The blog post announcing this (https://18f.gsa.gov/2015/09/28/web-design-standards/) claims that the standards were created using "data-informed best practices" within government websites. It would be fantastic to get that data published here as well to help support the "best decisions" made.

Otherwise this unfortunately just becomes another set of opinions by a select group of designers and developers. Let's make this the best it can be!

Cool stuff! Glad to see they're responding to the biggest issues in government websites with this (lack of consistency making the sites hard to confirm as legitimate, and poor support for mobile).

I wonder how much inspiration they drew from the British government's web style guide? https://www.gov.uk/design-principles

nice. fresh from 18F/USDS. Writeup here https://medium.com/@USDigitalService/introducing-u-s-web-design-standards-aff21383afd6

Spectacular effort.

I think it is very interesting to see that the government's design problem has made changes faster than the data problem they has. Local government municipalities, and even on the State level, have a mountain to climb when it comes to adopting a process for gathering data and doing something useful with it.

Design leading the way. I dig it.

Nice find!