The CivicTheme product team assesses community contributions following a thorough review process. There are several ways you can contribute:

  • Design contributions
  • Code contributions
  • User research contributions
  • Documentation contributions

All contributions and community engagement must adhere to our code of conduct(Opens in a new tab/window) and licensing policies.

Design contributions

The CivicTheme project includes open source designs(Opens in a new tab/window). It’s freely available to use and be modified by the wider community. Everyone can contribute back to the CivicTheme design system, including you.

Changes to the core designs, including any community contributions in Figma, will follow a workflow to be added to the core build for future releases.

Read more about How to contribute(Opens in a new tab/window) in the CivicTheme Figma file.

Code contributions

CivicTheme is an open source project with the full codebase available for developers to use as ready-to-use Drupal(Opens in a new tab/window) and GovCMS(Opens in a new tab/window) frontend themes. Alternatively, you can use the UI Kit component library(Opens in a new tab/window), which has a wide range of components designed, developed and user-tested with many use cases in mind.

Code contributions can be bug fixes, improvements or new features. CivicTheme primarily uses the standard GitHub process to manage the code and accept contributions. Drupal theme issues are handled on Drupal.org to help better manage Drupal contribution credit(Opens in a new tab/window).

As new implementations are built, contributions to those codebases will be welcome as well. Follow our CivicTheme GitHub organisation(Opens in a new tab/window) to track new repos.

For more information about code contributions such as suggesting new features and reporting issues, see the CivicTheme Contributing(Opens in a new tab/window) docs.

User research contributions

CivicTheme was inspired by the former Australian Government Design System (AGDS), then uplifted with new features and functionality informed by current users’ needs.

As custodians of CivicTheme, Salsa Digital identified the need to integrate user research evidence for all components and patterns. As such, we're currently in the process of working towards the following outcomes: 

  • A framework that is publicly accessible and open to public feedback.
  • A well-defined data and evidence schema.
  • A public repository for all evidence and process documentation, including guides on contributing to user research or proposing component changes.
  • Playbooks to assist contributors in how to conduct user research, detailing recruitment, research methods, data capture, synthesis, reporting insights, and how these insights inform design decisions.
  • A closed loop coupled with every CivicTheme release, where the repository is updated to reflect evidence supporting newly released features.

Documentation contributions

Documentation(Opens in a new tab/window) is an important part of the CivicTheme project. We welcome fixes, improvements and additions to our docs.

CivicTheme uses the standard GitHub process to manage documentation and accept contributions.

Documentation GitHub repository(Opens in a new tab/window) for issues and PRs.

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