Research · The American system (USWDS)
The American design system (USWDS): what is worth adopting
This document analyses the U.S. Web Design System (USWDS), the design system for federal websites in the United States. The situation described is as of 20 October 2026. Here you will find what the system contains, how widely it is used, what happened to it in 2025–2026 and what would be worth adopting, adapting or avoiding in Romania.
I mark information from the press with (press), information from public advocacy material with (advocacy material) and figures I calculated myself with (own calculation).
0. Summary in ten points
- USWDS is one of the most reused government design systems. It is in the public domain (the CC0 licence). The Danish system DKFDS, for example, is based on it.
- Some ideas are very good: a “magic number” that guarantees colour contrast, public accessibility tests for each component, adoption in three levels, the “official website” banner and public measurement of adoption.
- After 11 years, 15–23% of federal websites use it, but these account for 25–28% of page views.
- The legal obligation was never firm: agencies “should” use it, and none of the 9 federal website standards is mandatory.
- There is no rigorous impact assessment. The savings figures are estimates.
- The accessibility of federal websites remains low: 1.96 out of 5 in the 2025 assessment.
- 2025–2026 was an unstable period: the team shrank to about one person (advocacy material), no release appeared for 15 months, the leadership changed, and the community announced an independent copy.
- The lesson has two sides: USWDS shows what a national system should contain, and how easily one is lost when it depends on a single team and on non-binding rules.
- For Romania, the value lies in the ideas and the governance lessons, not in the code as a dependency. Reusing the code is legal, but risky at the moment.
- Section 8 lists concrete proposals, linked to PL-x 300/2026, the Romanian bill on standardising digital design.
1. In brief
| Item | Details |
|---|---|
| What it is | Principles, design tokens (named values for colours, spacing, fonts), 47 components, patterns and templates |
| Who owns it | GSA (General Services Administration), the federal agency for general services |
| Launch | 28 September 2015 |
| Current version | 3.14.0 (18 August 2026) |
| Licence | CC0 1.0 (public domain) |
| Accessibility | The target is WCAG (the international web accessibility guidelines) 2.1 AA, above the legal minimum (WCAG 2.0 AA) |
2. History
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| 2015 | Launch, so that agencies would stop “reinventing the wheel” for buttons, forms and search |
| 2017–2022 | Versions 1.0 (2017), 2.0 (2019) and 3.0 (2022) |
| Dec. 2018 | The 21st Century IDEA Act: public websites must follow GSA standards |
| Sept. 2023 | OMB Memorandum M-23-22 (OMB is the White House budget office): agencies “should” use USWDS |
| Mar. 2025 | GSA's 18F digital team is disbanded (about 90 employees) |
| Aug. 2025 | Executive Order EO 14338 calls for USWDS to be “updated” under a new White House design studio |
| Aug. 2025 – Feb. 2026 | No changes to the main code |
| Aug. 2026 | Version 3.14.0, the first in 15 months |
| Sept. 2026 | An artificial intelligence (AI) engineer from the Treasury takes over the leadership; contributors lose access (press). About 75 former employees and experts write that USWDS is, for now, no longer trustworthy infrastructure (advocacy material) |
| Oct. 2026 | About 200 people announce an independent copy, the Open Government Design System (OGDS) (press) |
3. The legal basis: why “should” was not enough
| Act | What it says | Mandatory? |
|---|---|---|
| 21st Century IDEA (2018) | Public websites must follow GSA standards. It does not name USWDS | Yes, if the standards exist |
| OMB M-23-22 (2023) | Agencies “should” use USWDS | No |
| Federal standards | 9 standards, none mandatory in October 2026 | In practice, no |
| Section 508 | WCAG 2.0 AA | Yes |
In 2021, agencies did not know whether USWDS was a legal requirement or an optional tool. GAO (the Government Accountability Office, the federal audit body) found that in 2023 only 7 of 24 agencies covered all the requirements of the law.
4. Governance, funding and the changes of 2025–2026
- Funding comes from a GSA fund, with no budget line of its own. In 2026 “a reduced version” was funded.
- The team: in 2025, the programme lead was the only full-time employee (advocacy material).
- The vulnerability: after the changes of 2025, no release appeared for 15 months, the community channels closed and the leadership changed (§2).
- What remained was the code. What was lost was the community's trust: agencies are pinning their versions (press).
The main lesson: a national design system is infrastructure. It needs a legal basis, a protected budget, written rules and a community able to carry it on.
5. The product: what it contains
5.1 The design principles (5)
Start with real user needs. Earn trust. Embrace accessibility. Promote continuity (a consistent experience, without identical websites). Listen.
5.2 Design tokens
Every colour has a grade from 0 (white) to 100 (black). The “magic number”: the difference in grade between two colours predicts the contrast, whatever the hue. 40+ passes level AA for large text, 50+ passes AA (4.5:1), 70+ passes AAA. Designers can thus choose accessible pairs without separate checks. Spacing starts from 8 px, and themes are configured according to the rule “design tokens, not hard-coded values”.
