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Login.gov Principles |
article |
Our mission and project principles
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Team |
Program Information |
To improve how the public interacts with government through a single login experience that is designed around their needs and addresses their pain points.
Login.gov provides a simple, secure way for the public to access their government services and information, while protecting privacy.
We do the work so agencies don’t have to. Login.gov enables and creates a seamless way for the public to engage and interact with their agency through a secure, user friendly login experience. We are a trustworthy government partner to the government agencies that integrate with Login.gov.
We decrease the friction of using government services online.
We are stringent about security and privacy best practices. Login.gov takes seriously the use of authentication and identity best security practices at every stage of the Login.gov experience. You can read more about that in our privacy and security statement.
We help improve public trust in government by being open source. Login.gov shares our processes with the public and government agency partners early and often and publicly abide by security and privacy standards.
- Change the culture. Don’t just build a product — disrupt bureaucracies and challenge assumptions.
- Be responsive. Solve for actual needs and problems, not perceived ones.
- Serve the people first, and the government second. We’re here to serve the American public as a whole (and even foreign visitors), so they should always be our primary focus. We can also strive to make it easier for agencies to fulfill that mission.
- Create simplicity. Reduce cognitive burden. Absorb the complexity on behalf of the public to give them a delightful experience.
- Be smart. Informed decisions over superfluous options.
- Be personalized. Reach people where they are with contextually relevant experiences.
- Be empathetic. Go beyond intuitive functional designs to deliver an aesthetically beautiful experience. Design for the ideal, not the lowest common denominator. Create loyal and passionate users, not passive ones.
- Be an open platform. Build for the future. Be lean, modular, and decentralized. Expose APIs. Encourage reuse and collaboration through interoperability. Eat our own dog food.
- Embrace unpredictability. Evolve with the experiment. Respond and pivot as needed.
- Share. Keep the public informed, and actively seek out feedback.
- Measure impact: Identify the metrics that represent outcomes for users. Measure and be accountable to those.
- Treat every interaction as an opportunity to delight. From pixels to copy, code to community, each part of the process should be a positive experience to engage and defy expectations.
- Always ask: Are we solving for the right solution for the public?
- Mobile first. Bake responsive web design into the DNA - it’s not an afterthought, but core to the experience.
- Be lean and agile: Use prototypes and experiments to validate learning and make data-informed decisions. Ship unfinished code and be prepared to fail fast.
- Embrace ignorance. Run with our naiveté on government constraints as well as the public’s lack of familiarity with the bureaucracy.
- Don’t unnecessarily handicap the creative process. Say “Yes, and” instead of “no, but.”
- Meaningful deadlines are not arbitrary. Milestones should have a purpose.
- No HIPPOs (highest paid person’s opinion). Titles and hierarchy don’t impact weight of ideas.
- Meetings are the exception, not the rule. Have a clear understanding of who the meeting is with, who they are, the purpose of the meeting, and the intended outcomes.