Planning, reviewing and archiving your content

Create content when it:

• helps customers exercise their rights and responsibilities
• teaches about a policy, program, scheme or initiative
• is a legislative or regulatory requirement, or a judicial recommendation
• is in the public interest (GIPA, transparency, accountability, openness)
• fulfils a customer need, evidenced by search queries, feedback from frontline staff, customer research and journey mapping, gaps in compliance
• supports a government service
• lets customers ‘tell us once’
• helps customers to contact the right part of government
• is owned by the NSW Government and not reproduced elsewhere
• is in an accessible format
• is easy for your team to maintain
• is evidence of the NSW Government's authority and a source of truth.

See how to write content.

Review content for:

• purpose – does it have a reason to exist?
• customer-focus – does it meet the customer’s needs and achieve a good customer outcome?
• level of detail – is it the right amount or can it be condensed?
• relevance – is it appropriate?
• currency – is it out of date?
• accuracy – is it factually correct?
• accessibility – does it work for everyone?
• readability – is it in plain English, at a reading level appropriate for the audience and written in active voice?
• links – are they working and appropriate?
• SEO – is the content search engine-friendly or can it be improved?
• potential retirement – is it time to archive the content?

Archive content when it:

• is outdated, inaccurate, redundant or irrelevant and there is no evidence for retaining it
• risks misinforming users or creating a legal issue (for example, outdated licence or lease application form)
• is not authored or commissioned by the NSW Government and is duplicated elsewhere (for example, an Australian Government report)
• has been superseded due to legislative or regulatory change, or a new format
• infringes copyright (for example, it contains editorial images where licence has expired)
• is identified by the retention schedule as appropriate for retirement (for example, news article more than 4 years old)
• isn't cost-effective to maintain
• contains private or sensitive information and explicit consent was not granted to publish the information (for example, old submissions)
• is defamatory, offensive or no longer appropriate
• is primarily for internal use and should be moved to an intranet or knowledge management system.