What I've learned from working with local government on their content

Working with local government and public sector teams on their content is challenging. Some challenges relate to the content operations – the people, processes and technology involved in creating, delivering and managing content. Other challenges are present because content is political within the organisation. That is, there are conflicting priorities or agendas, a lack of ownership, or too much ownership, and a shared belief that the team or organisation is ‘designing for everyone.’

In this article I’ll share some of the lessons I’ve learned, some of the challenges I’ve faced and some of the patterns present when I’ve worked with the local government and public sector.

Everyone claims to know what users want. Policy makers, subject matter experts (SMEs), and senior stakeholders can all have strong opinions about user priorities. But often almost no one has actually asked the users. The other end of this spectrum is that these key decision makers show little or no interest in the user's needs. Both are problematic.

This isn't through lack of caring. Teams are stretched, with subject matter experts juggling work alongside content responsibilities they never signed up for. User research needs budget, time and buy-in and all of these can be scarce in the public sector.

So assumptions become "facts" through repetition:

• "Our users prefer detailed information" (even when analytics show massive drop-offs)
• "People understand basic governmental terms" (they don't)
• "Users know which department handles their issue" (they really don't)

Without formal research, you need to get creative by digging into call centre data, analysing search terms and testing with colleagues' relatives! Not perfect, but any insight is better than no insight and I’ve witnessed time and again how people do whatever research they can just to get some sort of evidence to support their work. Any effort made to validate thinking should be commended.

Telling someone they don’t know the user when they truly believe they do is not easy. This is why data and evidence can support that conversation and keep the chat focused on the people who the content is being created for. Keeping it focused on the user and not the individual needs of a stakeholder is necessary for the right and the best outcome.

This way of thinking has led to many awkward meetings or conversations. I’ve heard first-hand how so many teams and departments think their users are unique. Of course, there are some instances where that may be true. But broadly speaking across the public sector there aren’t as many unique circumstances, users and services that the owners and SMEs would like you to believe.

This creates chaos. A small business owner might encounter:

• Formal, jargon-heavy content when applying for tax schemes
• Conversational, simplified content when seeking grants
• Something in between when checking employment regulations
• Technical specifications for health and safety compliance
• Chatty FAQs for business support services
• Dense legal text for licensing applications

Each department maintains they're serving users correctly. The user experiences confusion and loses confidence. They start wondering if they're on the right website, if they've misunderstood something, if the friendly-toned grant application is less "official" than the formal tax one.

These circumstances are partly due to silos running deep. Teams barely know other departments exist, let alone what content they're creating or how they're creating it.

Observations I’ve made from the public sector on more than one occasion include:

• Different content management systems that can't talk to each other
• Different style guides (if they exist at all – often it's just "how we've always done it")
• Different approval processes – two days here, two months there
• Different definitions of "plain English" – one team's "simple" is another team's "dumbed down"
• Different update cycles – some content reviewed annually, some never
• Different interpretations of accessibility requirements
• Different views on how much context users need

Each silo develops its own culture. The tax team believes users want every detail upfront. The digital team thinks users want tasks completed quickly. The legal team insists on precision over clarity. The communications team wants positive messaging. They're all designing for the same person, but that person has to somehow adapt to each department's version of "good" content.

Government content exists in constant tension. Ministers want policy wins, citizens want to access services and these goals aren't always compatible.

The users who need the most help are sometimes the least visible. They're digitally excluded, linguistically diverse, cognitively overwhelmed and having to navigate systems that weren't designed for them.

Meanwhile, the loudest voices rarely represent typical users:

• Stakeholders push for edge cases they're familiar with
• Policy makers want every nuance captured
• Legal teams add caveats that protect the organisation but confuse readers

Making the case for these audiences means constantly explaining why some users can't just "phone if they're confused". Advocating for the users requires constant vigilance. It means pushing back on requests for "just one more paragraph" that serves internal needs rather than user needs. It means pushing for simplicity in rooms full of people who equate complexity with thoroughness. This is hard, it takes time and perseverance.

It’s also important to show empathy. People across the public sector often do care, but content may not be their job or expertise. They often do what they think is right even if it isn’t. I’ve always found good listening, honest feedback and clear direction to help everyone involved. There should be no judgment.

"Just get the policy team to write it" sounds efficient until you see the output. When you've worked in tax for fifteen years, "capital allowances" feels like everyday language. Experts can't remember not understanding their field.

The language gap is huge:

• Experts say "eligibility criteria" → Users ask "can I apply?"
• Experts explain "assessment processes" → Users want "how long will it take?"
• Experts detail "statutory obligations" → Users need "what happens if I don't?"

