DOGE Track

National Design Studio

In the middle of summer 2025, DOGE found itself in a minor crisis. Elon Musk had left, Steve Davis had spurred a civil war within the organization, and embittered agency heads were starting to assert more power over the DOGE members embedded in their agency, including firing the ones they didn’t like. In July, the Wall Street Journal reported that Joe Gebbia had pitched the White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles on a new design direction for DOGE, using “Mad Men”-style presentation boards to promote a plan for a refurbished National Parks website among others. As the article wryly noted, “Susie listened, There were no major decisions made.”

But, it clearly worked. In late August, Trump signed EO 14338, establishing a new office of the National Design Studio within the White House, charged with defining standards for the look and functionality of federal websites. Within a few weeks, Joe Gebbia was named as the first Chief Design Officer of the NDS. Despite this new role, the NDS seems to be following theconfigs: same playbook as DOGE, with the executive order definining a similar Temporary Organization that can be used to hire Special Government Employees without them having to quit their regular work or worry about ethics declarations. Is it just DOGE 2.0?

Positions

click for sources; full legend
Name Positions
Caelin Sutch
Source
NDS date unknown
Tai Groot
Sources
NDS 7/XX/25 «Guessing started at NDS because identified by White House as staffer»
SSA 7/XX/25 likely detailed IT Cybersecurity Expert «Guessing a detail because of NDS link»
Joe Gebbia
Source
NDS 8/21/25 Chief Design Officer «Position created in EO 14338»
Kaitlyn Koller
Sources
NDS c.8/26/25 Director of Operations
Edward Coristine
Sources
NDS 8/29/25? Director of Engineering
Zach Terrell
Sources
NDS 8/29/25? «He has been linked to NDS but is still also at HHS?»
Nate Brown
Source
NDS 10/XX/25 Creative Director
Greg Hogan
Source
NDS 10/XX/25 Hacker in Residence
Michael Novia
Source
NDS 10/XX/25 Creative Director
Darshan Phillips
Source
NDS 10/XX/25 Executive Creative Director
Jaylee Adams
Source
NDS 12/XX/25 Producer
Braden Steffaniak
Source
NDS 1/XX/26 Software Engineer
Adam Bhaloo
Source
NDS 2/06/26
Tyler Kim
Sources
NDS 2/XX/26

