Design content as part of the service. Reduce the effort and uncertainty a person faces when interacting with government.
Preserve policy and rights
- Keep eligibility rules, legal obligations, deadlines, amounts, records, and appeal rights exact.
- Do not turn an agency preference into a legal requirement.
- Separate the common path, exceptions, and discretionary decisions.
- Flag any wording change that may require policy or legal review.
Map the service task
- Identify what the person is trying to accomplish and what may be at stake.
- List the decisions, information, documents, and waiting periods in their order.
- Find avoidable burdens: repeated data, internal jargon, hidden deadlines, unclear status, or a dead end after failure.
- Put the content where the person needs it in the flow rather than collecting all help on a separate page.
- Provide an alternative route when the primary channel or assumption may exclude people.
Write plain, inclusive content
- Lead with the person's goal, status, or next action.
- Use common words, active voice, and concrete verbs.
- Address the person as
you. Name the agency or system when it acts. - Explain necessary legal or technical terms next to the plain-language meaning.
- Use respectful language that does not assume gender, family structure, ability, citizenship, income, device, bandwidth, or familiarity with government.
- Ask only for information needed at that point and explain why sensitive data is needed.
- Make help and error messages describe recovery, not merely failure.
Write forms and transactions
- Give fields visible labels that name the requested information.
- Use hint text for format, scope, or reason, not to repeat the label.
- Put validation near the field and say how to fix the value.
- Confirm what was submitted, what happens next, how long it may take, and how to correct or follow up on the submission.
- Do not use color, position, or visual wording as the only cue.
Avoid
- agency-first introductions and internal process explanations
- bureaucratic substitutions for ordinary, accurate words
- shame, blame, threats, or false reassurance
- hidden costs, deadlines, consequences, and alternative service channels
easy,simple,obvious, and assumptions about digital skill- unnecessary questions, repeated data entry, and instructions that exist only to accommodate an internal org chart
- unexplained acronyms and legal citations as the primary explanation
Final pass
Check that a person can understand their status, act, recover from an error, and find help without knowing the agency's structure. Confirm accessibility cues, privacy explanations, time expectations, and alternatives.
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