Only 13% of large government IT projects succeed*

Implementing custom software projects can be extraordinarily costly and risky in a government setting. Waterfall software development remains standard at all levels of government. Outdated budgeting and oversight processes have been designed around these very waterfall processes. Moving toward a user-centered, agile approach to this work will save millions of dollars in spending on bad software.

Another fantastic online resource from the team at 18F.

18F user experience (UX) designers join cross-functional teams to improve interactions between government agencies and the people they serve. The 18F UX Guide helps us get this job done. It’s a starting point for UX design at 18F: doing it, discussing it, and ensuring it’s done to a consistent level of quality.

Another useful open source guide from the incredible team at 18F.

A design guide for the flags of the United States.

Lynn Fisher put together this love letter to state flag design. She writes:

I’ve always loved the Arizona flag and consider it one of the best designed. After a visit to the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia and seeing all of the state and territory flags hung together in a row, I was eager to learn more about their designs and histories.

Personal favorites include Colorado, New Mexico, and—like Lynn—Arizona.

I really dig this twist on the existing maxim from Elizabeth Ayer:

Here are 4 reasons that radiating intent is better than begging forgiveness:

• Radiating intent gives a chance for someone to stop you before you do a thing, in case it’s truly harmful
• Radiating intent gives people who have information, or want to help, an opening to participate
• Radiating intent leaves better evidence of your good will
• Radiating intent shows others that adventurous behavior is acceptable in the org.

Her note on inclusivity is a good reminder for anyone dispensing advice to others:

I also don’t believe that “ask forgiveness” is inclusive advice. If you are from a group who has historically not been granted forgiveness, how is that going to land? Or if you’re in a group with cultural baggage around subversive behavior?

I was pleasantly surprised-not-surprised to see that Elizabeth works at 18F where they continue doing really important work building inclusive government services.

How to plan, write, and manage content at 18F.

Another great resource from the folks at 18F. The Inclusive Language page is especially noteworthy:

The words we use can make the difference between forging positive connections or creating distance in our personal and professional lives. Particularly in writing, impact is more important than intent.

As we build government services, we want to ensure they are accessible and welcoming to everyone who needs to use them. Inclusive language helps us to be more accurate and build trust with our users.

Today, we’re launching U.S. Web Design System 2.0 (USWDS 2.0), a new foundation for the future of our design system. This new version was designed to make it easier for any project to integrate USWDS and use it to support your mission and the needs of your audience.

USWDS is a library of code, tools, and guidance to help government teams design and build fast, accessible, mobile-friendly government websites backed by user research and modern best practices. USWDS 2.0 is an important update to the design system — it introduces a powerful toolkit of new features to help make creating useful, consistent digital services faster, simpler, and more fun.

Two years in the making, version 2.0 of the U.S. Web Design System is now live. This is a tremendous update and will be a boon to anyone building digital services for the American people. Congratulations to Dan, Maya, and the rest of the Technology Transformation Services team!

Maintained by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, Usability.gov contains a wealth of knowledge on topics such as user experience design, content strategy, project management, and visual design.

A collection of tools to bring human-centered design into your project.

The team at 18F share their methods for conducting human-centered design research.

The Australian Government Design System provides a framework and a set of tools to help designers and developers build government products and services more easily.

Australia’s Digital Transformation Agency has made available their design system. Source code is available on GitHub.

Put together by 18F’s Accessibility Guild, Accessibility for Teams is…

A “quick-start” guide for embedding accessibility and inclusive design practices into your team’s workflow.

In the post announcing the website’s launch, Maya Benari notes:

Accessibility is a crucial part of government product design. First, it’s the law. Federal agencies face legal consequences when they don’t meet accessibility requirements. Second, it affects us all. Whether you have a motor disability, you sprained your wrist playing dodgeball, you need a building to have a ramp for your wheelchair or stroller, or you literally just have your hands full, we all find ourselves unable to do certain things at different points in our lives. Accessible products are better products for everyone.

Congratulations to Maya and everyone else on the team for launching this useful accessibility guide!

About 400,000 service members move every year, and let’s just say the technology to support them in this time of stress has been less than adequate. For example, the Defense Personnel [sic] Property System (DPS), run by the U.S. Transportation Command, was reliable only 16 percent of the time, was not mobile friendly and would crash, making it difficult to schedule moves.

Starting last year and continuing into this summer, the U.S. Digital Service is beginning to relieve some of the stress that comes with moving.

I’ve worked on aspects of the Defense Personal Property System (DPS) since joining USDS last year. While most of the article focuses on the work my teammates continue pursuing, the article does make mention of our big relaunch of Move.mil.

Another piece to the project was simplifying the website Move.mil, which [designer and project manager Lauryn] Fantano described as a Wikipedia tool of how to move in the military. USDS worked with the command to remove government speak and answer the questions that families most care about when it comes to moving. USDS relaunched Move.mil in December.

It’s nice to see folks taking note of the important work we’re doing. If you’d like to help improve government services through better technology, head on over to usds.gov/join.

💪🏼 🖥 🇺🇸

The U.S. Web Design System (USWDS) is a library of design and code guidelines to help agencies create trustworthy, accessible, and consistent digital services. The Design System is being used on over one hundred government sites, with an audience of 120 million users. In this 12th post in our series, we sat down with Jason Garber, front-end web developer at the U.S. Digital Service (USDS)‘s Defense Digital Service, to talk about his work creating a Ruby gem for the new Move.mil that integrates the Design System into a Ruby on Rails application.

I was recently interviewed by the team behind the U.S. Web Design System about the uswds-rails Ruby gem I put together. Yay, open source!

Plain language makes it easier for the public to read, understand, and use government communications.

Led by the incomparable Nicole Fenton, the team at 18F recently relaunched plainlanguage.gov, an exceptional website full of writing guidelines, examples, and resources. While the Plain Writing Act of 2010 mandates that government resources be written in clear, concise language, there’s ample evidence that agencies have been slow to update problematic services.

It’s heartening to see GSA tackle the matter head on.

In this article, Code for America founder Jen Pahlka expertly captures many of the reasons I have for choosing to serve our country in tumultuous times.

But sometimes [leaving the federal government] is a luxury. The veteran to whom we’ve promised benefits after she served our country does not have the luxury of choosing to opt out of the federal government; she needs processes to work for her to access benefits. About 75 million people in our country rely on Medicaid; they don’t have the luxury of opting out, either. If the people who administer these and other services walk away and others don’t come to replace them, that choice will be made for them, with devastating consequences.

Earlier this year, I willingly ran into the burning building with a goal of helping as many of my fellow Americans as possible. Six months in, I’m proud to say that—in spite of the three-ring circus at 1600 Pennsylvania—my work continues apace.