We are forever grateful for the support of our clients, families, friends, and business partners, and for the successes the year has delivered (see 2021 year in review). Especially after an incredibly tough start to the year (see #1).
Thank you, always, for reading and sharing our blog articles with friends and co-workers and on social media. We are glad to count you as part of the GWW/PWW family.
And the top 12 blog articles of 2021 are…
From the GovWebworks and Portland Webworks blogs (based on unique page views from Google Analytics and Mouseflow)
1. Portland Webworks Mourns the Loss of Christopher Prinn
Our beloved creative director and co-founder passed away suddenly on January 26
We are deeply saddened by the loss of our highly esteemed friend and colleague, Christopher Prinn. The news of his sudden and unexpected passing on January 26 has been devastating for everyone who knew him.
PWW Staff
January 28, 2021
2. Top 10 Most Effective UX Trends for 2021
Usability tips to make online life less stressful and easier to navigate
With 2020 behind us, we’ve all been working hard to make a fresh start in 2021. However, I find, as a designer, that the events of 2020 are still impacting how we interact online. Here’s a look at the top 10 user experience (UX) design takeaways from 2020, and how they’re making a difference in 2021.
Sarah Crossman
March 16, 2021
3. Transforming From Manager to Maker
Lessons learned for balancing deep and shallow work in a distraction-filled world
Much has been written about transitioning from a maker to a manager, but what about the shift from manager to maker? This has been my challenge as I transition from a Project Manager to a UX Designer. Is it possible to cultivate and maintain a great creative mind in today’s interconnected and distraction filled world? Herein lies my quest.
Brett Kana
October 5, 2021
4. Agile to Agility Highlights: Transformation With Jesse Fewell and Miljan Bajic
How coaches and leaders can optimize the Agile transformation process
In his book, Untapped Agility: Seven Leadership Moves to Take your Transformation to the Next Level, Jesse Fewell (that’s pronounced fuel) assures leaders that when an Agile transformation feels like a failure, don’t worry, that’s normal. “If you are not running into issues,” he says in a podcast about the book from PMO Strategies, “you are probably not having any impact.”
GWW Staff
August 17, 2021
5. Benefits of a Chatbot Pilot Program – White Paper
How a chatbot pilot approach can help manage scope and costs
Development of an effective chatbot can range widely in time and cost, so to prevent overspending, it’s vital to determine what style and features will best match the situation. As we have found, the planning and implementation of a chatbot pilot helps to define the ideal solution, and refine the features needed to be most effective for the core audience(s).
Ravi Jackson with Adam Kempler
April 27, 2021
6. Infographic: Top 10 Most Effective UX Trends for 2021
Visual guide to usability tips that make online life less stressful and easier to navigate
The top 10 user experience (UX) design takeaways from 2020, and how they’re making a difference in 2021.
Text: Sarah Crossman
Graphic: Peter Clark
April 13, 2021
7. Data Extraction and Migration With Spacy and Tesseract
How AI tools can help transfer and organize content in a Drupal migration
We often address unique issues for our public sector clients by coming up with creative solutions. Sometimes, the solutions are worth sharing so others can use them. This is one of those cases. Recently we needed to transfer thousands of PDFs of fiscal impact statements for the South Carolina Revenue and Fiscal Affairs Office as part of their migration to a Drupal content management system, and make the data in the PDFs searchable at the same time. Here’s what we did.
Adam Kempler
August 31, 2021
8. Data-First Security Reminders
Five ways agencies can avoid enterprise data security threats
Today’s tech strategy dictates the inclusion of cybersecurity into every layer of organizational technology. Rising threats targeting sensitive information and the growing efficiency of hacking methods puts data security top of mind for many companies who want to protect personal details gathered from customers. Furthermore, the expense of security vulnerabilities and exposure is a lot more now than just five years ago, with the average cost of a data breach coming in at a whopping $3.86 million last year.
Sarah Fruy (Pantheon)
September 28, 2021
9. Agile to Agility Highlights: Leadership Awareness With Pete Behrens and Miljan Bajic
How leadership awareness benefits the leader and the entire organization
What are the leadership capabilities that allow a leader to be most effective with less energy exerted? It’s a million dollar question, and Pete Behrens, Certified Agile Leadership (CAL) Educator, is helping each leader to find the answer for him or herself. “Unless leaders do their own development, they are less likely to create business transformation,” Behrens says in his talk on Five *Oops!* Six Mistakes You are Making as a Leader.
GWW Staff
September 14, 2021
10. Agile to Agility Highlights: Distributed Teams With Mark Kilby and Miljan Bajic
What distributed and hybrid-remote teams can do to connect and be most successful
In his book, From Chaos to Successful Distributed Agile Teams, Mark Kilby offers three mindset shifts that are needed when using Agile and lean principles to support distributed team members. Busting the myth that distributed Agile teams don’t deliver on time, Kilby’s expertise has been in high demand since many teams became distributed during the pandemic.
GWW Staff
October 26, 2021
11. April AI Newsletter
Our AI Lab’s roundup of the latest articles and news relating to artificial intelligence and online services in the public sector
Welcome to the April AI Newsletter from the GovWebworks AI Lab. The following articles touch on important topics in the industry, including:
- Conversational AI is getting better at debating with us
- A new approach to data labeling for ML Models
- Using AI to detect how someone is “feeling”
- Unifying heterogeneous collections of data
Adam Kempler
April 13, 2021
12. Organizing Techniques That Actually Work
How a few good organizing techniques can help you get your most important things done
Tell me if this sounds familiar. I show up at my desk in the morning with the best intentions. Today is going to be the day that I get my BIG goals accomplished! I log in and open my email. A couple things look urgent, an email thread from yesterday seems to have continued overnight so I catch up on that. This one looks like a phishing email, delete! Oh, but this sounds interesting — a new version of a library I’d been thinking of using is coming out, plus some tips on how to reduce boilerplate code.
Kevin Ferguson
January 19, 2021
2021 year in review
A sampling of some of the client and project highlights from the year:
New contracts
- Advocates for Human Potential / California Dept. of Health Care Services
- California Department of Transportation / Caltrans
- Colorado Avalanche Information Center
- Colorado State University / Center for the New Energy Economy
- Maine Department of Education / CATES Education
- Minnesota Office of Higher Education
- Washington DSHS / Washington Cares Fund
In progress
- Caltrans: SB1 Rebuilding California website
- Florida Turnpike Enterprise: SunPass website redesign and front end consumer app redevelopment
- Idaho Department of Health and Welfare: Various projects
- Maine Department of Education: EnGiNE Innovation in Education Platform, Learn with MOOSE!
- Minnesota Office of Higher Education: Higher education discovery website
Completed
- Caltrans: Redesign phase 1
- Florida Department of Transportation: SunPass discovery phase 1
- Maine Department of Education: EnGiNE platform discovery phase 1
- Maryland Judiciary: Usability study
- Minnesota DEED: CareerForce Assistant chatbot
- Missouri Department of Conservation: Redesign
- South Carolina Revenue and Fiscal Affairs Office: Redesign
Here’s to 2022
Thank you again to our clients, vendors, event organizers, employees, and contractors. We wish you the happiest of holidays, and best wishes for 2022!
