Content audit and pre-election planning at DfE

The challenge

Scroll was brought in to assist the Department for Education's Digital Communications Team (DCT) with an audit of around 10,000 GOV.UK pages. This was to support the team to review and identify content needing attention and to plan for the changes that would happen across all GOV.UK content if there was a change in government. This central process is referred to as history mode.

Initial planning

The audit required a content designer with Whitehall Publisher experience to:

• immerse themselves into the digital communications team and understand all its workflows and processes

• review Whitehall Publisher data since 2015

• connect with the Government Digital Service (GDS) to understand its processes if there was a change in government

• review all communications about history mode from previous implementations

What they say about working with Scroll

“Scroll was instrumental in enabling DfE to complete high-profile and time sensitive work around GOV.UK ‘history mode’ during a period of sustained volumes within the digital communications team. They brought considerable expertise to the project and will leave a legacy beyond this activity on how we approach content auditing in the future.”

Indira Pereira-Lopes, Digital Communications Team Leader, DfE

Detailed general election planning

Once the election was called, all departments were asked by GDS to plan for history mode. The audit work already underway meant that DfE was ahead of the game with this. The Scroll content designer continued with a detailed review of:

• over 1,000 policy papers, detailed guides and guidance pages, collections and promotional material

• over 1,500 PDFs and other format documents

She worked closely with a lead content designer in DCT to plan the specific changes needed for around 100 pages and documents. This also highlighted areas where pages needed to change regardless of the outcome of the election. 

Using Whitehall Publisher managing editor expertise, the Scroll content designer worked within DfE’s process to practically put these in place where possible. In addition, she presented to a cross-DfE senior delivery board on the pre-election planning work and potential changes.

After the change in government

Once aware of the change in government, the Scroll content designer continued to:

• practically change content

• provide support to team members changing content they had been allocated

• give consultancy and advice to support other history mode changes that needed to be made