Digital Data Dissemination Techniques
Lessons from the Census Bureau’s
Digital Transformation Program
Lisa Wolfisch
Center for New Media & Promotion
U.S. Census Bureau
June 5, 2014
Background
Leveraging the success and innovations achieved with 2010Census.gov across
Census.gov., Census Bureau launched its Digital Transformation Project in 2011.
Digital Transformation Project Goals:
• Increase Customer Satisfaction
• Grow Our Audience
• Increase Awareness of Census Statistics
The program includes work related to:
• Mobile apps and APIs
• Interactive web apps, infographics and videos
• Census.gov redesign including look & feel, smart search, navigation, and
analytics
2
Current Expectation: Anywhere, Anytime
•
•
•
•
•
24/7 access to data
Easily Found
Accessible
Timely
Relevant
Former Methods for Publishing Content
Digital Products for the 21st Century
Digital products have replaced traditional publications.
5
Digital Products for the 21st Century
6
Measuring America Infographics
•
•
•
•
1,693,996 page views
160,748 visits
143,425 unique visitors
Most popular was "America's
Foreign Born in the Last 50 Years."
7
Interactive Data Tools – creating an
immersive experience
8
8
Grow Your Audience with sharable
content
Economic Indicators
From text list with no
visible data…
…to engaging, embeddable,
social information.
9
My Congressional District – raise
awareness with branded apps
Day of launch - July 25, 2013:
• Washington Post "So go ahead and bookmark the tool
now — or at least after you spend a
good amount of time playing around
with it (which is what we did).“
• Washington Post generated 6,782 visits
to the app, with 1,926 table views.
• Up to 300,000+ readers of tweets from
journalists
10
PopClock Case Study
• Popular feature, static experience
• Opportunity to delight
– 3 out of 5 were less than “very satisfied” with
the Population Clocks provided
• Opportunity for an impact at scale
– Population Clocks have always been among
our most popular applications
– 1 out of every 10 unique visitors to
Census.gov has viewed a Population Clock
• Opportunity for an introduction to
new audiences
– What if we made this tool available on other
sites?
Results
• New PopClock “Embeddable” Widget – delight new users
– Approx. 420 other web sites have embedded the web application
– Delivering roughly 510,000 page views
• New PopClock on our site
– Delivered roughly 7,400,000 page views
• Embedded PopClock has expanded
our audience by 7 percent
12
Engage Developers
Data
web
Advanced Search
Source
Source
Source
API Serve the Data
Web Applications API enabled
Mobile Applications
13
Mobility gives us new opportunities to
provide the data user with the select
information you want – to provide a
personalized approach to data access.
14
Dwellr
• Uses mobile app user’s
demographics, occupation ,
geographic and lifestyle preferences
to determine places around the U.S.
that may be appealing to them and
to see local statistics.
• Generate interest in places and ACS
data for further exploration on
Census.gov.
• Social sharing through twitter and
Facebook
15
16
Engaging Audiences with Social Media
Connecting
stories in the
news back to
Census
Generating
interest/
involvement
before and
after a data
release
“This Day
in History”
features
17
Social Sharing
18
Plan Campaigns
Two Blogs with Cross
Promotion from DOC and DOT
Partner for events: Google Hang Out
Hosted by League of American Bicyclists
Produce Social Media Friendly
Graphics
19
Questions and Discussion
[email protected]
20