6 ms·

Digital Services Playbook

130 points by ronbenton 2y ago

isiahl 2y ago
RIP to the USDS, an inspiring government department to someone like me.
- ronbenton 2y ago
  I wanted to join them some day. Hopefully they will be back.
  - hayst4ck 2y ago
    Mikey Dickerson, the first head of the USDS, would say hope is not a strategy.
- kevml 2y 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.
- lmeyerov 2y 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!
- righthand 2y 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.
  - ronbenton 2y 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.
    - righthand 2y 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.
      - atonse 2y 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.
- hn_user82179 2y 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).
  - ronbenton 2y 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.
- andreygrehov 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - 0xCMP 2y 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.
    - andreygrehov 2y 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.
  - ronbenton 2y 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.
  - righthand 2y 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.
    - deleted 2y ago
- boris-ning-usds 2y ago
  We'll live on in people's memories and hearts. Thank you.
  - ipython 2y ago
    Thank you for your service.
- seanwilson 2y 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/overview/ 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).
  - Maxious 2y 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/3078 https://github.com/uswds/uswds-site/pull/3053/files#diff-86ccf55f781bde4571031d1eba9e77e77e2907d8d40ccc582839c175b23d0f4eL185-L189 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/ending-radical-and-wasteful-government-dei-programs-and-preferencing/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/endi...
    - seanwilson 2y 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/overview/ 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?
      - 2y ago
whoitwas 2y ago
[flagged]
- whoitwas 2y ago
  ...and a lot of people think it's good. Why?
  - ceejayoz 2y 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.)
    - whoitwas 2y ago
      [flagged]
      - getlawgdon 2y ago
        The reckoning will come.
    - righthand 2y 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.
andreygrehov 2y ago
If the website goes down, there is https://sharedserviceplaybooks.com/books/digital-services-playbook https://sharedserviceplaybooks.com/books/digital-services-pl...
xnx 2y ago
I assume this link is being shared now to encourage backups before it is deleted.
- ronbenton 2y 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.
dang 2y ago
Related. Others? USDS Digital Services Playbook - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25595830 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25595830 - Dec 2020 (98 comments) Staying with the US Digital Service - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13432881 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13432881 - Jan 2017 (236 comments) A brief update - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11927447 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10612779 - Nov 2015 (12 comments) The US digital service - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10060858 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 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9286906 - March 2015 (116 comments) Join the U.S. Digital Service - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8988819 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8988819 - Feb 2015 (233 comments) The U.S. Digital Services Playbook - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8216419 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8216419 - Aug 2014 (9 comments) The U.S. Digital Services Playbook - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8164676 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8164523 - Aug 2014 (139 comments) The U.S. Digital Services Playbook - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8164461 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8164461 - Aug 2014 (1 comment)
- ronbenton 2y 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)
  - dang 2y 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&query=by%3Adang%20major%20ongoing%20topic&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... downweighting follow-ups - https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=follow-up%20downweight&sort=byDate&type=comment 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.
woodylondon 2y 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-and-technology-playbook https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-digital-data-...
- heidarb 2y 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Digital_Service

130 points by ronbenton 2y ago

isiahl 2y ago

RIP to the USDS, an inspiring government department to someone like me.

ronbenton 2y ago
I wanted to join them some day. Hopefully they will be back.
- hayst4ck 2y ago
  Mikey Dickerson, the first head of the USDS, would say hope is not a strategy.
kevml 2y 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.
lmeyerov 2y 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!
righthand 2y 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.
- ronbenton 2y 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.
  - righthand 2y 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.
    - atonse 2y 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.
hn_user82179 2y 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).
- ronbenton 2y 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.
andreygrehov 2y ago
[flagged]
- 0xCMP 2y 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.
  - andreygrehov 2y 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.
- ronbenton 2y 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.
- righthand 2y 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.
  - deleted 2y ago
boris-ning-usds 2y ago
We'll live on in people's memories and hearts. Thank you.
- ipython 2y ago
  Thank you for your service.
seanwilson 2y 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/overview/ 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).
- Maxious 2y 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/3078 https://github.com/uswds/uswds-site/pull/3053/files#diff-86ccf55f781bde4571031d1eba9e77e77e2907d8d40ccc582839c175b23d0f4eL185-L189 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/ending-radical-and-wasteful-government-dei-programs-and-preferencing/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/endi...
  - seanwilson 2y 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/overview/ 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?
    - 2y ago

whoitwas 2y ago

[flagged]

whoitwas 2y ago
...and a lot of people think it's good. Why?
- ceejayoz 2y 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.)
  - whoitwas 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - getlawgdon 2y ago
      The reckoning will come.
  - righthand 2y 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.

andreygrehov 2y ago

If the website goes down, there is https://sharedserviceplaybooks.com/books/digital-services-playbook https://sharedserviceplaybooks.com/books/digital-services-pl...

xnx 2y ago

I assume this link is being shared now to encourage backups before it is deleted.

ronbenton 2y 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.

dang 2y ago

Related. Others? USDS Digital Services Playbook - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25595830 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25595830 - Dec 2020 (98 comments) Staying with the US Digital Service - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13432881 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13432881 - Jan 2017 (236 comments) A brief update - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11927447 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10612779 - Nov 2015 (12 comments) The US digital service - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10060858 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 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9286906 - March 2015 (116 comments) Join the U.S. Digital Service - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8988819 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8988819 - Feb 2015 (233 comments) The U.S. Digital Services Playbook - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8216419 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8216419 - Aug 2014 (9 comments) The U.S. Digital Services Playbook - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8164676 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8164523 - Aug 2014 (139 comments) The U.S. Digital Services Playbook - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8164461 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8164461 - Aug 2014 (1 comment)

ronbenton 2y 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)
- dang 2y 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&query=by%3Adang%20major%20ongoing%20topic&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... downweighting follow-ups - https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=follow-up%20downweight&sort=byDate&type=comment 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.

woodylondon 2y 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-and-technology-playbook https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-digital-data-...

heidarb 2y 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Digital_Service