Clear communications – for internal or public consumption – is at the heart of good government. Writing better content eliminates confusion, saves time and resources and delivers a better overall government experience. Department of Civic Things and ProudCity are proud to collaborate on new training to support local governments in plain language, both for online … Continued
It’s that time of year again – business license renewals. If your renewal cycle is based on the calendar year, you are probably sending out reminders to hundreds or thousands of business owners right now. There’s usually quite a bit of customer service involved in this program. Business owners often: Get confused about what they … Continued
We created a custom ChatGPT called Service Thing. It helps you write government services content that focuses on tasks and is easy to understand. Service Thing You can also use the guidance in our last post about using AI to help write content for a government service. Let us know if this helps you! We … Continued
Generative AI can create content based on patterns it has learned from existing data. A prompt for generative AI is a set of instructions that tells it what kind of content to create. This post explains the steps for preparing a generative AI prompt you can use to create draft government service content. An action … Continued
A government website often feels like a firehose of information. It’s overwhelming to read long paragraphs of text, especially on your phone. Content editors struggle to keep things up to date, especially when the same information appears on multiple pages. Structured content is a way to organize and present information in a way that makes … Continued
Generative AI (gen AI) is a useful tool that can help you write draft content for your government website. At this point in time, you can’t completely trust it to write perfect and accurate content. But using it can save you time. There are several free gen AI tools available. The most common ones are … Continued
Website content is one of the first things someone interacts with when learning about your government service. It should be part of your local government customer service strategy. A service helps someone do something and an action page is like digitally holding their hand through the process. The information in your service inventory is a … Continued
If your government website is like most, it has a lot of PDF documents. They outline steps to a process, answer frequently asked questions, provide checklists, list requirements. They are very common and they are a problem. Most PDFs are not accessible The best way to make a PDF accessible is to do so from … Continued
Plain language helps you convey complex information. Your readers understand and get what they need quickly, with fewer questions and less confusion. As a government, using plain language will help you improve your services, forms, and public information. Benefits of plain language: Helps people know what information means the first time they read it. Makes … Continued