5.3 Components, patterns, templates
47 components, from date pickers to file uploads. Each goes through a public life cycle: proposal (at least 45 days of comments) → experimental → stable → deprecated → retired. The patterns cover complex forms, language selection and profile data (name, address, date of birth, phone number).
5.4 The “trust layer”: the banner and the identifier
The banner has fixed text, which cannot be customised:
- “An official website of the United States government”;
- “Here's how you know”, which opens the explanation;
- “Official websites use .gov”;
- “Secure .gov websites use HTTPS”.
It appears on every page, immediately after the skip-to-content link, and never on .com or .org websites. There are variants in Spanish and for .mil.
The identifier, in the footer: “An official website of the …” (followed by the agency's name), plus the links required by law: about the institution, the accessibility statement, access to public information (FOIA), No FEAR Act data, the inspector general, performance reports, the privacy policy and, optionally, USA.gov.
The banner is the most adopted part of USWDS: about 15–18% of websites.
5.5 Accessibility practice
- Automated checks on every code change and manual checks (screen readers, keyboard, zoom).
- A public test page for each component, with the WCAG criterion, the result and the version tested.
- A published conformance report: 44 components, plus sessions with 13 participants with disabilities.
- The documentation states that accessible components “do not guarantee an accessible service”.
- Limitations: some tests are on old versions, and the 2026 move to AI-based testing is disputed (only about 30% of testing can be safely automated).
5.6 The maturity model (gradual adoption)
- Integrate the principles.
- Follow the guidance, “even if you don't use USWDS code”.
- Use the code and contribute back.
5.7 Publishing releases
The release notes label each change (accessibility, breaking, HTML markup) and tell teams what they need to do. Even so, breaking changes have also appeared in minor versions. About 154 federal websites still run unmaintained versions.
5.8 The community and contributions
Proposals are made on GitHub. The monthly calls and the public Slack have been closed. There are 27 community adaptations for other technologies, but no official React library.
5.9 Systems built on USWDS
VA.gov, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (HealthCare.gov), Login.gov, NCI (cancer.gov), NASA and the Forest Service have their own extensions or copies. The Danish system DKFDS started in 2017 from USWDS 1.4.2 (checked in the code history) and is now very different. OGDS is the community's 2026 copy.
6. Adoption and impact: the figures
6.1 Adoption
| Source / date | Indicator |
|---|---|
| USWDS, August 2023 | In four years: websites 103 → 461; share of federal page views 9% → 28% |
| White House, August 2025 | “Less than 20%” of about 26,000 federal websites |
| GSA Site Scanning, 19 Oct. 2026 | Of 7,787 active executive branch websites: 1,220 with the banner (15.7%), 1,804 with USWDS code (23.2%) (own calculation) |
| Legislative / judicial branch | 2 of 745 and 7 of 132 websites |
Derived systems (VA, NASA) are undercounted, because they do not carry the USWDS marker.
6.2 Evidence of impact
- Savings: only estimates (“about $100,000 per project”); no official audit quantifies them.
- Results: only case studies by suppliers, which do not isolate the effect of the system.
- Qualitative (60 interviews, 2021): teams spend less time justifying their decisions.
- Accessibility (data reported by agencies): 1.96 out of 5 in 2025; fewer than 30% of agencies check it in procurement.
7. Critical observations
- Agencies want their own visual identity: “the biggest obstacle” to adoption.
- The ambiguity between “should” and “must” (§3).
- Copies that drift apart and websites left on old versions.
- No official route for React.
- The cost of change rises as adoption grows.
- No plain language guide of its own.
- Breaking changes in minor versions.
- Dependence on a single team (§4).
- The criticism that “everything looks the same” is not supported by evidence.
8. What would be worth adopting in Romania
The proposals below are possible changes to the text of PL-x 300/2026. My own proposal, with adoption in stages, is in the The full proposal.
The proposals refer to SUDD (Sistemul Unic de Design Digital, the Single Digital Design System), the design system provided for by PL-x 300/2026 (see the Analysis of the bill).
