Digital Services Playbook

 (playbook.usds.gov)

122 points | by ronbenton23 hours ago

6 comments

  • isiahl22 hours ago
    RIP to the USDS, an inspiring government department to someone like me.
    • lmeyerov22 hours ago
      "It takes 20 years to build a reputation and 5 minutes to ruin it"

      This applies equally to institutions and individuals, so from investors to CEOs to politicians to tech community leaders to individuals picking where they work, this is a very "interesting" time

      Both the USDS and PIF programs were inspiring to me as they were almost like a New Deal for digital natives & coders. They did a good job of attracting smart hard workers to be underpaid for unglamorous & often-frustrating but impactful work. A lot of good people!

    • seanwilson17 hours ago
      They're behind U.S. Web Design System (USWDS)? This is going away?

      USWDS have a cool palette system where color pairs from their palette have predictable WCAG color contrast (unlike in e.g. Tailwind's default palette), but I rarely hear of projects using USWDS colors:

      https://designsystem.digital.gov/design-tokens/color/overvie...

      > We call the difference in grade between any two colors the magic number. Magic numbers have the following contrast implications:

      > A magic number of 40+ results in WCAG 2.0 AA Large Text contrast (example: gray-90 and indigo-warm-50v).

      • Maxious15 hours ago
        Under Executive Order 14151 "Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs And Preferencing" many links/pages were already removed from the design system https://github.com/uswds/uswds-site/pull/3078 https://github.com/uswds/uswds-site/pull/3053/files#diff-86c... (ie. inclusivecolors.com would be prohibited)

        Within 60 days "“diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility” (DEIA) mandates, policies, programs, preferences, and activities in the Federal Government" must be terminated https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/endi...

        • seanwilson15 hours ago
          > (ie. inclusivecolors.com would be prohibited)

          I didn't have "does this include words in it that might get banned?" on my checklist when hunting for a good domain name haha. The https://designsystem.digital.gov/design-tokens/color/overvie... link still mentions "inclusively".

          > Within 60 days "“diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility”

          Are there more details on this? So next USWDS might be stripping out references to WCAG accessibility guidelines like their color contrast advice?

          • plasma_beam11 hours ago
            That’d be something for sure. Section 508 accessibility laws are built into most federal IT contracts. DHS has an entire trusted tester certification program around it. The changes required to existing federal contracts if they do this are staggering.

            https://www.dhs.gov/trusted-tester

      • tylerchilds10 hours ago
        > Sec. 3. DOGE Structure. (a) Reorganization and Renaming of the United States Digital Service. The United States Digital Service is hereby publicly renamed as the United States DOGE Service (USDS) and shall be established in the Executive Office of the President.

        https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/esta...

        in essence, USDS had the most cross functional access and was the best agency to be able to back door every other agency.

    • hn_user8217922 hours ago
      Yep. I’ve been subscribed to get emails when application to their jobs open, because they really represented a portion of the government that I thought was doing good work and was an area I could contribute meaningfully to (given my skillset). I never made the jump, it was such a large paycut and iirc looked like it’d require relocation, but I’d like to think I might in the future (if it ever comes back).
      • ronbenton22 hours ago
        The people I met at USDS took that kind of pay cut for the mission, which I was in awe of. Senior, Staff, Principal engineers from big tech who likely had been making twice as much as top government salary.
    • righthand22 hours ago
      I wanted to work for them since Obama announced it, but they didn’t pay as well as a big funded private corp startup. If I was a bit older and more comfortable with my savings I would have.

      I would have loved serving my country and working on software as a way to give back.

      • ronbenton22 hours ago
        I talked to some people at USDS during my time in govt. They took a 50% pay cut to serve their country. Wish more people understood a lot of civil servants often do it for the mission.
        • righthand21 hours ago
          There is a sad side to my desire, I’ve told people this before in social circles and most people respond with confusion as to why I would want to do that.
          • atonse19 hours ago
            The general expectation with USDS and others was that you only stay for 2-3 years. So it’s more like a temporary tour.

            At least that’s what was pitched to me a few years ago when I spoke to their counterparts in the US gov. Incredibly smart, no-BS people that wanted to do good work and have high impact.

            Still the only job I regret not taking in all my career.

    • boris-ning-usds21 hours ago
      We'll live on in people's memories and hearts. Thank you.
      • ipython18 hours ago
        Thank you for your service.
    • ronbenton22 hours ago
      I wanted to join them some day. Hopefully they will be back.
      • hayst4ck13 hours ago
        Mikey Dickerson, the first head of the USDS, would say hope is not a strategy.
    • kevml22 hours ago
      I wanted to join them a few years ago but I wasn’t in the right life position to do so. I was hoping to one day in the near future. Maybe that day will one day come again.
    • andreygrehov21 hours ago
      [flagged]
      • 0xCMP21 hours ago
        I never really saw anyone bad mouthing USDS even here. Can you explain why you think people didn't like USDS?

        I'm sure there was some resentment from other agencies that USDS helping them implied they didn't know what they were doing or something, but on HN it has basically been non-stop positive from what I've seen. Echos of the same things in this thread: that they wish they were in a position to sacrifice their pay in order to contribute meaningfully to the government where they have the most chance at impact.

