Welsh Revenue Authority Statistics Publication Experience in HTML - GSS Sharing Seminar
Welsh Revenue Authority (WRA) is a new tax authority for Wales aiming to raise funds for public services through devolved Welsh taxes. They publish statistics in HTML format since 2018, focusing on detailed datasets and innovative breakdowns for better user experience. The shift to HTML publishing has improved online accessibility, search engine visibility, and user experience, aligning with the government's digital-first approach.
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Welsh Revenue Authority statistics Experience of publishing statistics in HTML GSS Sharing Seminar - November 2019 Dave Jones Data Analyst and Publication Lead, WRA
Background to the WRA Established as a new tax authority for Wales on 1 April 2018 First non-ministerial department of Welsh Government Responsible for collecting and managing the first two devolved Welsh taxes: - Land Transaction Tax (replacing Stamp Duty Land Tax) - Landfill Disposals Tax (replacing Landfill Tax) Anticipated to raise an estimated 1bn over four years to support Welsh public services
Key facts about the WRA A small and multi-skilled team of approx. 70 plus staff across 16 Civil Service professions First fully-cloud based tax authority (UK Civil Service) - a digital first approach to tax The WRA works with Welsh Treasury around legislation and policy for taxes The WRA is committed to delivering a new way of doing tax in Wales: 'Our Approach'
Statistics in the WRA In November 2017, the WRA was named in legislation as an official statistics producer Publishing monthly and quarterly statistics since April 2018 1st annual statistics in summer 2019: HTML format for stats releases 1st organisation on gov.wales to do this New detailed datasets on the StatsWales website New breakdowns for Land Transaction Tax: Local authority Assembly constituency Deprivation analysis using the Welsh Index of Multiple Deprivation
Publishing stats releases in HTML format (rather than PDF) Publishing charts, summary tables and analysis directly on a webpage. Don t need to know HTML coding! Since the summer, we've published 4 stats releases in HTML format. Continue publishing all future releases in HTML format Fully bilingual webpages (English and Welsh) - required for gov.wales Working closely with our web content designer in WRA. Publishing stats in HTML format takes more time for them (than uploading a PDF to the website).
Advantages of HTML publishing (rather than PDF) Gov.wales aiming to be digital by default (same as Government Digital Service) Better way to get stats content online (than a long PDF) Better visibility for internet search engines Better user experience in general Better for mobile devices HTML pages adjust to the user's screen size Easier to use than PDF many site visitors don t download PDF stats releases Accessibility a particular issue for PDF. Eg HTML works better for screen readers Insight from Google Analytics about user journeys
Key features of our HTML releases Table of contents summary of content and for navigation throughout the release Quality information and glossary are on separate webpages (don't generally change much). These are referred to and linked to throughout each release. How we communicate at WRA: "Modern. Direct. Supportive" A series of charts / summary tables with 2 or 3 key points below each one Charts and tables are static images (at present). Accessibility e.g. alt-text on each chart/table. Move to HTML tables in future.
Readability scores A reading score of 9 is GCSE reading age A reading score of 13 is university level Readability score (9 is the target, lower is better) Land Transaction Tax (LTT) Landfill Disposals Tax (LDT) Latest quarterly release 9 9 Cymraeg? In general, plain English text will translate into plain Welsh. However particular phrases could translate to be slightly more complicated, depending on the words used. Key quality info page 11 13 Glossary page 8 10
Scroll depth analysis with Google Analytics (Aug Nov data) Land Transaction Tax, Apr 18 Mar 19 (annual) - published 27 June Landfill Disposals Tax, Apr-Jun 2019 (Q1 2019-20) - published 15 August 28 users scrolled at least 25% of way down the page. Scroll depth data only captured from Aug onwards. 87 users scrolled at least 25% of way down the page Of those users, 71% got this far (halfway) Of those users, 79% got this far (halfway) 54% got this far (three-quarters) 57% got this far (three-quarters) 3% got to the very bottom (caveat) 25% got to the very bottom (caveat)
Click-through rate from the headline page to the HTML release Release (with hyperlinks) When published Click-through rate Comments LTT annual Jun 2019 82% Google Analytics data to Sept. 400 unique pageviews of HTML page. LTT Q1 Jul 2019 21% GA data to Sept. Still had key points on the headline page. LDT Q1 Aug 2019 54% GA data to Sept. Key points placed at the top of the HTML page (rather than the headline page). LTT Q1 Oct 2019 68% GA data to Nov. Moved key points to HTML page. Click-through rate = (Unique page views of HTML page) / (Unique page views of headline page) Unique page view = number of user sessions in which the page is viewed at least once. If a user is inactive for 30+ minutes, this counts as a new session.
Insights from publishing in HTML Limited user feedback so far - some comments that it's useful and easy to navigate Started with a blank page and re-thought about what content to include. Didn't just copy over the PDF content. Need to be much more concise. Consider the important points to get across. Consider user navigation splitting the content into sections (each of which are not too long) Infographics on the page if they add value
HTML publishing useful resources and advice The ONS style guide has really useful advice on writing for the web Why gov.uk content should be published in HTML format and not PDF Writing well for the web advice on gov.uk How users read on the web Hemingway app - don't put pre-release statistics into here! Plain English campaign A-Z list of alternative words
