Congress adopts digital tools proposed at 2023 hackathon

The annual Congressional Hackathon is Thursday, and ahead of it, FedScoop is reporting that two of the five top recommendations from last year’s event have been implemented and others are on their way to being realized. Steve Dwyer, senior director for innovation at the House Office of the Chief Administrative Officer, told FedScoop that the two completed and now implemented projects are an internal unified House calendar that was launched in July and an internal social media tracking tool that was announced in recent weeks by the CAO to compare lawmakers’ social media statistics. A bipartisan House bill aimed at improving customer service interactions with government technology breezed through a key Senate panel Wednesday, putting it one step closer to becoming law. The Government Service Delivery Improvement Act passed the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee by an 11-0 tally, setting it up for a vote before the full chamber. The bill, first introduced by Reps. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., Byron Donalds, R-Fla., Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga., and William Timmons, R-S.C. in the House last October, passed that chamber in May. The legislation tasks agency heads with designating a senior official to oversee service delivery improvements and charges the Office of Management and Budget with choosing a senior official to coordinate governmentwide efforts on the issue.