US National Design Studio will help create ‘one government approach’ to services
The US government’s federal chief information officer Greg Barbaccia has said that the administration is developing a “one government” approach to improving public services.
Greg Barbaccia said that website redesigns across government would be key to improved digital services, and that the recently-launched National Design Studio was working to “coalesce” a government-wide voice for the public online.
Speaking at the ACT-IAC/DCI CX Summit last week, Barbaccia said that the federal government was working to provide “the same experience” across different parts of government.
“It’s jarring to the public when one agency’s [digital] experience is completely different than another agency,” he said, highlighting the different design elements of different federal websites.
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Impact of the National Design Studio
Barbaccia also discussed the work of the National Design Studio (NDS), according to comments reported by FedScoop.
US president Donald Trump signed an executive order last year to launch the NDS as part of the America by Design initiative. The studio was tasked with providing “first-class online and offline experiences for Americans”, and has been redesigning government websites since its launch last August.
The focus is on developing a common visual design. “The websites look the same, you feel like you’re visiting the same entity when you look at different websites”, Barbaccia said.
His team is working with agencies to implement systems to ensure that members of the public understand they are “interacting with the same government”, and internal sandboxes are being run on the new designs, according to Barbaccia.
Jonathan Finch, the Office of Management and Budget’s digital experience director, also said at the Summit that the White House was actively working with chief design officer Joe Gebbia and the NDS team on how their respective entities can contribute to design improvements.
The NDS is “uniquely positioned to frankly just flip the script and change expectations on what folks see when they interact with government,” according to Finch.
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