Category: Ideas

Plain language writing is a skill, and most governments don’t do it well

Information on your government website is the foundation of your customer service. If it’s easy to understand and accurate, you’ll save time and build trust. Government website projects typically focus on a new content management system and a new design. Content is often an afterthought. Departments are usually left on their own to manage the … Continued

Small cities deserve great websites too

You don’t need a big budget or a lot of staff to make a great website. When I started Department of Civic Things, I knew I wanted to work with small cities. About 85% of towns in America have fewer than 25,000 residents, and 76% have fewer than 5,000. With tiny budgets and few staff, … Continued

Beginner’s guide to managing a government website project

Your website is the foundation of your digital government services and customer service. A helpful website that works well will increase public confidence and trust in government. In this guide, we’ll help you make the best local government website. We’ll provide a comprehensive rundown of a City website project, including: Why it’s important How to … Continued

6 tips to make your government website project a success

Your website is the foundation of your government’s services and customer service. A good website makes it easy for people to get things done and this increases public trust in your organization. In this post, we’ll provide 6 tips for government website projects and why they are critical for your project’s success. 1. Help people … Continued

How to understand and calculate government form burden

Most people interact with your government through forms. Sometimes a form is short and simple. Some forms can feel long, complex, and stressful. A lot of time is spent filling out forms and processing them. The main reasons forms take a long time to complete are figuring out what questions are asking for and tracking … Continued

How to write business license renewal website content

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

Try our custom ChatGPT to write government services content

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

How to use AI to write content for a government service

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

What is structured content (and why it’s important)

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

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