civic hacking: build your cred while doing good

Civic hacking:Build your cred while doing good

@fureigh

Hi, I’m Fureigh!

@fureigh

18F is a digital consultancy for the U.S. government, inside the U.S. government.

WHAT?

@fureigh

Just start.MVP.Learn and iterate.

Delivery is the strategy.

180+ people45% DC55% everywhere else

Making an impact while building your open source portfolio

@fureigh

Why contribute to open source?

@fureigh

● Share your work and express yourself.

● Develop new skills.

● Build community, learn from others.

● Build your portfolio.

● Some of us just like to be helpful.

@fureigh

And why civic tech?

@fureigh

IMPACT

@fureigh

@fureigh

@fureigh

@fureigh

@fureigh

community-minded

@fureigh

You are uniquely qualified.

@fureigh

Okay, but also...

@fureigh

@fureigh

@fureigh

Open source is your friend

@fureigh

There’s aworld out there

@fureigh

This is 18F!

We are 18F!

We are 18F!

And many cities and states.

@fureigh

There’s alsoCode for America.

@fureigh

ex: Adopt-a-Hydrant

@fureigh

So how do you find these people?

@fureigh

@fureigh

Meetups (find one or start one)

@fureigh

Civic Tech Issue Findercodeforamerica.org/geeks/civicissues

@fureigh

@fureigh

@fureigh

@fureigh

@fureigh

I can haz issue?

@fureigh

@fureigh

Code contributions are not the only contributions.

@fureigh

Back to finding issues.

@fureigh

Cloud.govAnalytics.USA.govCollege ScorecardEvery Kid in a ParkIdentity Managementbeta.FEC.gov + FEC’s first API

Some 18F projects

So many technical options!

The U.S. Web Design Standards

PART ZERO

We're designing for 320 million peopleThe population of the United States

This is Joanne.

1/ But wait — there’s more

PART ONE

1 2 3

$86 billion

is spent a year on federal IT projects

94%

of federal IT projects are over budget and behind schedule

Just to show how this scales...Why this matters

40%

of them never see the light of day — they’re scrapped or abandoned

2/ Why it’s like this

PART TWO

Buying IT is not the same as buying pencils and tanks.

Our work happens in silos.

Bureaucracy over human needs.

Forced to comply with outdated regulations.

It became clear that if we wanted to help Joanne, we had to help the people making these digital services.

1 2 3

The question in front of us became:

Is it possible to create a shared set of tools to provide consistent, effective, and easy-to-use government websites?

Could we build easy-to-use tools that serve the public’s need?

We think this is possible.

Here are the principles that guided us:

Flexible: Create a design system for wide use across agencies and brands

Accessible: They must work for everybody, regardless of abilities

Reusable: Save time and money – there’s no need to reinvent the wheel

Open source: Increase knowledge, shared understanding, and practices across projects

A consistent look and feel with common design elements will feel familiar, trustworthy, and secure.

We built the Standards to be lightweight

● Just HTML, CSS, and JavaScript● Sass preprocessor language

○ Sass add-ons (thoughtbot’s Bourbon and Neat)● Component-based design

3/ Accessibility

PART THREE

Accessible out of the box

● Start with HTML5 with ARIA

● Testing Section 508 features

● Developed with WCAG 2.0 AA in mind

4/ In the wild

PART FOUR

“I like the clean format. I like that it shows me all the things I need to fill out all at once. I can read it fine. Sometimes I need my reading glasses because of the colors, but this is good because it's got sharp contrast.”

Good civic design is about accessIt means that people can get the right help, sooner, with less stress.

5/ Open source from day one

PART FIVE

We <3 our contributors

What if I want to work on something else?

@fureigh

Start your own band.

@fureigh

@fureigh

18F.gsa.govjoin.18F.gov

@fureigh

codeforamerica.org/geeks/civicissues

github.com/18F/web-design-standards/issues

github.com/18F

@fureigh