Hi friends 👋🏻

This week, I want to share one story from the mountain of thousands of government cuts we're enduring currently – a cut that relates to making websites better.

There's a lesson here about whether these government cuts are really about efficiency (spoiler alert, they're not). And there are some powerful resources that are still available for us to use, despite the dismantling of the 18F team.

Want links to recent emails or a sign-up link to share? Go to The Digital Landscape sign-up page​

18F?

18F was a digital services consulting group composed of around 90 specialists, within the federal government, that helped other government agencies fix technology problems and save money by making smarter technology investments.

The 18F team (named after the GSA headquarters building at 1800 F St. in DC) worked to make government services more efficient and accessible. They had worked on hundreds of projects, all designed to make government technology not just efficient but effective, and to save money for American taxpayers.

Exactly the kind of thing the current cost-cutting drive purports to be looking for, right? A few examples:

• Improving access to weather data with NOAA
• Making it easier and faster to get a passport
• Supporting free tax filing with the IRS

Yet the 18F team was eliminated on March 1 by the new administration and DOGE.

Following their dismissal, the 18F team shared a public statement, and stood up a website to make sure some of their important work is still accessible.

How can you use 18F guides in your website projects?

The guides created by 18F to help manage large web projects are excellent. If you're developing a website and want to follow a user-centric process (which you should, right?!) then these guides are a great support. They include:

• ​Accessibility​
• ​Content development​
• ​User experience research​
• ​De-risking web and technology projects​

They're really good! And written in accessible, digestible language that you could use to help persuade your boss or board that investing in a modern, user-centric website is worthwhile.

Learn more about 18F

Here are a couple more resources to learn about this government cut story, amongst all the others we're swamped with.

• ​Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency laid off a team whose purpose was to make the government more efficient (The Atlantic)
• ​GSA shutters 18F, possibly leaving agencies in the lurch (Fedscoop)

And go follow 18F on Bluesky.

Until next time ✨

— Ed Harris (your digital strategy guide)

Connect on LinkedIn

​