The US Digital Service ten years later: how the agency cuts through web design bureaucracy

With 160 websites down and thousands to go, USDS doesn’t let perfection become the enemy of better public services.

Before the internet, Americans may have interacted with the federal government by stepping into grand buildings adorned with impressive stone columns and gleaming marble floors. Today, the neoclassical architecture of those physical spaces has been replaced by the digital architecture of website design—HTML code, tables, forms, and buttons.