        IIUC Login.gov and the much more unified design system based on Material Design for government websites came from USDS.

        • andreygrehov21 hours ago
          > I never really saw anyone bad mouthing USDS even here. Can you explain why you think people didn't like USDS?

          HN search is available to all of us. I've been a HN reader for 10+ years. USDS has been proclaimed as a bureaucratic machine that cannot do much.

          Edit: ok, I actually apologize and take my words back. I must've confused USDS with something else.

      • ronbenton21 hours ago
        I cannot speak to online sentiment, but my experience when I was in government was a lot of reverence for USDS. They did great work.
      • righthand21 hours ago
        This is not true in my experience. Most people I’ve talked to didn’t even know about it. I always heard great things about it otherwise.

        > According to comments from previous years, nobody liked USDS. Everybody was bullshitting on it.

        Who is everybody? HN commenters? Do you have evidence of this sentiment?

        Emotional anecdotal comments should not be taken as public sentiment on an issue. They are often one sided and inaccurate.

        • andreygrehov21 hours ago
          Deleted my previous comment. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43145755
          • righthand21 hours ago
            I updated my comment with response to your deleted comment. The last line specifically about emotional anecdotes. However your example has a lot of other comment threads that do not support the “usds is disliked” conclusion.

            What is disliked in your example is bureaucracy and domain guarding which can be found inside and outside of the government. That does not mean USDS is a bad or disliked program because it has inefficiencies. It also does not mean we need to audit and dismantle services and programs as a way to root out inefficiency.

        • 21 hours ago
          undefined
  • xnx22 hours ago
    I assume this link is being shared now to encourage backups before it is deleted.
    • ronbenton21 hours ago
      I shared it because I am still sad about the loss of USDS. I wanted to join it some day. I am holding out hope it will be back one day.
  • dang21 hours ago
    Related. Others?

    USDS Digital Services Playbook - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25595830 - Dec 2020 (98 comments)

    Staying with the US Digital Service - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13432881 - Jan 2017 (236 comments)

    A brief update - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11927447 - June 2016 (169 comments)

    Ask HN: What have the USDS and 18F accomplished so far? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10612779 - Nov 2015 (12 comments)

    The US digital service - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10060858 - Aug 2015 (292 comments)

    Back to SF After the U.S. Digital Service - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9800276 - June 2015 (160 comments)

    I’ve Joined the White House’s U.S. Digital Service - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9286906 - March 2015 (116 comments)

    Join the U.S. Digital Service - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8988819 - Feb 2015 (233 comments)

    The U.S. Digital Services Playbook - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8216419 - Aug 2014 (9 comments)

    The U.S. Digital Services Playbook - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8164676 - Aug 2014 (10 comments)

    White House launches “U.S. Digital Service,” with HealthCare.gov fixer at helm - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8164523 - Aug 2014 (139 comments)

    The U.S. Digital Services Playbook - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8164461 - Aug 2014 (1 comment)

    • ronbenton21 hours ago
      Hi dang can I ask do redundant links get penalty on top list? I noticed when you commented this the post dropped down the front page quite a bit

      (also thank you for all you do here)

      • dang21 hours ago
        > do redundant links get penalty on top list?

        Not sure I understand what you're asking. Your post was fine and was not penalized (edit: sorry, this was not true—see below)—it's true that we downweight dupes, but once a year or more has gone by, we consider reposts to be dupes any more. Does that answer your question?

        Edit: Oh, I get it now. Yes, I downweighted this thread as a follow-up, because it's obviously related to the Major Ongoing Topic (MOT) of Doge etc. In cases like that, follow-ups aren't the greatest posts; usually it's better to post the link as a comment in one of the other threads.

        You can find lots of past explanation about this here:

        major ongoing topics - https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

        downweighting follow-ups - https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

        However, I thought your submission was a good one, so I downweighted it quite a bit less than we normally would.

        • ronbenton21 hours ago
          Okay, thank you for the detailed explanation!
  • woodylondon15 hours ago
    I have never seen this before, and it is both interesting and generally useful to see how others put this sort of content together, but it got me thinking: is there a UK version of this? I found the following.

    It depends on why you want this - not building government sites, but it is still valid for general use as well.

    https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-digital-data-...

    • heidarb14 hours ago
      As far as I know the US one is heavily inspired by the UK one.

      The UK kind of pioneered doing digital services in government well with GDS, 10+ years ago.

      Some of the people who were central to the effort have gone to consult other governments on how to do the same.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Digital_Service

  • whoitwas22 hours ago
    [flagged]
    • whoitwas22 hours ago
      ...and a lot of people think it's good. Why?
      • ceejayoz22 hours ago
        20-30% of the country will think any particular thing is good. Even if it’s methylmercury for dinner.

        (It’s not always the same 20-30% each time. Every one of us probably holds at least one loony position.)

        • righthand21 hours ago
          Or is it 20-30% of the country will be in the mood to feed you bullshit that they don’t actually believe initially? 20-30% have something they’re willing to be pedantically spiteful about.
        • whoitwas22 hours ago
          [flagged]