A new report has placed Services Australia ahead of all other Australian Public Service Agencies when it comes to the readability of the documents it produces on its website.
The report, released recently in Canberra, assessed content readability using a language analysis platform.
The survey measured school grade level, sentence length and the percentage of sentences that were active or passive.
Along with Service Australia’s high website readability score of 119.3 over and above the benchmark of 100, the Agency’s annual report and corporate plan was judged to be 33.4, higher than the average score for all Departments of 28.5.
The report said Services Australia put a huge effort into making its website clear and easy to read and understand.
“The better the website and its other documents explain its services, the better the Agency can do its job,” it said.
Product Manager for the Services Australia website, Julie Watkins-Lyall said the Agency applied a human-centred approach to each page that was created.
“In 2019-20, people with a range of diverse backgrounds and reading abilities viewed pages on our website 324 million times,” Ms Watkins-Lyall said.
“We have to make sure they can find and understand the information they need quickly, so they can get on with their lives.”
She said content designers, communication specialists and subject matter experts developed the content, with the delivery team doing a final check before anything was published.
“This is fantastic news for our Agency and most importantly, our customers,” Ms Watkins-Lyall said.
