Far West Local Health District joins nsw.gov.au

The Far West Local Health District (FWLHD) is the most remote local health district in the NSW health system. Their network of hospitals and community health services provide for the residents of the most sparsely populated regions of NSW.

FWLHD work to provide the best available healthcare to the communities they serve. This aim was reflected in their recent work with the OneCX program team. They worked together to review, refine and migrate content, to build a new web presence on nsw.gov.au which meets the needs of their remote populations.

What was the approach?

FWLHD was the first NSW Health agency to migrate to the nsw.gov.au platform. The migration goal was to improve the digital experience of their customers by ensuring they can access trusted, accurate and timely health information.

The migration also sought to provide a stable and future ready platform which is easy for FWLHD staff to manage and update their content, themselves.

The Strategic Communications and Engagement team from the Ministry of Health joined the content review and migration project work. This was to ensure an early and co-ordinated approach to the Health cluster's broader migration. The three teams worked collaboratively to:

• Assess how well content met NSW Health and OneCX program readability score requirements.
• Assess opportunities to remove duplication by integrating with existing content on nsw.gov.au.
• Prioritise page structure, content and design improvements.

A complete audit of existing content informed our migration plans. Over 98 pages were audited for either migration, consolidation, uplift or removal. 

Working closely with subject matter experts from FWLHD, the audit revealed several opportunities to reduce complexity, simplify content and remove duplication. 
 

What was improved?

FWLHD’s new site structure and design focuses on ensuring the local community have easy access to trusted, accurate and timely health information. It provides easier navigation and direct access to key contact details for their health services and facilities. 

New Information Architecture (IA) was established for better navigation, making it easier for customers to find and understand information. As a result of the content audit, 60 pages were removed, and 38 new pages created. Of these, a new patients and carers page was developed to directly support customers during their time of need - the first of its kind for FWLHD, thanks to the customer-centric focus of the migration with the OneCX program.

A number of key improvements to the customer’s digital experience include: 

• A fast and clearer path to access key information and contact details quickly
• Clearer listings for services and facilities in the district, including directions and contact details. 
• A new search and filter feature for news within FWLHD. 
• An updated design, consistent with NSW visual identity system. This increases customers’ trust in the information source and avoids the need to relearn how to use separate NSW Government websites.
• Optimised for mobile devices, providing better access for a wider range of people in the community, at home or on the go. 
• Site accessibility score improved from 68.3% to 92.9%
• Digital certainty index score improved from 65.4% to 94.2%

In addition, the migration to nsw.gov.au and the Drupal content management system (CMS) delivered enhanced functionality, search optimisation, metadata tagging and access to analytics. The analytics insights will help to inform future updates and ensure continuous improvement of the customer experience. 

Capability uplift is another key focus of the OneCX program. Content management system training is provided to agencies and ongoing support is provided via an on-demand learning platform and the nsw.gov.au content editor support desk.

Lessons learnt

As further LHD’s join the OneCX program, they will benefit from the learnings of this first Health website migration.

A similar content structure is now being utilised for Nepean Blue Mountains LHD web content, who are the second LHD to join the OneCX program. It is not only the content structure that LHD’s can benefit from, it is improved ways of working to ensure a positive outcome.

The key insights for a successful migration, that will prove invaluable for future migrations:

• Map out your content stakeholders early on, so you can gather valuable input from the right people. There’s a lot of content to review and refine and some of it is very specialised, so it’s important to engage the right people early, and regularly.
• Invest the time to work together. Frequent communication and regular feedback from the team members across the three teams, was key. This meant we could work together more effectively and had a shared understanding of where the work was up to, and where it might get stuck.
• Adapt as you go. Together, we discovered challenges and came up with new solutions as we progressed through the migration. It sometimes meant we took extra time to solve a problem, though being open, flexible and adapting our plans meant we ended up with better, customer focussed solutions.

Check out the content guidance pages on the OneCX program hub for more information on how you can start thinking about your content, prior to migration.

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