If you make yourself a sandwich, you might not think of that as design. Your creation might be subject to the designs of others—from the size and shape of the bread, to the length of the knife, to the temperature of your fridge. But within these constraints, you’re free to roam. You can put mustard on the outside if you want. You can be impulsive and reactive.
As soon as you want others to build that sandwich, you need a recipe they can follow. At this point, you’re making design decisions: In what order do things need to happen? What are the tools and ingredients?
There are plenty of definitions of “design.” Bruce Mau says it is “a leadership methodology, a way of imagining a future and systemically executing that vision.” High praise for a sandwich—but whether you’re designing a map, a house, a government service, or just lunch, the best design unearths deep truths about the way something works, and then conveys those truths so elegantly they become obvious in hindsight.
Great design is far more than the thing itself. It’s how that thing is understood, shared, and adopted. Superb designs become a part of culture: Think of the London Underground’s subway map, the act of swiping, or the brutal ubiquity of Helvetica. Each has its own voice and brand (and merch!) They have become iconic languages unto themselves.
To succeed, digital government needs more than the language of design. It also needs great messaging. Many well-designed services languish in obscurity, unappreciated by citizens and neglected by those they would best serve.
There are many reasons for this, but one is that the communications realm has changed completely, and the public sector is still living in the past.
The democracies that grew from post-war Europe were products of the communication infrastructure of the time. Broadcast media, from newspapers to radios to television, flowed from one source to an audience of millions. They were expensive to launch—you needed a printing press and newsstands, a radio transmitter, a broadcast license, or a studio. And they gave us a common set of facts delivered by authorities we trusted.
In 2025, those who cling to such models are astonished when politicians ignore norms and friends believe parallel realities. Ambassador Patrick Moynihan, a central figure in twentieth-century diplomacy, said that “everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.” So when Kellyanne Conway told Meet the Press that “Sean Spicer gave alternative facts” in 2017 it was clear that the world had changed.
21st century media isn’t broadcast, it’s any-to-any. There are zero barriers to entry: Anyone can livestream to the world with a tap, and video templates that make a speaker almost indistinguishable from Fox News or CNN cost only a few hundred dollars. More people than ever—by some estimates, more than half of the human population—rely on social media platforms as their primary source of news. Debate has bifurcated into three-hour-long rambling podcasts, and verb-article-noun slogans that amplify well and convey nothing but outrage.
This isn’t the only reason Westminster democracies struggle to get their message out. For one thing, they’re often hampered by regulations designed to keep them honest, and any form of promotion can seem like political advocacy for the party currently in power.
Perhaps more importantly, the government is not a business (despite many people wishing it were run like one.) Governments have a monopoly—there’s only one tax authority—and are bound by the constitution to deliver services to everyone, even if it’s unprofitable to do so.
Because it’s not a business, the public sector doesn’t face competitive pressure, which means go-to-market strategy is an afterthought. “Build it and they will come,” is the underlying assumption, because after all, we built it for their needs. Government workers issue press releases, hoping someone will notice.
That’s why we’re focusing our September online event on the language of design and communications: What does it take to conceive of a thing, turn that conception into something that just flows, and shout about it from the rooftops?
We’ll kick the day off with an introduction by FWD50 co-chair Alistair Croll, whose recent book, Just Evil Enough, looks at how go-to-market strategies have changed over the past century. He’ll discuss the role of Common Knowledge in behavioral change. Then we welcome back activist and speculative fiction author Malka Older, who first took the stage in 2019. Malka is now the executive director of Global Voices, and her team will deliver a Narrative Spotting workshop later in the day.
We’ve got plenty more in store. UX expert and trainer Maigen Thomas (check out her YouTube channel!) will reframe accessibility, showing how it’s a foundation for great bottom-up design rather than an affordance to be bolted on as an afterthought. We’ll hear about how Kativik designed a resident-informed digital prototype to improve water service in Canada’s North. And co-chair Hillary Hartley will interview future-savvy marketing expert Mitch Joel about how the public sector can ensure its messages are heard in the modern world.
September 16 might seem far off, and we’re still finalizing the content and preparing the speakers. But it’s already shaping up to be another unmissable day of public sector learning that goes far beyond technology and, along with our April 15 Product and June 3 AI days, gets to the core of what it means to deliver modern digital government.