
Improving FCDO guidance for British people abroad: how we unpublished 120 pages
Where does a British person go if they need a certified copy of their passport in Latvia? Or to swap their UK driving licence for a Panamanian version? Your nearest British embassy, consulate or high commission can be the place to get help.
The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FDCO) provides these kinds of essential services – known as notarial and document services – to tens of thousands people a year through its embassies and offices. It’s often how British nationals living or travelling abroad satisfy the needs of foreign authorities to get necessary life admin done, like opening a bank account, buying property, or getting a work permit.
But, as Caution Your Blast Ltd (CYB) found as part of our work leading the digital transformation of the FCDO, there are over 220 countries and territories in the world with massive variations in rules, regulations, and levels of bureaucracy. How does someone find out which services they can get from the FCDO in their country? Until recently, there were over 120 country-specific ‘notarial and document’ pages with information about services offered. We saw an opportunity to audit, consolidate and improve this essential content.
Inconsistent content increased work
The country-specific notarial and document pages had grown and evolved without centralised control – without even an agreed convention for the page titles.
Content was inconsistent, confusing and sometimes misleading. It led to:
unnecessary enquiries: 41% of user enquiries to the FCDO ended with users being sent to another department
misunderstandings: 28% of embassy appointments were cancelled because people didn’t understand what they needed to do
extra strain on staff: most enquiries about notarial services were users clarifying information that should have been clear online
Although the majority of embassies offer the same, very limited services to British nationals – certifying a copy of a passport is the main one – many pages contained a level of detail about process that led people to believe they could get more done at an embassy. There was also information about what embassies cannot do - information that people are told (or assume) is within the FCDO remit, like helping with visas and passports.
We found through our audit that almost all the information from the 120 pages could be covered in a single page. We could capture the services that are offered, and signpost to other government services people often wrongly think are provided by FCDO.
What does notarial even mean?
This was the first piece of work I did for FCDO with CYB, so I needed to understand more about the department. My first question was: what can/does/should FCDO do for British people abroad?
My second question: what exactly does notarial mean? Or many of the other words used for services and tasks. Legalisation? Certification? What’s an affirmation?!
I thought, if I had these questions, there was a good chance other people did too and this turned out to be true – in official testing and when I asked friends and family. As there wasn’t a good understanding of what the terms meant, we realised we needed to work on making the language better for users.
We spent time thinking about the title of the new single page: what does it do? Who’s it for? Do we need the words, ‘government’, ‘UK’, or ‘official? We needed to make it clear that the page contains advice about where to get documents from many departments and agencies, not just FCDO.
We settled on the simple, ‘Documents for British people abroad’ as the title and included the terms ‘notarial’ and ‘documentary’ in the page summary so that the page would appear if people search those words.
We’ve made sure to use plain, user-friendly terms that focus on the tasks people are doing, like ‘Getting copies of official documents’. And we’ve included more technical terms where necessary, like ‘legalisation’ and ‘certification’, with clear explanations of what the terms mean and when they might be useful.
Collaborating with the experts
We worked closely with the FCDO contact centre (who get around half a million enquiries from British people a year), policy teams, and embassies to make sure the content in ‘Documents for British people abroad’ reflects the needs of British nationals, is accurate, and aligns with FCDO guidelines.
It was a great content exercise, to understand the perspectives and concerns from such a range of stakeholders. For example, contact centre staff spend a lot of their time explaining FCDO’s remit, and those of different government departments, and it was important to them that we clarify this in the new, single page. But, we found in testing that users don’t distinguish between government departments and saying, ‘This is something we don’t do – go to this other GOV department’ wasn’t a great user experience.
We compromised by placing high-volume, FCDO services at the top of the page and for non-FCDO services, including references to the relevant department in helpful, non-invasive ways, like in a clear link to contact.
‘Documents for British people abroad’ contains 16 of the most common areas of enquiry, from marriage abroad to court documents. The way the page has been designed allows for additional topics and sections if there’s evidence people need them.
A single page is better for everyone
By consolidating 120 pages (around 150,000 words) into a single clear page, we’ve made life simpler for users and FCDO staff. ‘Documents for British people abroad’ can be managed and updated just once, centrally, when needed.
British nationals can now find consistent, high-quality information no matter where they are in the world, and confidently access the right services without unnecessary confusion. More people can now do what they need to online without contacting FCDO for clarification or reassurance.
Without direct booking links or confusing calls to action on country-specific pages, we’ve reduced the likelihood of users booking incorrect services or relying on busy embassy and contact centre staff for basic guidance. That leaves FCDO staff more time and capacity to give emergency support to British nationals – like the victims of crime or a flood, and those with vulnerable cases in real need of direct, one-on-one support.
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