18F has started building a much-needed federal government-wide pattern library.
For those unfamiliar with the concept of a pattern library, it’s a standardized, front-end design style guide for all the components of a website, such as fonts, colors, layout and forms (example: Code for America’s pattern library).
This is an important project in that it (hopefully) begins to set a standard common look and feel for all federal government websites and moves the focus from design to user experience.
If agencies get on board with the standardization, millions of dollars in savings would be realized, not to mention a path for expedited development processes because front-end code can be easily re-purposed and deployed.
Clarification
@lukefretwell @18F So you know, it's on 18F's GitHub, but isn't an "18F project". It's led by @mollieruskin and involves various govvies.
— Eric Mill (@konklone) June 25, 2015