Organising and grouping content on GOV.UK

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Government Digital Service

October 25

13:43 2023

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All content on GOV.UK will eventually be grouped by what its about. Each group is called a topic.

Topics are organised in a hierarchical taxonomy. This means topics can have subtopics, those subtopics can have subtopics and so on. Topics get more specific the further down the hierarchy you go.

Education, training and skills is an example of a high level topic. Subtopics for this topic include:

Everything on GOV.UK needs to be categorised so that users can find content based on what its about. You must tag content to topics when creating or editing a document.

Find out how to tag content to topics.

You can request a new topic or suggest a change to an existing topic.

Read the taxonomy principles for guidance on how the taxonomy is designed and rules for naming topics.

Organising how to content

How to content tells the user how to use a government service, or gives them information on how to do a specific task. Examples of how to content formats are:

mainstream content (mainstream guides, quick answers, smart answers and transaction start pages)
publication (type: guidance)
publication (type: statutory guidance)
publication (type: form)
detailed guides

Mainstream browse pages

Mainstream browse pages group how to content thats aimed at the general public or a general business audience.

Examples of mainstream browse pages are:

Use the support form to ask GDS to add content to a mainstream browse page.

Document collections

Use document collections to group content items together if:

theres a genuine user need to view that set of content in one place
its a need that could not be met by one of the other formats (for example, a detailed guide)

To test whether something is a genuine user need, write it up as a user story. For example:

As an urban planner working for a local council, I want to view all road traffic accident statistics in one place so that I can easily compare accident rates over different time periods.

Then look at whether the evidence suggests that theres a genuine need.

Do not use a document collection:

to group parts of a single document - instead, put all the attachments on a single publication page
to guide users through a task - convert the documents into a detailed guide instead
to group long complex documents that specialist users need to do their job - think about using a manual instead

Talk to your department or agencys managing editor before creating a new document collection.

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