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Catching up with the TANF Data Portal project
on September 7, 2023
Around 800,000 low-income American families receive cash assistance through Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) each month. 18F and the Administration for Children & Families’ Office of Family Assistance partnered on building a new data portal for TANF. We caught up with Office of Family Assistance leaders to see how their agency is continuing with the work.
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18F Checks In With the DAWSON Project at the U.S. Tax Court
on April 25, 2023
The United States Tax Court is an independent federal court that settles disputes between taxpayers and the Internal Revenue Service. Since the 1980s, the Court has used a modified commercial software product to manage its operations. In December 2020, the Court introduced DAWSON, a modern open-source case management system developed with assistance from an industry partner and 18F. DAWSON streamlined Court operations and changed the way the public interacts with the Court.
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18F Checks In With Emily Read and the USGS Water Resources Mission Area Projects
on February 24, 2023
At 18F, we like to keep in touch with our project partners. 18F partnered with the USGS Water Resources Mission Area from March 2020 to June 2022 on a wide variety of projects together. We caught up with Emily Read, Chief for the Web Communications Branch at USGS Water Resources Mission Area.
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Content design for beta.ada.gov: writing for action and flexibility
on July 13, 2022
We worked with a team at the Department of Justice to redesign ADA.gov. We helped them launch beta.ada.gov, and we’ve designed new content for some of the most sought-after ADA topics.
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Tech talks with One OHS
on January 25, 2022
Building cross-system interoperability is long-term work, but the tech talks became an early step in establishing shared understandings and contexts for OHS.
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Building capacities within a government agency to build and support a new case management system: part 2
on June 17, 2021
This is part two in a two-part series with our partner team at the U.S. Tax Court about their experiences building their new, open source case management system, DAWSON. For this post, we talked to Mike Marcotte, Technical Lead on the project.
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Building capacities within a government agency to build and support a new case management system: part 1
on June 16, 2021
This is part one in a two-part series with our partner team at the U.S. Tax Court about their experiences building their new, open source case management system, DAWSON. For this post, we chatted with Jessica Marine, Product Owner and Deputy Clerk of the Court, Case Services Officer.
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Improving the way the U.S. Tax Court engages with the public
on June 15, 2021
The United States Tax Court is an independent federal court that provides a forum for settling disputes between taxpayers and the Internal Revenue Service. After 30 years, the Court shifted the way it manages Court operations — here’s how 18F and the Court worked together to improve the public’s experience.
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Using agile and DevOps to get better results than a change control board
on March 2, 2021
Agile is a way of quickly reacting to the demands of your project and DevOps is a methodology for building infrastructure and applications that is able to adapt and change quickly. Using these methods, you can avoid many of the pitfalls of traditional waterfall practices described above.
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Doing user research to design the next-gen WDFN
on August 6, 2020
The USGS Water Resources Mission Area is striving to make their water data easier to access for their users. This involves stepping back and reviewing how users currently use waterdata.usgs.gov so that we can make informed decisions moving forward.
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Transforming how DOJ's Civil Rights Division engages with the public
on July 7, 2020
In order to be more responsive to the public’s changing communication needs and the increased reporting volume,the Civil Rights Division, in close collaboration with 18F, has launched a user-friendly online submission experience at civilrights.justice.gov that transforms the way the Division collects, sorts, and responds to civil rights reports.
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18F is here to help during critical times
on April 9, 2020
Government agencies are seeing their systems and staff stretched to the max as they do their best to serve the public. 18F is a team of government employees with expertise in modern digital tools and practices, and we’re here to help
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Six years improving the experience of government
on March 19, 2020
We’re celebrating another birthday at 18F, and we thought we’d take the opportunity to reflect on how our organization has grown and progressed in the last year
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Long-term teams, not sudden handoffs
on December 3, 2019
Don’t let your agency waste knowledge and opportunity. Instead of planning for a handoff to operations and maintenance, plan for a long-term team. Instead of launching your project and then keeping it running, plan for ongoing development.
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Becoming a product manager
on November 21, 2019
If you had asked me two years ago what a product manager is, I wouldn’t have known. And, yet, today, that is one of my titles. Along the way, I have been lucky to receive guidance and coaching from experienced product managers at the General Services Administration’s 18F.
