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Prepare for transition

Talk to the Government Digital Service (GDS) before you start your transition project. You can either:

• use the GOV.UK content advice and help form if you have a Signon account
• email govuk-enquiries@digital.cabinet-office.gov.uk

GDS will help you understand whether your content meets the GOV.UK proposition. They can also help you with any questions about transition.

Get internal approval

You can ask GDS for a business case template for transition. This will help you show the benefits of transition, including cost savings.

Prepare your team

If you need new staff to work on transition, you can ask GDS for templates to help you advertise on the Digital Marketplace. The templates are for recruiting content designers, delivery managers or a full transition team.

Youll need to arrange training and request publisher accounts for anyone who does not already publish on GOV.UK. You cannot publish content on GOV.UK without this training.

Contact The National Archives

Youll need to ask The National Archives to make a final copy of your website. This copy will remain on the UK Government Web Archive.

Email The National Archives to start this process. You need to ask them to record a copy of your old website 4 weeks before you intend to close it.

Decide how to redirect your content

Start planning how youll redirect your old content to your new or archived content. You may be able to use the GOV.UK transition tool or set up redirects on your own server. Talk to GDS at least 2 weeks before you need the site to be redirected to agree the best way to do this.

Get a copy of your URLs

Create a list of all the URLs on your website that are being archived, including URLs of attachments such as PDFs and any short URLs. This will help you set up redirects later, and will also help you audit your content.

Audit your content

Before you start creating content for GOV.UK, you need to understand how your existing content is used.

Auditing your content includes things like investigating which content is:

• the most used or has highest impact
• out of date
• duplicating content already on GOV.UK or elsewhere

The audit can help you decide what to publish on GOV.UK and help you prioritise your content. You can use the audit later when youre validating your user needs.

You can audit your content using:

• data from Google Analytics
• user research (either doing new user research or looking at recent research)
• other customer insights like call centre data or forums

Define your users and their needs

GOV.UK puts user needs first. Every piece of published content should meet a need that the public or businesses have of government.

Find out how to identify and write user needs.

One way you can identify, define and prioritise your user needs is to run a user needs workshop with your subject matter experts. Youll need people who understand the content and its users to take part in the workshop.

Use the data, user research and other findings from your audit to check the user needs are not just your own assumptions.

Youll use your user needs to help you write and structure content on GOV.UK.

Plan your content

Check if theres content already on GOV.UK that meets the user needs youve identified. This could be content published by another government organisation.

If you need to publish new content on GOV.UK, use a content plan to help you keep track of what youll publish and in which content format.

The content plan can show things like:

• which content is relevant to the user needs you identified
• which content you will not publish on GOV.UK, based on your audit and user needs
• if there are gaps in the content because all or part of a valid user need is not being met yet

Youll also need to consider the GOV.UK formats youll use and who will manage the content.

GOV.UK content is managed in different ways. Youll be able to publish things like corporate information, news stories, specialist guidance and policy papers yourself through Whitehall publisher. See the full list of Whitehall content formats.

Some of your guidance content might need to be published as mainstream guidance. This is written and maintained by the GDS content team.

Ask GDS for content advice if youre not sure which format to use, or you think you need new or amended mainstream content.

If you have a user need that cannot be met on GOV.UK, you might have to explore other options, for example a marketing campaign or publishing data on data.gov.uk.

Set up an organisation homepage

Ask GDS for an organisation page if you are not already on the list of government departments, agencies and public bodies.

You cannot create or publish any content without an organisation page, so request this early in the project.GDS will create the page. Youll need to edit and add content to the organisation page.

You can request a short URL for your organisation page.

Write and publish content on GOV.UK

When youre writing the content, use the:

• guidance on planning, writing and managing content
• style guide

You can get help and advice about writing for GOV.UK.

Find out how to get content reviewed, approved and published in Whitehall publisher.

You can schedule content to go live at a certain date and time.

Set up redirects from your old content

You must set up redirects from your old website to the new content.

You can use the GOV.UK transition tool or set up redirects on your own server. Talk to GDS at least 2 weeks before you need the site to be redirected and agree the best way to do this.

If youre using the GOV.UK transition tool

A GDS develope

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