Scaling Digital Governance for 3 Million Citizens (Obelisco Design System)
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The Challenge
From fragmentation to a unified ecosystem.
The Government had over 50 disconnected websites, creating a fractured experience for citizens and high maintenance costs. The challenge wasn't just visual; it was operational. We needed to convince decentralized teams to abandon their custom processes and adopt a shared standard.
My Role: I led the strategy and governance definition. My focus was orchestrating the adoption across political areas and defining the workflows that allowed design and dev teams to ship accessible services 40% faster.
Outcomes
Cultural Transformation Transitioned the organization from "siloed" work to a collaborative, open-source culture.
Operational Efficiency Reduced "time-to-market" for public services by providing pre-validated components to dev teams.
Standardization at Scale Achieved consistency across 15+ concurrent digital products used by 3 million citizens.
Launched the first version of Obelisco (publicly available on GitHub):
https://gcba.github.io/estandares/
Our Approach
We designed and delivered two hands-on workshops focused on purpose-driven project development:
Formed a dedicated design system cell within the team
Mapped recurring issues in existing digital products
Defined principles, components, and documentation
Created a workflow that integrated internal and external teams
Key Learnings
A fully dedicated team is essential to build and maintain a design system
Having a clear capsule (narrative + assets) helps attract allies and scale adoption
Being tech-agnostic improves flexibility and team diversity
Who This Is For
Public digital transformation leaders
Organizations scaling design systems
Civic tech consultants and cross-functional design ops teams
Ready to scale your design operations without the chaos? Let's talk.