August 08, 2026
Why are so many government websites unusable for the constituents who need them most?
Civic technologists are building excellent playbooks for how governments can move past broken processes that produce outcomes that don’t serve users. But creating agile, empowered, and accountable delivery teams in the public sector isn’t enough—we also have to make the right technology choices.
At Big Sky Dev Con, I spoke about one simple choice that can transform government service delivery: HTML. Embracing a simple, multi-page architecture results in accessible web services that not only perform better for the public, but saves money for them too. Governments simply need to require that their web portals work without JavaScript. The UK already does it!
You may recognize from ideas from “Building the Hundred-Year Web Service.” I think we can hold the government to the same standard, and finally get our public services off the modernization treadmill.