8.1 To adopt as it is
| # | What | How, for Romania |
|---|---|---|
| T1 | The official website banner and the identifier | The first SUDD component, on all .gov.ro websites, with fixed text („Un site oficial al statului român · Cum verificați?”, “An official website of the Romanian state · How can you check?”). It could become mandatory after a voluntary stage. It could be ready within a few months |
| T2 | Colour grades and the “magic number” | The same 0–100 logic, aligned with EN 301 549 and WCAG 2.2 AA |
| T3 | Design tokens and themes | A shared core plus themes, so that institutions keep their identity |
| T4 | Public accessibility tests and a conformance report | A launch condition for every version, including testing with people with disabilities |
| T5 | Adoption in three levels | Deadlines by level, instead of the single deadline of 1 January 2028 |
| T6 | Automated, public measurement | The Romanian Authority for Digitalisation (ADR), the government agency for digitalisation, would scan public domains and publish a ranking (Art. 6(2)(f)) |
| T7 | The public life cycle, with a comment period | The procedure for new components, with 30 days of comments, instead of approval by the National Council for Digital Transformation (CNTD), an advisory body of ADR |
| T8 | Labelled release notes and migration guides | A mandatory format; no breaking changes in minor versions |
| T9 | The open licence | The words „cu titlu gratuit” (“free of charge”) added back and the licence named (EUPL-1.2, the EU public licence, for code; CC BY for documentation) |
| T10 | Profile patterns | Name, address (county, locality, SIRUTA code, the code from the official register of localities), CNP (Romanian personal numeric code), date of birth, IBAN, phone number; language selection (Romanian, Hungarian, English) |
8.2 To adapt for Romania
| # | What | The problem in the US | The adaptation |
|---|---|---|---|
| A1 | The legal basis | Under 20% adoption after 10 years | Only the minimum layer mandatory (banner, identifier, design tokens, basic accessibility); the rest linked to funding and to the approval of IT projects, not to fines |
| A2 | Funding | No budget of its own | A multi-year budget and minimum staffing for the SUDD team |
| A3 | Governance | A single team | Written rules, an advisory council (the association of municipalities, organisations of people with disabilities, academia), maintainers from several institutions |
| A4 | Other technologies | Only unofficial adaptations | Web components and an official package for the most used CMS (content management system), then others, on demand |
| A5 | The content guide | It depended on the 18F guide | A plain language guide in Romanian (and in Hungarian, where relevant) |
| A6 | Accessibility testing | Manual testing, threatened by automation | Manual testing as a launch condition; automation only supplements it |
8.3 To avoid
- An obligation that refers to unfinished standards. A deadline for publishing SUDD v1 would help.
- Self-reported compliance. Safer: independent scanning and sample audits.
- A single point of failure (one team, one leader, one budget line).
- No baseline. Starting indicators from day one and an annual impact report (Art. 11(4)).
- Breaking changes without warning.
- Copies left to drift apart. Better: “core + extensions”, with an obligation to follow the core.
8.4 Should Romania reuse the USWDS code?
| Option | Advantages | Disadvantages |
|---|---|---|
| A copy of USWDS or OGDS | Free; mature, tested components | Unstable leadership at the source; American patterns; a copy to maintain alone |
| SUDD from scratch, with European references (the European Commission's ECL library, under the EUPL licence) | Alignment with EU law; Romanian patterns | More work; it needs the team and budget that USWDS did not have |
| Hybrid (the option I recommend) | USWDS ideas adopted as specifications; components built under a European licence | The origin of any reused code must be documented |
8.5 Mapping to PL-x 300/2026
| PL-x 300/2026 (the Senate text) | The lesson | The suggested change |
|---|---|---|
| Art. 2(f): „puse la dispoziție cu titlu,” (“made available on a … basis,”; the word „gratuit”, “free”, is missing) | T9 | „cu titlu gratuit, sub licență deschisă (EUPL-1.2 / CC BY)” (“free of charge, under an open licence (EUPL-1.2 / CC BY)”) |
| Art. 4(4): fixed deadline, 1 January 2028 | T5, A1 | The minimum layer within a fixed deadline, counted from the publication of SUDD v1; the rest by levels |
| Art. 5: feedback only „dacă consideră” instituția (“if the institution considers it necessary”) | The “Listen” principle | Mandatory feedback, a reply deadline, public statistics |
| Art. 6: ADR's duties | A2, A3 | Budget, minimum staffing, written governance |
| Art. 6(2)(e)–(f): indicators and report | T6 | Daily automated scanning and a public dashboard |
| Art. 7: CNTD gives its opinion on ADR's acts | T7 | Public consultation and an advisory council |
| Art. 8: clauses in procurement | Fewer than 30% of American agencies check accessibility | A standard clause, checked when IT projects are approved |
| Art. 11(4): assessment at 36 months | §8.3, point 4 | Starting indicators; an annual impact report |
| (missing) | T4, A6 | A public conformance report and manual testing |
9. Open points and unverified information
- The budget and the number of staff of USWDS are not published.
- The claims in the open letter come from advocacy material.
- I do not know what the new design studio delivered by the deadline set by the executive order (4 July 2026).
- The 2023 adoption figures contradict each other (461 versus 160 websites).
Sources
Primary sources
- USWDS: about the system, principles, colour, components, component status, life cycle, accessibility, maturity model, banner, identifier, the 2021 research
- GitHub: uswds/uswds, decisions in uswds-proposals, uswds-elements, uswds-for-designers
- standards.digital.gov · GSA Site Scanning · site-scanning-analysis reports
- 21st Century IDEA · OMB M-23-22 · EO 14338 · White House fact sheet, August 2025
- GAO-24-106764 · GAO-25-107652 · Section 508, findings for 2025
- USWDS monthly call, August 2023 · 18F case study, 2019 · USWDS savings calculator
- Derived systems: VA, CMS, NCI, DKFDS
Press and advocacy material