Overview
Scope
The scope of this content strategy is all of the content that is published across the council’s digital estate, including the core essex.gov.uk website, the intranet, and microsites operated by the council.
Content in this context refers to everything we produce to convey information, including:
- long and short form web copy
- PDFs and other documents
- infographics and videos
The strategy does not cover:
- tone of voice
- language choices
- the practices we use when writing or designing content
All of our content should follow the council’s brand language guidelines and house style guide, as well as our online content standards and GDS content guidelines.
The work of the council covers an extremely diverse range of services, user groups and content types. It is not the intention of this strategy to mandate in detail a single approach which must be followed to the letter regardless of context. Rather, it looks to establish a set of principles which can serve as a flexible framework for both day-to-day and more strategic decision-making.
Context
The council’s main essex.gov.uk website was developed and launched in 2018. It delivered a significant improvement in user experience, establishing a foundation of well-designed and maintained content. It is maintained by a core team with specialist skills.
However, content is created, published and managed in multiple different places across the organisation. In addition to its main website, the council has over 60 websites which have an inconsistent approach to technology for publishing platforms.
There is no single set of content standards which define best practice for the publishing and management of content across the entire digital estate. This leads to unclear governance and accountability and an inconsistent user experience.
Inconsistent, poor quality or out-of-date content undermines the trust of users and makes it less likely they will accomplish their goals. Creating and maintaining good quality content is time-consuming and resource-intensive and has an opportunity cost.
The Council is moving its web publishing technology to LocalGov Drupal. So far this work has included the migration of essex.gov.uk and the Intranet. We have also migrated some other legacy microsites (e.g., SEND Local Offer, Infolink). One of the benefits of replatforming is that it will enable future opportunities to provide a viable alternative for many of the existing microsites on the council’s digital estate.
This work will involve many decisions about content being made in a relatively short timeframe. These decisions will have considerable implications for how content is published and managed across the council in the future.
Aims
The overarching aim of this content strategy is to help everyone at the council who is making decisions about content make the best decisions they can for our users and for the council.
Making good content decisions means making sure that the content we are producing is as effective, efficient, consistent and measurable as it can be.
Read about good content decisions.
Principles
These principles should guide all decisions about content. They are universally applicable to all of our online content and will guide decision-making about roles and responsibilities in our operating model through the replatforming work.
Proposition
This proposition statement sets out what kinds of content we do publish and what we don’t. It is based on the GOV.UK proposition.
This proposition statement has been produced with our main essex.gov.uk website in mind. To be useful it needs to be detailed, and the detail means that it won’t be applicable for every site and service.
Having a clear content proposition is an important part of getting set up to manage content well and make effective decisions. Whenever a new site or instance of content is being created, the default position should be that this content proposition will apply. If it does not, then exceptions to this proposition should be discussed and documented.