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Two exercises for improving design research through reflective practice
on October 23, 2018
Maturing your design research practice is a bit like honing your skills at cooking. Experienced researchers rely on a refined set of sensibilities, or tastes, in their use and application of research methods; they create, curate, and refine informational recipes that turn raw data into palatable insights. And just like cooking, everyone can improve in their research abilities with a bit of reflective practice
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Exploring a new way to make eligibility rules easier to implement
on October 16, 2018
When federal agencies issue a policy change, say income eligibility guidelines, that policy gets communicated down to the states as text on the Federal Register or via PDF. This translation of federal policy into many state systems creates opportunities for implementation errors.
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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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Am I doing this right?: Antipatterns in agile contracting
on September 27, 2018
As agencies try to adopt agile development practices and modular contracting methods, there are several anti-patterns that we have noticed through the course of our work. We address how these can hinder success and alternatives to consider.
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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.
18F Blog
Delivering civic technology
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