Product Management - Digital Government Hub

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Adopting a product approach to digital services

By adopting a product management approach, governments can help align priorities and features of a digital service. By having a clear owner and product mindset, teams can define the problem, scope, and functionalities of a digital service early in the development process, including ahead of procurement. As a product develops, the product manager or owner can also help set a framework for continuous learning and improvement based on metrics and user behavior.

This page includes resources to help your organization adopt and grow product-based thinking in developing digital services.

How to Get Started

We recommend these resources as a starting place for adopting and growing product-based thinking in the delivery of government services.

Product Management

The Ad Hoc Product Field Guide

This field guide is written for digital services and technology leaders working in government agencies at the federal, state, or local level. It’s meant to highlight the power of product thinking to government digital services. With this guide, agencies can start moving from a project management mindset to a product-based approach to delivering services.

Ad Hoc
2023

Product Management

How to use product operations to scale the impact of government digital services

Ad Hoc has found that product operations can help scale impact by putting objective indicators at the center of product decision-making. The team has seen success in supporting product thinking at agencies like the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), where they made it easier for Veterans to access employment and education assistance and for caregivers to receive needed support.

Ad Hoc
2022

Human-Centered Design

Demystifying Inclusive Design: How to Design More Equitable and Accessible Products

Inclusive design means making design choices that take into account personal identifiers like ability, race, economic status, language, age, and gender. This resource walks folks through an introduction to inclusive design, focusing on accessibility and equity.

Exygy
2022

Discover All of Our Product Management Resources

Below you can see the latest items and the most popular. Click View More to see all resources and examples.

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Accessibility

State of California Innovation Hub

A collection of resources from the California Office of Data & Innovation to support government service delivery in the State.
- California Office of Data and Innovation (ODI)
Communications

City of Santa Ana Done/Doing Update Repository

The City of Santa Ana's 'done/doing' update repository.
- 2023
Human-Centered Design

Gathering feedback with customer panels

To improve the .gov registrar, 18F and CISA created customer panels to gather feedback, opinions, and suggestions. Using a customer-centric approached enabled 18F and CISA to identify areas for improvement, build a product roadmap, and establish relationships with users.
- 18F
- 2024
Human-Centered Design

Standardizing and Digitizing Government Forms in Canada: A Digital Service Network Spotlight

The Digital Service Network (DSN) spoke with GC Forms’ Senior Product Manager Stevie-Ray Talbot and Acting Head Ioana Contu to learn more about the team's approach to building GC Forms.
- Beeck Center for Social Impact + Innovation
- 2024
Human-Centered Design

How GC Forms can help collect data for public services

Case study Natural and Non-prescription Health Products Directorate (NNHPD) at Health Canada's experience using GC Forms.
- Canadian Digital Service (CDS)
- 2023
Human-Centered Design

Recoding America at BenCon 2023

Jennifer Pahlka, Deputy CTO in President Obama’s Administration and author, shares her new book, Recoding America on how government must be equipped for digital delivery in order to meet ambitious policy goals. This video was recorded at the Digital Benefits Conference (BenCon) at Georgetown University on June 14, 2023.
- Beeck Center for Social Impact + Innovation
- 2023
Engineering + Software Development

Digital Service Toolkit

Toolkit of resources from the Government of New South Wales to help design, develop and deliver better digital experiences.
- Government of New South Wales (NSW)
- 2023
Engineering + Software Development

Low-Code/No-Code Tools: Implementation and Insights from the Field

An overview on how U.S. Digital Response has used low-code/no-code tools internally as well as with our government partners
- U.S. Digital Response (USDR)
- 2022
Engineering + Software Development

Strengths and Weaknesses of Low-Code/No-Code Tools

Understanding the strengths and weaknesses of the available low-code/no-code tools will help you pick the right tool for the job and balance their sometimes significant weaknesses with their tremendously valuable strengths.
- U.S. Digital Response (USDR)
- 2022

Product Management

The Ad Hoc Product Field Guide

This field guide is written for digital services and technology leaders working in government agencies at the federal, state, or local level. It’s meant to highlight the power of product thinking to government digital services. With this guide, agencies can start moving from a project management mindset to a product-based approach to delivering services.
- Ad Hoc
- 2023
Human-Centered Design

Recoding America at BenCon 2023

Jennifer Pahlka, Deputy CTO in President Obama’s Administration and author, shares her new book, Recoding America on how government must be equipped for digital delivery in order to meet ambitious policy goals. This video was recorded at the Digital Benefits Conference (BenCon) at Georgetown University on June 14, 2023.
- Beeck Center for Social Impact + Innovation
- 2023
Engineering + Software Development

Digital Service Toolkit

Toolkit of resources from the Government of New South Wales to help design, develop and deliver better digital experiences.
- Government of New South Wales (NSW)
- 2023
Product Management

How to use product operations to scale the impact of government digital services

Ad Hoc has found that product operations can help scale impact by putting objective indicators at the center of product decision-making. The team has seen success in supporting product thinking at agencies like the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), where they made it easier for Veterans to access employment and education assistance and for caregivers to receive needed support.
- Ad Hoc
- 2022
Accessibility

State of California Innovation Hub

A collection of resources from the California Office of Data & Innovation to support government service delivery in the State.
- California Office of Data and Innovation (ODI)
Human-Centered Design

Standardizing and Digitizing Government Forms in Canada: A Digital Service Network Spotlight

The Digital Service Network (DSN) spoke with GC Forms’ Senior Product Manager Stevie-Ray Talbot and Acting Head Ioana Contu to learn more about the team's approach to building GC Forms.
- Beeck Center for Social Impact + Innovation
- 2024
Human-Centered Design

Using human-centered design and low-code tech to inform unemployment insurance policy implementation

U.S. Digital Response partnered with the Department of Labor to design a human-centered, low-code solution for efficient retroactive unemployment benefit determination.
- U.S. Digital Response (USDR)
- 2022
Human-Centered Design

Gathering feedback with customer panels

To improve the .gov registrar, 18F and CISA created customer panels to gather feedback, opinions, and suggestions. Using a customer-centric approached enabled 18F and CISA to identify areas for improvement, build a product roadmap, and establish relationships with users.
- 18F
- 2024
Engineering + Software Development

Thinking Like an Engineer: Selecting and Working with Low-Code/No-Code Tools

Using low-code/no-code tools successfully requires knowing how to pick the right tool and knowing the kind of challenges that merit calling in a technical team for consultation and advice.
- U.S. Digital Response (USDR)
- 2022