We’ve published a content policy. This is the first time we’ve done that since UK Parliament was established in 1801. Was there a lot of digital content back then? I can’t say, but there was a content lobby…
The word ‘content’ is everywhere today, because it can be used to describe so many things. And that was the first challenge we had in putting together our policy.
Parliament publishes a lot of content. Some of it is pretty unique, like Hansard, the formal record of (almost) every word that’s spoken in the House of Commons and House of Lords. Or written evidence, which is submitted to Parliament’s committees by people or organisations outside of Parliament. Then there’s the kind of procedural content that’s been written a certain way for hundreds of years, or legislation that includes Norman French, par exemple.
The focus of our content policy is on what I call ‘editorial content’. That’s content created by editors and teams in Parliament, for websites like Parliament.uk, MP's Guide to Procedure or even this PDS blog. We could get into a lot more detail about how we create content for our different websites, but today we’re discussing overall principles, and the key point is that wherever and however we create and publish content, we want to meet the principles of the content policy.
Those principles do not mark a significant change in approach for us. The focus on clear and accessible content for our users remains the same. I will not try to summarise the content policy here because you can get that from the policy itself. I instead want to share a little about why we’ve published one.
It’s about showing our intent. It’s about making a clear statement that Parliament is an inclusive organisation that cares about accessibility. And in doing that, we’re holding ourselves to account, both within our organisation and publicly, for the digital content we produce.
So we’ve worked with teams all over Parliament to make sure the content policy lines up with our wider approach to things like our Inclusion and Diversity Strategy and our approach to transforming digital in Parliament. And we’ve been thinking about how we can create a mindset of clear and accessible content across the organisation, too.
We have editors all over Parliament who get training and support to manage the content they’re responsible for. They know that Parliament has an obligation to meet certain content standards, to help the public understand and engage with subjects that impact their lives.
But our editors are not always the people who write the original information. They may well be given something that’s already been agreed to be published by someone else.
So it’s important that we build an understanding of our standards and approach across the organisation. And this content policy is part of that. That’s not just my view. Simon Burton, Clerk of the Parliaments and Chair of Parliament’s Information & Digital Board, said: “Making sure that the information we provide online is clear, accessible, findable, impartial, consistent and meets the needs of all our users is an important priority for Parliament, and I warmly welcome the launch of this new policy, which places these principles at the heart of how we create and publish our digital information.”
It’s high-level, so you won’t see much about the inner workings, but we’re doing plenty of things to support it, and help it have the impact we want it to have. From governance work and reviewing and improving our training offer to looking at the tools and support we can offer editors and their teams to meet these principles.
We want to enable teams across Parliament to meet their objectives, and the needs of their users. Offering the public clear, and accessible content that does not exclude anyone. That’s what Parliament’s first content policy is all about.