Design State: A weblog about government web design

In case you missed it the first time around, like I did, WIRED has a good article about the challenges facing the Obama Administration’s attempt to drag federal government use of the Internet into the present.

A key ‘graph about the systemic challenge of this endeavor:

For starters, the federal government operates more than 24,000 separate sites, many of them years out of date. “Nobody stepped back and asked strategically, how do we do this?” Godwin says. “Whenever there is a new initiative or program, they put up a new Web site.” And the first thing they usually do on that site, she says, is post a bandwidth-hogging picture of the bureaucrat in charge.

Godwin and Campbell have been pushing government agencies to treat citizens more like customers, rebuilding their sites to help visitors do things like find loans or obtain passports—rather than serve as static repositories for press releases and personnel photos. “At Housing and Urban Development, for example, one of the missions is to reduce homelessness,” Godwin says. “If you go to HUD.gov, can you find shelter? The answer is no.” If the government can improve itself in these little ways, they say, great. Don’t worry about trying wild stuff, like setting up federal social networks. Many agencies bar employees from even looking at sites like Facebook at work, much less building their own versions.

The Wired Presidency: Can Obama Really Reboot the White House? – Evan Ratliff – 19 January 2009

The article was put together before Obama’s swearing-in, so it is interesting to see how things have played out in the few months since then. For the most part, everything seems to be consistent. The new design of whitehouse.gov and new sites like recovery.gov remain consistent with change.gov and the Obama campaign website. At the same time they suffer from the same content issues that I noted in my review of change.gov, namely, lack of real content, and ease of access to that content.

That’s a big caveat, but these new sites are still light-years better than the other 24-thousand federal government sites. Since we’re so comfortable with the rapid pace of the Internet communication, it is easy for web geeks like me to expect instantaneous improvement, but patience is definitely necessary with our expectations of turning Uncle Sam into Uncle Sam 2.0.

There is now a U.S. National Design Policy Initiative. It started off in early January, and you can download their policy proposals, a report from their 2008 Summit, and presentations from the same.

If you feel that this is a good idea, you should leave an endorsement. Here’s what I wrote:

My name is Adam Harvey. As a public sector web designer living in Cleveland, Ohio, I have often had the opportunity to see how local and regional governments look to the federal system and its benchmarks and standards for guidance.

Because there is a great need for design standards and mentoring in public sector design, I fully endorse the mission of the U.S. National Design Policy Initiative.

I believe that good design can facilitate the interactions between citizens and their government, that good design can enhance the communicability of important information, and that good design can set a standard of quality and professionalism that will increase confidence in our government.

My Senators are George Voinovich and Sherrod Brown, and my representative is Marcia L. Fudge for Ohio District 11.

Keep up the good work!