President names the Airbnb co-founder as the country's first Chief Design Officer.

We have a Chief Design Officer now. The country does. The first one. He’s a co-founder of Airbnb. The President signed an executive order on Thursday creating the position and creating, alongside it, the National Design Studio.

The mission, per the order: to “improve experiences for Americans, starting by breathing new life into the design of sites where people interface with their government.”

Hon. Look. The federal websites are bad. They have always been bad. USAJOBS dot gov has the same UI today as it did when George W. Bush was on the way out, and it loads like it’s running on a server in a basement. Anybody who has ever filed for unemployment benefits or applied for a passport on a Tuesday knows the word “unintuitive” and has used it. That part isn’t wrong.

What’s funny is the framing. We did not get an executive order creating a Chief Plumber, even though half of America’s water mains were laid in 1923 and the EPA estimates we lose six billion gallons a day to leaks. We did not get a Chief Carpenter, although we have a housing crisis. We did not get a Chief Electrician. We got a Chief Design Officer. Specifically a guy from a tech company that helps people rent each other’s spare bedrooms. Reporting to the White House Chief of Staff. With a budget for “innovative solutions.”

The federal forms could absolutely use a better designer. So could the federal forms in 2014. So could the federal forms in 2002. The fix is not a new C-suite title. The fix is hiring people. They are sitting in design firms in Brooklyn waiting for somebody to call. Many of them have been waiting since the Obama Digital Service was gutted.

But that wouldn’t come with an executive order signing ceremony. And the executive order signing ceremony is the actual product.

You ever notice how the most expensive part of a bad federal website is announcing the redesign.

That ought to concern you.