdles to publishing quality blog posts, and it’s also the part of our new Blogging Guide that I’m most excited about.
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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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Making more consistent decisions with design principles: A new 18F guide
on April 8, 2016
Design principles are concise, specific guidelines for generating and then evaluating ideas and artifacts. We had trouble finding detailed instructions for making and using design principles online. So we decided to write our own.
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New guide provides tools for product leads
on March 31, 2016
To help our product managers, newcomers and veterans alike, wear the many hats that their jobs require, we’ve developed the 18F Product Guide. The guide will help get our team on the same page and provide a resource to our newcomers.
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Introducing the CSS coding style guide
on January 11, 2016
18F is releasing our CSS coding style guide, which specifies our best practices and rules for writing consistent, maintainable CSS code.
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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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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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What's in a name: Understanding and using government acronyms
on October 14, 2015
We have an acronyms section in our Content Guide, a resource we heartily recommend. Acronyms and abbreviations also have a ton of associated history and nuance, which we’re shedding light on here, hopefully to encourage other authors and agencies to think carefully about how they use them in digital tools.
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You shared, we listened — updates to the 18F Content Guide
on October 8, 2015
After we launched the 18F Content Guide, we received all kinds of suggestions for updates and improvements. Here's a sampling of some of the improvements we've made recently based on your suggestions.
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Introducing 18F Design Methods
on August 10, 2015
We’re thrilled to introduce the beta deck of 18F Design Methods, a collection of research and design practices that we use to better understand and serve the users of our products.
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18F’s style guide for open source project documentation
on July 29, 2015
The Open Source Style Guide is a comprehensive handbook for writing clear, accessible, and user-friendly documentation so that your open source code repositories are accessible both internally and externally.
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The 18F content guide: working toward cleaner, more accessible communication
on July 6, 2015
We’re proud to announce the release of our 18F Content Guide, a comprehensive handbook to help content creators on our team (and, we hope, elsewhere) create more direct, accessible, and compelling written works.
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18F Guides
on May 28, 2015
While there's no substitute for personal instruction and mentorship, that effort scales far more effectively when there are clear, concise materials to introduce the basics. 18F Guides aims to fill that role for our young and growing team, and we hope it may be of use to others as well.
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