Federal baseline
USWDS
The U.S. Web Design System is the canonical baseline for federal .gov websites and the reference point many agency systems extend.
Civic design systems
Federal website design systems
A practical reference for USWDS, VA Design System, CMS Design System, state systems, and civic tech patterns.
Government design systems are not only component libraries. They encode accessibility expectations, policy constraints, content standards, and service consistency.
What this covers
Publicly documented systems used by federal, state, local, civic, and international government teams.
Agency system
VA Design System
VADS builds on USWDS with patterns and guidance tailored to VA.gov, Veteran-facing services, forms, and content needs.
Agency system
CMS Design System
CMS documents accessible design and front-end resources for Medicare, Medicaid, HealthCare.gov, and related product teams.
State systems in practice
State systems often solve the same public-service problems with different CMS, procurement, and governance constraints.
California
CA Design System
Open-source patterns maintained for California digital services, with its own token and component conventions.
Massachusetts
Mayflower
A mature state design system with Drupal-facing templates and component guidance.
New York
NYS Design System
Official digital service components and accessibility guidance for New York State properties.
Texas
Web standards
Texas publishes web standards and accessibility expectations without a comparable open-source component library.
Use the guide
The full guide is searchable and filterable by government category.