One NSW Design System implementation, many agencies

The client

NSW government agencies subject to the NSW Digital Design System (DDS) — among them independent commissions we host, including the Law Enforcement Conduct Commission and the NSW Crime Commission.

The challenge

The NSW Government introduced the DDS in 2019, and compliance is not one target. Non-exempt agencies use the master brand; others fall under Independent, Co-brand or Standalone, each with different obligations, and every government site must carry the prescribed elements — header, logo, footer. Independent commissions carry an extra tension: they need visible distance from the government of the day while still meeting the standard.

For a single agency that's a redesign. For a hosting partner with a fleet of client sites it means paying for the same work over and over, and watching every site drift apart again at the next revision of the standard.

The solution

We built the DDS once, as a shared implementation for Plone 6 and Volto, and open-sourced it as a Volto add-on — nsw-design-system-plone6 — with the matching backend package alongside it. A block-based editor maps closely onto a design system: components correspond to blocks, so the standard is enforced by what editors can place rather than left to each site's theme.

It covers the master brand and the other branding tiers, with the customisations an independent body needs — replacement logo, its own colour scheme, an acknowledgement-of-country footer — without departing from the standard.

LECC was the first to move, upgrading from Plone 5 with a custom theme to Plone 6 with Volto in 2022 and taking the design system as part of the platform upgrade. After that, sites came across as they reached their own upgrade points — often as a content conversion rather than a rebuild, because the implementation already existed.

The outcome

Agencies reach compliance as an upgrade rather than a redesign, and stay compliant as the standard moves, because the work happens once. Fixes and features needed along the way went upstream into Plone 6 itself, so the benefit is not confined to our clients.

What this involved

  • The NSW Design System built once as a Volto add-on for Plone 6, open-sourced, and applied across client sites rather than rebuilt per agency

  • Covers the master brand and the Independent, Co-brand and Standalone tiers, including the compulsory header, logo and footer

  • Design-system components map onto editor blocks, so the standard is enforced by what an editor can place

  • Plone 5 to Plone 6 with Volto for existing clients, taking the design system as part of the platform upgrade; fixes contributed upstream