New Trump design chief aims to improve thousands of U.S. government websites

Joe Gebbia co-founder and chief product officer of Airbnb, asks a question to President Barack Obama at an event on entrepreneurship and opportunity for Cuban people at La Cerveceria, Monday, March 21, 2016, in Havana, Cuba.

WASHINGTON — U.S. President Donald Trump’s new design chief said on Saturday he aims to improve government services to be as satisfying to use as the Apple AAPL.O App Store.

Trump has named Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia to spearhead the new National Design Studio that will seek to make digital services at federal agencies more efficient.

Gebbia said on X on Saturday he aims to make government websites beautifully designed and running on modern software with a great user experience. “An experience that projects a level of excellence for our nation, and makes life less complicated for everyday Americans,” he said.

Trump signed an executive order on Thursday to create the studio - a new body that an official familiar with the plan said appears to be a stripped-down successor to the controversial Department of Government Efficiency, formerly headed by billionaire Elon Musk.

Gebbia, who has led efforts to revamp the federal retirement process at the federal human resources agency, is the new chief design officer. Reuters reported this week that tackling problems at the Internal Revenue Service would be a focus, citing a government official.

Many U.S. government websites were designed by lowest-cost bidders and are hard to use or have not been significantly updated for years.

White House official David Sacks said on X that Gebbia will “oversee the redesign of roughly 26,000 federal web portals, many of which are obsolete, so they better serve Social Security recipients, veterans, and all citizens.”

According to Trump’s executive order, the National Design Studio will improve the “usability and aesthetics” of federal digital services.

The studio will advise agencies on how to reduce duplicative design costs and use standardized design on sites where people interact with the government.

The order also said that the studio will close in three years.

(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Andrea Ricci)