Streamlining the veterans information service reduced the number of callers waiting to talk to humans to almost zero, thanks to input from city innovators.

Challenge.gov is releasing a Challenges and Prizes Toolkit​ that offers federal agencies — and city and state leaders — the ultimate guide for hosting competitions of their own.

Rob Cook has worked with the Oscar-winning creative geniuses at Pixar who produced animated films like "Toy Story" and "Finding Nemo." Now at the helm of the General Services Administration's Technology Transformation Service, Cook says the talent of the bureaucracy hackers and civic-minded technologists he's gotten to know since his hire in late October is "as good as anything I've ever seen."

Information Technology accounts for almost $90 billion of the federal budget each year, but in the recent presidential election cycle in which candidates Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have spent much of their air time trying to defend past personal transgressions, tech policy has gotten scant attention from either of the White House hopeful, despite the fact that one of them will soon have the final authority over that budget request before it's sent to Congress for the next four years.

The Office of Personnel Management delivered perhaps the most sweeping update to its USAJobs.gov federal employment website in August since first moving the then-paper-based hiring process online about 20 years ago.

The tech and digital services progress made under President Barack Obama should continue with a new administration because it's a bipartisan issue, U.S. CTO Megan Smith ​said Monday.