We’re a group of content designers and strategists and we help Parliament's experts design content that meets the needs of our users. Our job is to help subject matter experts across Parliament create and promote content for the website and our social media channels.
Headed up by Carrie Barclay, the team work closely with different business areas in Parliament to make the most of content on parliament.uk. We're also getting a head start on content for the new website, with a senior content designer embedded in the team that's working on it.
Our team includes specialists who design and edit content, offer advice and training, run social media campaigns, manage and engage with online communities and produce audio visual content. We're growing and are recruiting for content designers.
What the content team does
We're working to make every piece of content better by:
- reviewing and restructuring content on parliament.uk, ready for the launch of the new site
- offering guidance and training that helps teams across Parliament to create high quality content
- producing films and audio that highlight the work of Parliament, its history and its people
- working with bloggers across the organisation to share stories from inside Parliament
- growing Parliament's social networks and online communities
- using data to make sense of what works, what doesn’t and what needs to change
With more than 2 million pieces of content on parliament.uk and over 1.5 million followers on social media, the team has a long to-do list.
What's coming up for us
With such diverse audiences, there’s a lot of subject areas to cover. Everything from how to find your MP and what's going on in the chamber to which political figures have been satirised in Vanity Fair. To help us plan our work we’ve got a roadmap of priorities for the next 3 months, focusing on:
- making Parliament an accurate and up-to-date source of information
- data that shows the content that could make the biggest difference for a greater number of users
- high stakeholder demand in Parliament for creating good content
Highlights from our roadmap include:
A content audit
We’re auditing parliament.uk to make content simpler and reduce duplication, ready for the new website.
Producing guidance
We're working on a PDS style guide and a guide to writing for the web. Initially written for the House of Commons Library, we’ll make these available for everyone in Parliament.
Brexit content
We're reviewing the pages that have Brexit information by doing discovery work with other teams in Parliament. We'll research if there's a need for a hub for all of Parliament's Brexit content.
Improving Parliament's intranet
We want to improve the intranet and meet the needs of its users. We’re starting with an audit and updates for the library and education teams.
Introducing podcasts
We’ll be trialling regular podcasts from the data and search team and if this medium can help tell compelling stories about Parliament and data.
Expert training
We’re offering pair writing, plain English and advanced search engine optimisation (SEO) training to the wider content community in Parliament. Our work growing a content community is at an early stage. Our aim is to bring together content producers, editors and publishers from across Parliament for networking and development.
We'll blog in more detail about these projects, and others, as they progress.
What we don't do
The currency of the content team is words, pictures, engagement, advice and ideas.
This means we’re not a web support service, web developers or problem managers. We can't help with login details, technical issues, or development requests for parliament.uk.
If you work for Parliament and need help with any of these things, check the intranet for the correct contacts.
Get in touch
We're a team of experts in our field, but we don't claim to be experts in all areas of Parliament's work. Creating world-class content for a world-class institution like Parliament is a collaborative process. If you'd like to work with us to make your team's content better then get in touch.
If you're interested in working with us then take a look at our current job vacancies. Find out more about what it's like working at PDS.