America by Design: Turning compliance into confidence at every citizen touchpoint .
On August 21, 2025, the White House launched America by Design: a government-wide push to upgrade how people experience services, not just how those services look. The Executive Order establishes a National Design Studio (NDS) and Chief Design Officer to modernize both digital and physical experiences, reduce duplicative design costs, and rebuild trust at high-impact service points. The deadline is real: agencies must show initial results by July 4, 2026. The order also directs GSA to update the U.S. Web Design System (USWDS) and directs agencies to ensure government-wide compliance with the 21st Century IDEA. (The White House)
This isn't about prettier websites; it's about citizen confidence. When government services work intuitively, people trust government more. When forms are clear, applications complete faster. When digital and physical experiences align, fewer people get lost between channels.
This is what Tactis was built for: unifying CX strategy, service design, and modern engineering so citizens can complete government tasks without frustration. We work across public and private sectors, and that crossover matters: ideas that raise the bar in industry often translate into faster, clearer, more trustworthy .gov services.
What's Different This Time
- A forcing function with a public deadline: Initial wins are due July 4, 2026. That timeline demands prioritization, governance, and measurable outcomes; not just strategy documents. (The White House)
- Shared design infrastructure: GSA will update USWDS, giving teams a standards-based component library that scales across agencies. We've seen this work: our USWDS-first approach with a law enforcement agency reduced page-load time by 35% and deployment failures by 30%. (The White House)
- Whole-journey scope: The EO covers both digital and physical touchpoints, legitimizing service design as the way to connect fragmented experiences for citizens. (The White House, National Design Studio)
From Pages to Pathways
If agencies treat this as a "website refresh," they'll miss the point. The job is designing services, not just screens. That means mapping the journey for a college grad paying off loans, a parent renewing a passport, a veteran managing benefits, or anyone trying to complete a task without getting bounced between forms, PDFs, offices, and call centers.
Our proven approach: We start with journey maps and service blueprints that reveal friction points, then prioritize fixes that cut time-to-complete and error rates fastest. At a major land management agency, user research and usability testing significantly improved access to public-land data, while automated API integration reduced manual work for staff. At a national association of state financial regulators, this approach delivered +105% new users and +180% overall page views.
Standards as Accelerators - Not Red Tape
With USWDS updates coming, agencies can adopt a shared design language and reusable components that ship faster and test better while meeting Section 508 and IDEA requirements by default. Standards aren't constraints; they're speed and trust multipliers. (The White House)
Our USWDS-first methodology:
- Build on USWDS components first, extending only where user research proves the need, as we've done across many Federal agencies
- Apply structured content and plain language so critical information scans consistently across channels
- Automate accessibility checks with tools like Siteimprove as part of ongoing operations, not last-mile fixes. At a land management agency, continuous monitoring helps sustain WCAG 2.1 conformance over time with regular admin training.
Our teams apply the same design-system discipline, plain-language content, and accessibility habits we use with regulated commercial brands so federal services benefit from patterns already proven at scale.
Connect the "Last Mile" (Content + Systems + People)
Citizens don't care which vendor powers a page, but they care that their task gets done. Content, workflow, and human support must move together:
- Content operations: Single source of truth for policies, eligibility, and guidance; versioned and reused across web pages, forms, knowledge bases, and staff resources
- Smart workflows: Route requests with context, pre-fill known information, reduce duplicate uploads, push proactive status updates
- Consistent experience: When people need human help (like a contact center), staff have access to the same content and journey context users see online which means no more "let me transfer you" or conflicting guidance
This integrated approach ensures citizens get accurate information whether they're self-serving online or speaking with agency representatives.
Prove It With Metrics That Leaders and Citizens Understand
America by Design demands outcomes, not artifacts. We recommend a scorecard leaders can review monthly and publish quarterly:
- Task completion rate (by top citizen tasks)
- Average time-to-complete (before vs. after improvements)
- Journey drop-off points (and fixes shipped to address them)
- Accessibility conformance (WCAG/508 error trends)
- Citizen satisfaction (eCSAT/NPS) by task, not just site-wide averages
- Self-service completion rate (with human support where it adds value)
We've measured what matters: A law enforcement agency's modernization delivered -35% page-load time and -30% deployment failures (case study). A national association of state financial regulators saw +375% page views on targeted content (case study). A land management agency maintains accessibility compliance through continuous monitoring with monthly coordination.
A Pragmatic 90-day Example Roadmap
Days 1-15: Current state assessment
- Map your top 10 citizen tasks across all channels (web, phone, in-person, mail)
- Audit current performance against USWDS standards and 21st Century IDEA requirements
- Identify your highest-impact, lowest-effort wins
Days 16-45: Create high-fidelity prototypes with User Input
- Mock-up a new user experience for 2-3 critical task flows
- Establish measurement framework and baseline metrics
- Identify key audiences for user research
- Collect user feedback
- Validate improvements
- Identify areas for improvement
Day 46-75:
- Apply USWDS-based design system for the "most valuable pathway" for your #1 citizen task
- Launch new flow
- Instrument task-specific analytics and satisfaction measurement
Day 76-90
- Track analytics and prepare progress report for leadership review
- Identify successful patterns to additional high-impact tasks
- Begin training content editors and support teams on new standards
This approach works: We've used similar sprint approaches at an independent federal agency and a land management agency to deliver measurable early wins while building toward larger transformation goals.
Why This Matters Now
Most agencies face a choice between large system integrators (great at infrastructure, weak on experience design) and boutique design firms (strong on discovery, limited on enterprise operations). The gap is in connecting design strategy to enterprise execution, and that's exactly where America by Design will succeed or struggle.
Our design-driven approach has proven this integration works: at a law enforcement agency, we designed unified user experiences across 40+ components while achieving 51% accessibility improvement. Blending industry know-how with federal standards is how we move fast and responsibly while keeping the bar high on usability, while meeting IDEA, 508, and USWDS requirements. America by Design gives agencies the mandate, structure, and timeline to do this work at scale.
The July 4, 2026 deadline is just over 10 months away. Agencies that start with user research, USWDS-based design systems, and clear measurement frameworks will be best positioned to show meaningful progress. The question isn't whether America by Design will reshape government digital services, it's which agencies will lead the way.
Sources: Executive Order Improving Our Nation Through Better Design (The White House), National Design Studio mission (NDS), and comprehensive coverage of the initiative (Nextgov/FCW).