The NSW Design System is a library of tools and standards that provides components and guidelines to help NSW Government teams – and anyone working on a public website – build consistent, accessible and user-friendly digital services.
A new addition to the system is a cookie consent component, enabling websites to better manage their cookie usage, meet privacy obligations and build trust through transparency. Importantly, it will inform website users about how their cookies are used.
“We’ve built the component to be flexible, accessible, and easy to integrate – because we know privacy shouldn’t come at the expense of user experience.”
- – Jim Carlton, Senior Front-end Software Engineer at Digital NSW
What are cookies?
Cookies are set directly by the website a user visits. They help store user preferences and information. On NSW Government websites, they are often essential for:
- keeping users logged into their accounts
- remembering accessibility or display settings
- enabling analytics to improve services
- storing selections in multi-step forms or applications.
Government organisations must be transparent about what data is being collected and why. This is driven by Australian Privacy Principles (APPs). That includes offering users clear notice and meaningful choices.
How privacy is built into the NSW Design System
Now live in the NSW Design System, the new cookie consent component provides all NSW Government teams a consistent, accessible and WCAG 2.2-compliant way to inform users and meet privacy standards.
The simple component helps teams embed privacy into service design from the outset.
“This component provides a consistent and accessible way to explain cookie use clearly. Its inclusion in the NSW Design System recognises that privacy compliance and best practice shouldn’t be bolted on – they should be built in.”
- – Digital NSW’s Jim Carlton
The cookie component is also configurable, allowing teams to adapt it to the complexity of their services while keeping implementation fast and accessible.
By standardising how cookie messaging and consent is handled across services, the NSW Design System:
- reduces the burden on delivery teams
- minimises legal and reputational risk
- ensures users see consistent, trustworthy patterns across NSW services.
The NSW Design System’s proactive approach ensures government teams are well prepared to manage evolving privacy expectations and embed responsible data practices in a user-friendly way as part of their delivery processes.
See the Cookie Consent component
Check out the cookie consent component in the NSW Design System.
To start the process of implementing cookie consents on your website, contact the Digital NSW Privacy Lead at digitalnswprivacy@customerservice.nsw.gov.au.