Federal Design Standards Get Permanent Status: Executive Order 14388 Codified as Law

The legislation before us is short, sweet, and procedural. It doesn’t introduce a new policy or a massive spending program. Instead, it takes an existing rule—Executive Order 14388, which focuses on improving design across the federal government—and makes it permanent federal law. Think of it like taking a temporary policy memo and engraving it in stone; it ensures that future administrations can’t just erase it with the stroke of a pen.

Why Codify a Design Order?

Executive Order 14388, titled “Improving Our Nation Through Better Design,” is all about making federal services, buildings, and digital tools easier to use and more effective. This ranges from the look and feel of a government website where you renew your passport to the layout of a new post office or the clarity of a government form. Currently, EOs are subject to the whims of the person in the Oval Office. By turning this specific order into a permanent law (SEC. 1), the bill ensures that the focus on good design—which usually means better user experience—has staying power.

What This Means for Everyday Life

While this might sound like bureaucratic inside baseball, it has real-world implications for anyone who interacts with the government. Imagine a small business owner trying to navigate a grant application website. If the design is clunky, confusing, and prone to crashing, they waste time and money. If the design standards mandated by EO 14388 are effective and now permanent, that website should be cleaner, faster, and more intuitive. For a veteran accessing benefits or a parent applying for childcare assistance, this codification means the government is legally required to prioritize systems that actually work for the people using them.

The Stability Factor

The main benefit here is stability. When it comes to digital infrastructure, consistency is key. Federal agencies often spend years implementing complex design guidelines—like making sure all online forms are accessible to screen readers, or standardizing the visual language across different departments. If these rules were easily overturned, agencies would constantly be starting over, wasting taxpayer dollars and creating chaos for users. By codifying this, the bill locks in the commitment to design excellence, preventing a future scenario where every government website suddenly reverts to looking like it was built in 1998. It’s essentially an insurance policy against bad government design.