President Donald Trump on Thursday signed an executive order launching the “America by Design” initiative – a sweeping effort to patch the federal government’s “digital potholes” and make its websites both easier to use and more aesthetically pleasing.
The initiative establishes a National Design Studio (NDS) within the White House, along with a new chief design officer position within the NDS. The National Design Studio will seek to reduce duplicative design efforts and improve the quality of public interactions with government services.
The chief design officer will be tasked with recruiting top private-sector designers and devising innovative solutions “to facilitate design improvements in both digital and physical Federal spaces,” according to a White House fact sheet accompanying the executive order.
“Federal websites and digital services aren’t meeting the public’s needs and expectations,” the fact sheet says. “Legacy government systems are costly to maintain and notoriously difficult for Americans to navigate, wasting time and resources.”
“Poorly designed digital and physical interfaces undermine public trust in high-impact Federal service providers,” it says, adding, “The current sprawling ecosystem of Federal services lacks the usability and aesthetic quality expected by the American public.”
The White House also notes that there are an estimated 26,000 federal websites – of which only 6% are rated “good” for mobile performance, and 45% are not mobile-friendly. According to the White House, less than 20% of federal websites use code from the United States Web Design System (USWDS), “contributing to inconsistent and varying user experiences.”
The executive order directs federal agencies to work with the chief design officer to improve websites and physical interfaces.
Agencies must also work with the chief design officer to ensure compliance with the 21st Century Integrated Digital Experience (IDEA) Act. That law requires public-facing agency websites to meet several modernization standards to be more accessible, user-friendly, and secure.
Federal agencies are tasked with producing initial results on those tasks by July 4, 2026.
The order also tasks the General Services Administration (GSA) to work with the chief design officer to update the USWDS. The USWDS is an open source toolkit of principles, guidance, and code for federal websites created by a collaborative team at GSA’s 18F group and the U.S. Digital Service (USDS).
GSA’s 18F digital consulting office was recently shuttered under the Trump administration, and the USDS is now the U.S. DOGE Service.
In a move reminiscent of the prior tech office efforts, the executive order also establishes “a temporary organization” within the National Design Studio to drive the America by Design initiative forward. The temporary organization would sunset in three years, according to the order.