Events

Date Event
8/21/25
Source
The National Design Studio also launches americabydesign.gov to promote the America by Design initiative mentioned in EO 14338. This includes the oft-repeated quote from Joe Gebbia that government websites should offer an “Apple Store”-like experience. This site is a single page of large bold text, with a header video of a waving American flag. It also includes an email sign-up form.
 IT Modernization
8/21/25
Source
To accompany the creation of the National Design Studio, the organization launches the site ndstudio.gov to promote the group. The site features a single page of chunky bold text as well as an email signup form and a place to submit resumes.
 IT Modernization
8/21/25
Source
President Trump signs EO 14338, which creates the new National Design Studio within the EOP and tasks it with centralizing control over design across the federal government. Joe Gebbia is subsequently named the new Chief Design Officer. Similar to DOGE’s structure, the NDS contains a temporary organization within that can be used for hiring Special Government Employees (SGEs) to work for the government on a volunteer basis.
 IT Modernization
September 2025
9/20/25
Sources
The Trump administration revamps the “Gold Card Visa” site that was originally launched in June. The visa now will cost $1 million and be an expedited EB-1 or EB-2 visa; the original proposal has been rebranded as the platinum card, which will be “coming soon.” The legality of this program still remains wildly unclear and demand is inflated because sign-up is through a public web form. This website is the first public work of recently-formed National Design Studio, although the previous version of the site was built by DOGE too.
 IT Modernization
October 2025
10/10/25
Sources
Working with the White House and HHS, the National Design Studio launches the TrumpRX to promote a forthcoming initiative from the White House to cap certain drug prices for private payers. This is the fourth website to bear the National Design Studio credit, and like the others it is a single-page site with expandable accordion elements of text and an email signup form.
 IT Modernization
10/17/25
Source
The Trump Administration announces plans for a digital version of the existing federal voter registration form that would be created by the National Design Studio and would run voter identity and citizenship checks against SAVE and other DHS systems before allowing voters to register. States of course have their own voter registration processes but have accepted the paper federal registration form as well. Notes from the call with National Association of State Election Directors reported that election officials from both parties expressed concern about this plan not complying with state laws. They also reported “the developers do not seem to want to spend the time to understand election official concerns.”
 Immigration
10/23/25
Source
Seeking to further bolster support for its proposed new voter registration tool that would be integrated with DHS databases, the Election Assistance Commission hosts a call with the National Association of Secretaries of State. Akash Bobba speaks on the call as a developer and reports it will be created by the National Design Studio and integrate with the revamped SAVE database from DHS. When asked for details about data retention and security, Bobba could only state that “clear data retention policies” would be provided to states in advance.
 Immigration
10/24/25
Source
The Trump Administration registers the domain techforce.gov and later launches a password-protected site with branding for the National Design Studio on it.
 IT Modernization
10/29/25
Sources
The National Design Studio launches a new website safedc.gov for the admnistration’s new DC task force. It features a single page of large bold text on a black background with a large (possibly AI-generated) picture of Trump on patrol with agents, links to job listings on USA Jobs and an email sign-up form. Weirdly, the NDS header also includes a clock.
 IT Modernization
November 2025
11/18/25
Source
In an interview, Joe Gebbia affirms he has been the Chief Design Officer since being appointed to the role in September, after EO 14338 was issued in August. He also confirms the position is in the White House and reports directly to the Chief of Staff Susie Wiles. Although it has an office nearby, Gebbia will primarily be working from his home in Austin, Texas.
11/25/25
Sources
The Department of Energy launches a new “Genesis Mission” to heavily use AI tools for scientific research. The website for this endeavor is created by the National Design Studio and features the classic hallmarks of their work: bold fonts on a black background with animations all on a single page with no navigation and an email signup form. According to Edward Coristine’s twitter account, this page took 3 weeks to make.
 IT Modernization
December 2025
12/10/25
Sources
Trump officially launches the trumpcard.gov website, which has been modified to now accept more formal online applications and a $15,000 processing fee. This change was presumably made by the National Design Studio, who did the last revamp of the site originally developed by DOGE. More importantly, it now has a more detailed signup form that promises payment processing of the $15,000 processing fee as well. With this change, NDS has added a second page.
 IT Modernization
12/14/25
Source
The National Design Studio launches merrychristmas.gov, a site for the America Bt Design to highlight 12 days of “GovDesign History.” In a marked departure from typical NDS style, this page features smaller text on a white background, snow that can be toggled on and off and a different URL for each day as well as a page linking to NORAD’s Santa tracker. These pages meant the site comprises 14 pages in total (the largest for any NDS site)
 IT Modernization
12/15/25
Source
The National Design Studio and OPM launch techforce.gov, a new site recruiting technical staff for a 2-year term to work on technical projects within agencies, a model that sounds similar to 18F and USDS, which were respectively completely destroyed and hollowed out by DOGE. The site features the typical design of NDS websites – a single page of large bold fonts on a black background with accordion elements to expand information. It also features AI images of a figure with a computer monitor head.
 IT Modernization
12/17/25
Sources
The National Design Studio launches another single-page site trumpaccounts.gov in cooperation with the US Treasury. This is to promote a program of special investment accounts that was passed by Congress but presented as if it’s a result of Trump’s personal largesse. It conveys a softer tone than many other of their sites, but still sticks to the same convention of a single page of text, with a FAQ presented as expandable accordions and a form to sign up for a mailing list.
 IT Modernization
12/26/25
Source
The National Design Studio launches a new blog named “Dev Index” with an article written about the modernization work at OPM for digitizing retirements that apparently has moved over to the NDS from OPM with Joe Gebbia. The article is written by Yat Choi and Dennis Li and thanks Edward Coristine and Zach Terrell for reviewing the content.
1/09/26
Sources
The National Design Studio launches realfood.gov with HHS. Evoking more of a nostalgic and warm tone rather than the technocratic darkness of some prior sites, it is still a one-page site with large bold text, expandable accordions but now also with some scrolling animation.
 IT Modernization
1/23/26
Source
Speaking in a podcast interview, Joe Gebbia reports that the National Design Studio is working to revise every government website, adding that “look like they’re from the mid-90s.” He also states that the NDS is going to deliver a refresh of some existing websites by July 4, 2026 and that the team will eventually consist of approximately 15 engineers and 15 designers and is currently employing brilliant veterans of Silicon Valley.
 IT Modernization
1/30/26
Source
Speaking at the ACT-IAC Summit, Federal CIO Greg Barbaccia touted the work of the National Design Studio and reported that OMB is working closely with NDS to “coalesce” the administration’s website design, comparing it to how certain hotel brands will all look and smell the same. He reports there are internal sandboxes running for new designs and a redesigned site for CIO.gov will soon illustrate the new look. The NDS is also reportedly leaning heavily into using AI for its work. In addition, 35,000 people have applied to the administration’s Tech Force initiative and they are reviewing 6,000 applicants.
 IT Modernization
February 2026
2/05/26
Sources
The Trump RX site formally relaunches with a lookup option to find savings codes for various prescriptions. Like many other National Design Studio sites, it features a mix of Apple Store-style titles and text styling alongside gilt images of an American map and an eagle and bombastic language extolling Trump himself. In a first for NDS sites, it also features a site search to look up specific medications, each of which has their own page URL.
 IT Modernization
2/10/26
Source
The news site Nextgov reports that the National Design Studio’s new site realfood.gov is directing users directly to Elon Musk’s Grok AI product. After being contacted by reporters for comment, the link is instead labeled as “Ask AI” but stll points to the Grok site.
 IT Modernization
2/11/26
Source
The CIO Council launches a new version of its website cio.gov which has been redesigned by the National Design Studio. This site also includes a new design system, which outlines a new style for websites but it lacks instructions, standardized CSS tags or web components found in other design systems like the US Web Design System and it has poor scores for accessibility. Nevertheless, with this launch, the National Design Studio has rebuilt a site with dozens of pages and has also implemented a site search for the first time.
 IT Modernization
2/21/26
Source
In a tweet on his personal account on X, Edward Coristine claims that the source code for freedom.gov will be open-sourced for public review.
2/23/26
Source
An article on the National Design Studio in NextGov lists several people as associated with National Design Studio, including some names that hadn’t been mentioned previously.
 Braden Steffaniak, Caelin Sutch, Edward Coristine, Greg Hogan, Jaylee Adams, Joe Gebbia, Kaitlyn Koller, Nate Brown, Tai Groot, Tyler Kim
2/24/26
Source
In a tweet on his personal X account, National Design Studio member Tyler Kim confirms that the content on cio.gov was “almost entirely generated by our internal ai agent system [end-to-end].”
 IT Modernization
2/27/26
Source
Posting with the title of Director of Engineering, Edward Coristine publishes a blog post on the National Design Studio website about how NDS is elevating the importance of accessibility in its designs and citing its work on trumprx.gov specifically.
DOGE
USAID