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A federal guide to de-risk government technology projects
on September 9, 2020
Announcing the federal field guide to de-risk government technology
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An Acquisition Retrospective
on March 18, 2020
The Centers of Excellence and 18F worked together with the General Services Administration’s Region 1 Assisted Acquisition Services to create the Discovery BPA, which allows the Centers of Excellence to quickly staff the industry side of the their teams embedded at agency partners.
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Ask 18F — What’s the difference between a Contracting Officer’s Representative and a Product Owner on agile software development projects?
on March 10, 2020
Ask 18F is an advice column that answers questions sent in by federal employees. In this edition, we’ll talk about the difference between a Contracting Officer’s Representative and a Product Owner on agile software development projects
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What we learned from building a pool of agile vendors
on July 26, 2018
In 2015, 18F had an idea for a better way for federal agencies to hire private vendors to build products and services using agile development techniques. We wanted to see what would happen if we used an existing government process (called a blanket purchase agreement) and tailored it to the needs of agencies looking to update their digital services.
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Five contracting tweaks that have yielded 18F better procurements (thus far)
on July 17, 2018
Here are five procurement hacks — both in the context of our Agile Blanket Purchase Agreement (BPA) and in general — that we’ve made in the past few years to make the procurement process a bit more joyful and effective.
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What agencies have to say about working in the open
on May 24, 2018
18F has long espoused the benefits of using open source technologies and more broadly, the value of working in the open. We wanted to hear from other agencies about how open source has worked for them and what the future looks like for them. So, we asked a few of our partner agencies to talk about their experience.
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A day in the life of an 18F product owner
on September 18, 2017
The Technology Transformation Services (TTS) has been working with the Forest Service in an effort to move their permitting process online. We’ve previously written about how doing this work in the open can benefit other agencies with permit systems. In this post, we’ll focus on why it’s important to have a product owner, what that looks like from the Forest Service’s perspective, and why a product owner is critical to successful projects.
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Forest Service: Six months in, checking our assumptions
on September 8, 2017
The Technology Transformation Services has been working with the Forest Service in an effort to move their permitting process online. In this post, we’ll focus on how taking a step back to check your assumptions can reduce the risk that your project will go off course.
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Why discovery research matters for modular procurement
on June 22, 2017
The Technology Transformation Service (TTS) has been working with the Forest Service since August 2016 on what will eventually be an agency-wide system to process permit applications. TTS is primarily helping the Forest Service hire private vendors for this work, rather than building it ourselves, and one way we’re improving that process is through “discovery research.”
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One agency’s investments in open source mean others benefit
on March 15, 2017
One of the advantages to working across government is that we often have opportunities to share insights from other projects, repurpose code, and connect otherwise disjointed efforts. This happens in direct work with our partners, but also on our blog and in our GitHub repository. Our code, guides, and other work are all free for other government agencies and the public to use for their benefit (and we love when people do).
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Building an effective agile partnership between government and industry
on January 5, 2017
The Wage and Hour Division (WHD) of the U.S. Department of Labor has been with 18F at the forefront of digital transformation and has been an outstanding early adopter. One of our latest initiatives has been an Agile Delivery Services Blanket Purchase Agreement (Agile BPA) Task Order to create the initial version of a web application tool for the Section 14(c) certificate application process.
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