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18F’s four favorite projects of 2018
on March 22, 2019
To continue our birthday celebrations, we’re saluting those projects and partners that inspired our team to do their best to improve the user experience of government. We asked staff from acquisitions to strategy to share what project they loved working on during the past year.
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Happy 5th birthday, 18F
on March 19, 2019
It’s been five years since we launched 18F, and we’ve grown a lot since that day — in size, in focus, and in impact. We wanted to celebrate our fifth birthday with a look back at what we’ve accomplished, what we’ve learned along the way, and where we’re headed next.
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Aiming for obsolescence: Lessons from an 18F product transition
on May 1, 2018
Four years into 18F’s work, transition is a topic of frequent conversation among our team. Every organization and every project is different. At the same time, every transition offers lessons that can be applied to the next.
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18F and federal laboratories work together to bring better data to businesses
on October 5, 2017
Working with 18F helped the Federal Laboratory Consortium for Technology Transfer create the largest collection of federal laboratory data and technology resources available online.
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Opening the nation’s crime data
on September 7, 2017
For more than eight decades, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has collected nationwide crime data under the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program. While the data has always been publicly available via static reports, the first release of the Crime Data Explorer makes it easier than ever for anyone to access and use the data.
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The new FEC.gov
on May 30, 2017
Last week, the Federal Election Commission (FEC) unveiled their new website at FEC.gov. This new site is the result of a years-long collaboration with GSA’s 18F and features completely revamped tools for exploring campaign finance data.
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Remembering Larry Mathias, an early partner and excellent civil servant
on April 27, 2017
We’re writing this to remember and pay tribute to Larry Mathias, who passed away unexpectedly this month. Larry was a senior contracting officer at the General Services Administration. He managed technology systems for the OASIS program and was instrumental in helping GSA launch this new contract vehicle. Larry was also an early believer in 18F.
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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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Three small steps you can take to reboot agile in your organization
on October 25, 2016
This past summer, 18F held an agile workshop for the National Technical Information Service (NTIS), part of the U.S. Department of Commerce. An agency with roots going back to World War II, NTIS is facing a future that requires a strategic realignment towards open data and services.
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Get the most juice out of the squeeze
on October 11, 2016
Through analytics and moderated sessions, we can learn what user goals are and enhance the platform to help them achieve those goals. By creating universal search across legal resources, people will be able to locate information more efficiently. This tool will allow them to better understand and comply with campaign finance laws, thus helping advance the FEC's mission.
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Using RFPs to make every dollar count
on October 3, 2016
We were thrilled to be invited to help National Endowment for the Arts and even more thrilled that we could help them succeed in a way that prevented years of back-and-forth exchanges and many millions of dollars spent. Instead, they invested $30,000 and a couple months to build the Bright Spots interactive graphic.
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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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New pilot aims to streamline notice and comment process
on July 26, 2016
Today, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) began asking the public to comment on a new proposed rule that would affect how the EPA tracks hazardous waste as it moves around the country. This rule is also the pilot of the new notice and comment feature of the eRegulations platform.
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Illinois fourth grade class uses Every Kid in a Park to explore national parks and beyond
on July 6, 2016
One fourth grade class in Monticello, Illinois used the Every Kid in the Park website to learn more about National Parks and create a project for their school’s annual open house. We reached out to Washington Elementary fourth grade teacher Robyn Garrett to learn more about how she used national parks in her curriculum.
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Using plain language to bridge the gap between government and industry
on June 21, 2016
Recently, we partnered with the Office of Integrated Technology Services (ITS) here within the General Services Administration (GSA) on a four-month effort to develop a plain language guide, informed by research and interviews, to help technology companies interested in doing business with the federal government better understand how to join IT Schedule 70.
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Two agencies participating in the Digital Acquisition Accelerator pilot
on June 15, 2016
Today, we’re thrilled to announce that the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Department of the Treasury are the first two agencies to participate in the Digital Acquisition Accelerator Pilot.
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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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Building better by building together with the Federal Election Commission
on June 7, 2016
How do you work iteratively and in the open in government? How do you transform an agency’s digital presence with agile and user-centered design? We’ve learned a lot about this as we’ve worked alongside our partners at the Federal Election Commission (FEC) on beta.fec.gov, and we want to share some of those lessons here.