Translation isn't just simplifying language. It means a fundamental change in perspective. What the expert thinks is important and what the user actually needs to know are rarely the same thing. It means being comfortable with leaving out details that experts consider crucial but users find overwhelming. It means accepting that perfect technical accuracy might need to be sacrificed for actual understanding.

Centralised publishing promises consistency but delivers rigidity. Every piece must fit the same template, follow the same process, meet the same standards. This works if users genuinely have identical needs – but while departments often wrongly assume their users are completely unique, the reality is that different user groups do have genuinely different requirements that can't all be served identically.

A centralised model might dictate that all content must be written at a specific reading level. But what about necessarily complex financial guidance for businesses versus simplified benefits information for vulnerable adults? The template that works for passport applications fails for tax self-assessment.

Decentralised publishing offers flexibility but creates chaos. Each department publishes independently. Users don't care about departmental boundaries, they just know every government service feels completely different.

The silos become the user's problem (again):

• Information scattered across multiple websites
• Similar services with different names
• Navigation reflecting organisation charts, not user needs
• Multiple systems, logins, processes for one entity: government

Neither model serves diverse audiences. Yet the publishing model often becomes sacred, defended more vigorously than user needs. I’ve seen it many times where the people involved in content know that their process isn’t the most efficient but they still favour the path of least resistance. They find comfort in the familiar and that can take a lot of convincing to change.

The answer isn't choosing one publishing model over the other but acknowledging that organisational convenience shouldn't trump user experience.

Government content must meet a lot of criteria:

• Accessibility standards
• Plain English requirements
• Legal accuracy
• Welsh language provisions
• Ministerial preferences
• Brand guidelines
• SEO considerations
• Reading age targets
• Political neutrality

Each requirement makes sense alone. Together, they create overwhelm. Content teams spend more time checking boxes than understanding users.

I've seen critical guidance stuck in approval for months while teams debated whether one phrase might possibly be misinterpreted by a tiny edge case. Meanwhile, thousands of users struggled without any guidance at all.

Finding the courage to prioritise some users over others feels wrong in government. Surely public services should serve everyone equally? But pretending all needs can be met simultaneously leads to content that helps no one effectively. Sometimes serving users well means accepting that you can't serve every possible user perfectly.

Content without clear ownership becomes content without advocacy. Orphaned content sits on websites, gradually becoming outdated, inaccurate and then irrelevant. No one updates it because no one owns it. No one removes it because someone might need it. No one knows if anyone uses it because no one's checking.

This creates user experience black holes:

• Critical information exists somewhere but no one knows where
• Different departments publish contradictory advice
• Users fall through gaps between departmental remits

When everyone's supposed to care about users, often no one actually does. It's always someone else's job to check if content works. Another team's responsibility to update. A different department's problem if users complain.

Building accountability for user outcomes, not just content production, requires fundamental shifts. It means someone needs to own not just the content but the user needs that it serves. Someone needs to be responsible for whether users can actually do what they need to do, not just whether content technically exists about it.

Approval processes prioritise internal comfort over user needs. Seven rounds of review ensure no stakeholder is surprised but guarantee content is outdated before publication.

Bottlenecks keep critical user information outdated. A simple content update – changing a phone number, updating a deadline, clarifying a confusing sentence – can take weeks. Not because the change is complex, but because the process is. Meanwhile, users work with wrong information, make preventable mistakes and miss important deadlines.

The human cost is invisible to those maintaining these processes. They don't see:

• The anxiety of someone unsure if they've applied correctly
• The frustration of calling dead phone numbers
• The consequences of missing deadlines because information was wrong
• Hours wasted trying to understand unnecessarily complex guidance

Process should enable good content, not prevent it. But when workflows are designed to minimise organisational risk rather than user struggle, the process becomes the problem.

Working with government audiences teaches you that "everyone" isn't an audience – it's an excuse for not making hard decisions. But it also builds skills you can't develop anywhere else.

You learn to:

• Advocate for users who can't advocate for themselves
• Evidence user needs without formal research
• Translate between expert knowledge and user understanding
• Navigate organisational dysfunction while keeping users central

These constraints make you better. When you've designed for every possible accessibility need, commercial projects feel manageable. When you've simplified tax legislation, explaining products becomes straightforward.

The government content designer's secret weapon is perspective. We've seen what happens when organisations assume they know their users. We've witnessed content without ownership. We've experienced the paralysis of trying to serve everyone.

Taking these lessons elsewhere is revealing. Organisations are confident their audiences are defined, their needs understood. Then you ask the questions learned in government: How do you know? Who decided? When did you last check? Who's responsible if users fail?

I’ve learnt plenty working with so many different teams but so much of it comes back to understanding that user needs are never as simple as stakeholders think, never as complex as experts assume and never as uniform as organisations hope.