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Four years ago, BusinessUSA launched with a mission to revolutionize the way government provides services to small businesses and exporters. Using technology to erase bureaucratic boundaries, BusinessUSA streamlined the way businesses find and get what they need from government.  This “no wrong door” approach combined resources from over 800 websites and created a single point of entry for businesses looking to grow and expand.  

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.”

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.

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.

“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.”