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Get your pass for Kids to Parks Day
on May 20, 2016
May 21 is Kids to Park Day— a day organized by the National Park Trust to promote nature, learning, and play. And if you’re lucky to have a fourth grader in your family, you can use the Every Kid in a Park program to access all federal lands and waters for free.
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From spreadsheet to API to app: A better contract forecasting tool
on May 2, 2016
Executive branch agencies of the federal government are required by law to tell vendors if and when they plan on making purchases. The General Services Administration (GSA) was forecasting using a crowded spreadsheet containing dozens of columns and hundreds of rows. 18F helped create a new, open-source tool to display contract forecasting opportunities.
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Treasury and the DATA Act: Full of sunshine
on March 15, 2016
To celebrate Sunshine Week, we’re highlighting some groundbreaking open government work by the Department of the Treasury, one of 18F’s partner agencies.
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We asked everyone at 18F to reflect on the most meaningful project they worked on this year
on December 23, 2015
2015 was a big year for 18F. We almost doubled in size, worked with 28 different agency partners, and released products ranging from Design Method Cards to cloud.gov. Internally, we improved onboarding and our documentation by releasing guides on topics as diverse as content, accessibility, and creating good open source projects. To mark the end of the year, we reached out to everyone at 18F and asked them to reflect on a meaningful project they worked on this year.
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Plain language for the win: betaFEC’s new content design
on December 17, 2015
The Federal Election Commission (FEC) has been working since the 1970s to clarify the rules for raising and spending money in federal elections, and today we’re thrilled to announce the first major content launch of betaFEC: a guide to registration and reporting that makes intricate information easier to understand.
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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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An open source government is a faster, more efficient government
on December 9, 2015
Regulation 479 is the first Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) regulation on the eRegulations platform. This collaboration is an excellent example of how open source development helps 18F deliver valuable services to our clients and the American public.
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New playbook details what it's like to work with 18F Delivery
on November 19, 2015
If you or your agency have thought about working with 18F but are unsure of how we work with our partners, we have a new set of guidelines to help you out. The 18F Delivery Partnership Playbook is specifically targeted at federal offices interested in working with 18F to build digital services.
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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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Welcome to betaFEC: campaign finance for everyone
on October 29, 2015
As the 2016 presidential election heats up, here at 18F we’ve been working with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) to make campaign finance data more accessible to the public. Today, we launched betaFEC, the first piece in a complete redesign of the FEC’s online presence. We were excited to work on a project that allowed us to delve into intricate campaign finance data, plain language, and the FEC’s first API.
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Every Kid in a Park: Why we can’t stop smiling
on October 21, 2015
Our projects are iterative, which means we keep working on them after they launch. In keeping with that practice, we’ve kept a close eye on everykidinapark.gov, which went live September 1. We’re excited to share a few of our improvements and updates with you today.
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Five factors for building a successful government-wide digital analytics program
on October 20, 2015
Launched just three years ago, the Digital Analytics Program (DAP) continues to drive the 2012 Digital Government Strategy’s mission to improve the citizen experience by streamlining the collection and analysis of digital analytics data on a federal government-wide scale. Today, 45 agencies — including all CFO Act agencies — have implemented the common code across more than 4,000 public-facing websites, counting 1.5 BILLION pageviews each month.
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New citizenship resources demystify the naturalization process
on September 21, 2015
For many people, September conjures up happy memories of heading back to school, new backpack and supplies in tow. For new and aspiring citizens, September has additional significance: It’s when the federal government celebrates Constitution Week, a weeklong observance commemorating the adoption of the U.S. Constitution.
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Behind the scenes: Building a new College Scorecard with students
on September 14, 2015
How we worked with the Department of Education on new steps to help students, parents and advisers make better college choices, including a new College Scorecard, comprehensive and updated data on higher education institutions, and customized tools using this new data.
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Reimagining the immigration process
on September 8, 2015
Since November, I’ve been working with a team from 18F and USCIS to develop my.uscis.gov, a customer-facing site to help users navigate their relationship with the agency. USCIS approached 18F about the partnership because they wanted to improve the experience for millions of users like my husband and me.
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How to design a government site for kids
on September 3, 2015
Every Kid in a Park gives U.S. fourth graders free access to all federal lands and water for a full year. Here at 18F, we were proud to develop the site in partnership with the U.S. Department of Interior and other federal land management agencies.
