Blog Listing | USAGov

Learn about the priorities, research, challenges, and great discoveries that shape the way USAGov connects people with government services and programs. Select year and/or month to see the blog entries from the selected year/month.

Tim Lowden: Helping Make Government Analytics More Open

Tim Lowden, Acting Program Manager for the Digital Analytics Program (DAP)

A fortuitous twist of fate led a Global Communications major with a focus in Public Diplomacy to become the acting program manager for the Digital Analytics Program (DAP). Tim Lowden, learned early on that “life can’t be scripted and that nothing’s ever going to follow the exact path you set.”

📅 June 24, 2016

Mail, speech bubbles, mobile phone icons by the word _feedback_ with a computer in the background

At USAGov, we’re constantly evaluating the programs we operate to ensure that they’re still meeting the needs of our users. In some cases, this leads to a decision that our resources can be better spent elsewhere and that we should decommission a product. This is never an easy decision, but given the rate of change online, it’s an important part of ensuring that we’re using our resources in the best way possible to help the public find government information and services.

📅 June 15, 2016

A Pinterest page for Kids.gov with 22 boards, 2.2K pins, 6 likes, 1.8K followers, and 145 following. It features boards like "Kids.gov Videos," "Science Activities," "History for Kids," and "Parents Resources," showcasing educational content with images of cooking, science experiments, historical scenes, and parent-child learning.

Last summer, Kids.Gov revamped its presence on Pinterest in an attempt to find new ways to connect with its followers.

The Marketing Team set out to learn more about our audiences and the kind of content they like. Despite being a difficult platform to navigate, we set lofty goals for ourselves and developed a timely strategy to pin everyday.

📅 June 11, 2016

A "Plan Ahead for Disasters" graphic with a checklist icon, featuring items like water, food, first aid kit, flashlight, radio, batteries, clothes, and documents. It includes a "Get a Kit" button and is credited to Ready.gov.

“Ultimately, knowing what drives us puts us in the driver’s seat.” – Susan M. Schneider

The Social and Behavioral Science Team (SBST) is a small, but mighty group of leading behavioral scientists and innovators from across the country. Housed within the Office of Evaluation Sciences at GSA, the SBST realizes that “seemingly small barriers to engagement...can prevent programs from effectively reaching the people they are intended to serve” and that “an effective and efficient government must, therefore, reflect our best understanding of human behavior.”

📅 June 2, 2016

Quantitative Research on Kids.gov

As part of USAGov’s efforts to assess and improve Kids.gov, we reviewed a variety of metrics to get a clearer understanding of how visitors have been using the site. This data--in combination with the qualitative research--is helping to guide our recommendations for the website.

The data was pulled from Google Analytics, DigitalGov Search, Google’s Webmaster Tools, Facebook, Twitter, and our email service provider.

Here’s a snapshot of some of the quantitative data we reviewed and what we took from it:

📅 June 1, 2016