A few months ago, the White House launched “Better by Design“, a broad initiative to improve how government looks, feels, and works for the public. The Act’s central idea to modernize federal digital ecosystem by:

• Using human-centered design (HCD) principles
• Testing designs with real users before launch
• Reducing complexity in online user experiences
• Making content clearer and readable

Note that this does not replace existing guidelines such as USWDS, Section 508, Plain Language, and the IDEA Act, and aligns very closely with them. However it does add an additional governance layer and level of accountability. Now, more than ever, human-centered design is required and must be measurable and repeatable.

The new fiscal year is the perfect time for agencies to evaluate their current design maturity, update roadmaps, and align resources, since agencies are expected to show measurable design improvements by July 4, 2026. As agencies move from policy to practice, what should federal web teams be doing now?

1. Conduct a self audit

Assess your current level of design maturity by asking yourself:

• How many of your components are reusable?
• Are you tracking metrics? i.e. accessibility pass rates and mobile completion rates?
• Do your interfaces feel consistent across pages, platforms, and devices?

2. Implement a dashboard

When it comes to demonstrating design excellence, data is your friend. Section 508 testing checklists and other compliance factors are a start, especially if your organization is not currently tracking these consistently. All web content must be accessible to users with disabilities, must be mobile-ready, and contain no broken links.

However, it is critical to consider additional user satisfaction metrics such as task success rates and time-to-complete. These can demonstrate where users are experiencing ‘friction’ or giving up on a digital task. CSAT scoring or on-page ratings can give end users a direct way to provide feedback about their experience. Make sure you have a plan to not only capture this data, but consolidate it and make it usable through dashboarding. Even a well-developed GoogleTagManager account can give you a solid start. Set up a cadence to review these metrics, identify trends, and prioritize solution for your design and development team to address. 

3. Design components for re-use

In striving for government efficiency, the “America by Design” policy emphasizes reuse and reduction of duplicate designs across agencies. Leverage shared best practices, frameworks, and templates to modernize quicker.

In practice, this means avoiding duplicating content wherever possible. If there is a piece of content hat needs to be displayed across multiple pages of a website, don’t recrate it each time. This is time-consuming and hard to keep track of when changes need to be made. Instead, create it as a reusable block that can be placed on multiple pages. When a change happens it only needs to be updated in one place but will reflect on many pages. The same applies to structuring media objects appropriately – reference media that lives in a central location instead of re-uploading content multiple times. 

“For users of Drupal, we recommend to use View and Display modes to allow various content to be displayed in different ways across different pages instead of duplicating. Use Drupal’s Views to dynamically display content that has already been created, instead of creating hardcoded references to the content.“ – Robert Morris, Lead Drupal Engineer

CTAC specializes in helping government agencies make the most of their limited time and budget, through the deployment of right-sized teams of experts. We understand the challenges web teams face, and have the depth of end-to-end experience to guide you. How are you preparing for the “America by Design” deadline? Let’s discuss! contact@ctacorp.com