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Building the next generation federal workforce
on September 1, 2015
We recently began our partnership with the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) on the GovConnect initiative, which helps agencies create a culture of excellence based on collaboration and teamwork.
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Show me the money: 18F works with Treasury on #TheNew10
on July 17, 2015
Shortly after joining 18F Consulting, the opportunity to work on a Department of the Treasury project came my way. I didn’t stop smiling for what seemed like an hour (or three) after I found out the scope: Treasury was putting a woman on the $10 bill!
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67 million more Federal Election Commission records at your fingertips
on July 15, 2015
The OpenFEC API added a filings endpoint as well as itemized receipt and disbursement data. This is the first major update to the API: The records we’re adding today are the meat and potatoes of campaign finance. You can see in detail where a campaign’s money comes from and where they spend their money.
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Introducing the Federal Election Commission’s first API
on July 8, 2015
Today marks the launch of the FEC’s first API. With that API, searching for candidates and committees will be easier and more interactive. Information is organized around concepts like candidates, which are more welcoming than navigating buckets of information based on forms.
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Announcing the CALC tool: Making pricing research easier in federal procurement
on May 12, 2015
Today, 18F and the General Services Administration (GSA) launched a powerful new labor category and pricing research tool to help the federal contracting community make smarter, faster buying decisions.
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Flexibility when releasing a new product: Peace Corps' new donations platform
on April 9, 2015
We were proud to provide design and development work for the Peace Corps' new donation platform. We want to share a few reflections around drawing that delivery line for this new product, and explain where we think we made the right call and look at other decisions which still keep us up at night.
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One year in and looking forward
on March 20, 2015
One year ago we said, 'Hello, World' and launched not only a new team, but also the promise of a new way of working with and for the Federal Government. Here's what we've accomplished so far.
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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. The event starts at noon and if you can’t attend, follow on Twitter where 18F teammate Nick Bristow will be live tweeting the event.
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O*NET today and beyond
on March 11, 2015
The de facto source of skills information, both inside and outside the federal government, is O*NET - the Occupational Information Network, a data collection program that populates and maintains a current database of the detailed characteristics of workers, occupations, and skills.
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UX lessons learned from a procurement project
on March 6, 2015
UX designer Nick Brethauer talks about how user research better informs the products 18F builds.
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Making procurement easier: questions for developer Kaitlin Devine
on March 5, 2015
We recently sat down with Developer Kaitlin Devine and asked her a few questions about Discovery, a new product designed to make government procurement more efficient.
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Announcing OASIS Discovery: making market research easier
on March 4, 2015
18F is glad to announce the beta release of a new procurement tool, Discovery. Discovery will allow federal acquisition personnel to conduct initial market research more easily and quickly - allowing users to discover and research vendors offering work across a number of professional service categories.
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User-centered design at 18F: a design studio for natural resource revenues
on September 25, 2014
We recently kicked off a new project with the Department of the Interior’s Office of Natural Resources Revenue (ONRR). Three weeks into the project, we decided to hold a design studio to solve the problem of how to convey complex revenue data. We needed to better understand the difference between onshore revenue (revenue from natural resources extracted from land) and offshore revenue (revenue from resources extracted from Federal offshore or the U.S. outer continental shelf) as it relates to our system. What is a design studio, you ask...
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A new look at the Freedom of Information Act
on September 4, 2014
As demand for information continues to grow, it is important to continue iterating the ways we refine the FOIA request process. Our effort is one of a number of commitments towards creating a more open, transparent government. We will explore how to supplement the work that has already been done by creating tools to improve the online FOIA requests process by designing for the user.
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Creating an open FEC
on August 21, 2014
A few weeks ago, FEC and 18F started to explore how campaign finance information can be better presented to the public. Over the past few weeks, we’ve begun learning all we can about the FEC, the process by which it collects and shares data, and how individuals outside of FEC use that data on a regular basis to gain insights into the workings of our democracy.
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A few notes on NotAlone.gov
on May 9, 2014
At the end of April, Vice President Biden, while rolling out the final report of the White House's 90-day Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault, announced the launch of NotAlone.gov, a website built by 18F and the Presidential Innovation Fellows.
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