Working with policy subject matter experts: a content design guide for Australian government

Most government content fails before a single sentence is written. It fails at the meeting where the policy subject matter expert explains what the page must say, and the content designer either takes dictation or starts a fight that cannot be won.

The British, Scottish, and New Zealand digital teams have published guidance for this. None of it fully fits the Australian Public Service. The policy stack is different, the legal exposure is closer to the surface, and the stakeholder culture is more deferential to legal and more dependent on personal relationships than the published method assumes.

This guide is for content designers working in or with Australian Government agencies — federal, state, and territory — who keep finding that the writing is the easy part. The hard part is the relationship with the person who owns the policy.

What you need before you start

Three things need to be in place before the first SME meeting.

A clear scope. What content you are designing, for what user task, on what platform. Without this, every meeting becomes a wide-ranging policy discussion.

A user need. The most defensible thing in the room. "A small business owner needs to know whether they have to register for X" beats a policy-led page description every time.

A working knowledge of the policy. At minimum, the agency intranet page, the relevant Act, and any decision the SME has been asked to communicate. Walking in cold makes the SME do more work than they should, and you lose authority before the meeting starts.

Step 1: Set up the first meeting around the user, not the page

The mistake is to walk into the first meeting with a draft, ask for "your input", and let the SME mark up sentences.

What to do instead: open with the user task. Show research evidence if you have it — a search query, a call centre transcript, a complaint log, a question the contact centre is fielding twenty times a week. Ask the SME to confirm or correct your understanding of what someone is actually trying to do.

This shifts the conversation from "is this wording right" to "is this the right conversation to be having with this user". The SME becomes a partner in solving for the user, not a reviewer of your prose.

Keep the first meeting to 30 minutes. Bring one page on screen, not a deck. If you cannot agree on the user task in 30 minutes, the page is not ready to be designed.

Step 2: Use pair writing without calling it pair writing

The GOV.UKcontent design guidance recommends pair writing — sitting with the SME and drafting together. In Australian agencies, calling it "pair writing" can flag it as a fashionable methodology and slow uptake, especially with senior SMEs.

What to do instead: ask the SME to share their screen and walk you through the most recent letter, decision notice, or briefing on the topic. Take notes. Then ask, "would it be useful if I drafted a version that uses what you've just told me, and we work through it together for ten minutes?"

This is pair writing. The SME experiences it as collaboration, not a content design ritual. After two or three rounds, the SME will start asking for the joint sessions before sending the draft to anyone else.

Step 3: Separate accuracy from authority

The most useful single move in the SME relationship is to separate accuracy from authority.

Accuracy is the SME's domain. Whether the page correctly describes the policy, the eligibility, the obligation, the right to review. The SME is paid to know this. They sign off on it.

Authority over how the content works is yours and the user's. Whether the page is structured for the user task, written in plain language, accessible under WCAG 2.2, and findable. This is the content designer's professional discipline.

When a Director starts marking up commas, you are being asked to surrender authority on something that is not theirs to grant. Hold the line politely. "Happy to take this back and look at the structural change you're suggesting — what is the user need that change responds to?"

Step 4: Handle legal accountability without surrendering content design

Some SMEs are legally accountable for the content. A delegated decision-maker, a privacy officer, a registrar. Their sign-off carries personal exposure, and that is real.

What to do: ask early, in the first meeting, "what part of this content carries legal exposure for you personally". This is rarely the whole page. It is usually a specific phrase, a specific definition, or a specific obligation.

Mark those parts in the draft. Treat them as protected — not "do not edit" but "structural changes here need a second conversation". Everything else is fair game for content design moves.

This stops the conversation where the SME locks down the entire page out of risk aversion. It also means when you push back on a comma-level edit elsewhere, you can point at the marked section and say "this is the protected phrasing — what we are discussing here is structure, not legal accuracy".

Step 5: Give back something on every loop

Most SME relationships fail because the content designer takes from the SME — time, expertise, sign-off — and returns a draft that does not visibly use what was given.

What to do: after every working session, send a one-paragraph note. Here is what I changed from our discussion. Here is what I kept the same and why. Here is the one thing I am still working through. This costs ten minutes. It compounds trust faster than any other move I have used.

The SME starts to see content design as a discipline that respects what they bring to the room. Once that happens, sign-off comes faster, scope discussions get easier, and the next piece of content opens with less resistance.

What good looks like

A good SME relationship in Australian government content design has three signals. The SME asks you to come to the early policy meeting, not just the late content review. The SME forwards you the first draft of a letter or notice and asks for your input before legal sees it. The SME uses words like "user task" and "decision-readiness" without prompting.

You will know it is working when the SME stops sending tracked changes on the page, and starts asking what you would do.

For comparison, the published guidance worth reading is the GOV.UKcontent design pages, the Defra digital blog for the policy-side view, and the digital.govt.nzcontent design guidance for the closest comparable context to ours. Read these for method. Apply them with an Australian stakeholder culture in mind. The moves above are how to translate.

What is the SME relationship breaking on in your team right now — the first meeting, the sign-off, or the loop after the loop?

Photo by aleno on Unsplash.