You know how the Internet is all fast and convenient, and then you try to do something on a government web service and it suddenly feels like you’ve traveled back to 1885? (Science Fact: The Internet was notoriously slow in 1885.) Well, the government is finally doing something about it by launching the USDS, which sadly doesn’t stand for “Ur Sites Don’t Suck.”
It actually stands for United States Digital Service, which is headed by the former Google engineer who helped turn the Healthcare.gov train wreck into an actual, functional website. The team will be separate from the government’s in-house 18F web development team and focus more on “successful best practices from the private sector and government that, if followed together, will help government build effective digital services,” according to their “Playbook.”
They’ll accomplish that with 25 of what their press release calls “our country’s brightest digital talent,” which I’m assuming they’ve taken out on loan from Google. The USDS finally launched today, so we’ll hopefully start to see improvements in government services on the Internet in the near future.
Hopefully the overhauls will include adding comment sections to all their sites so we can tell them about how much we love the changes, which is the Internet’s favorite pastime.
(via Gizmodo, image via Ministerio TIC Columbia)
- UPS accidentally delivered a government drone instead of this guy’s weights
- Meanwhile, the Japanese government has a form for having a crush on someone
- And there’s a Ministry of Magic website that mimics the UK government’s site
Are you following The Mary Sue on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest, & Google +?
