Understand MOG ripple effects
A Machinery‑of‑Government change is a Prime Minister or Cabinet decision that redistributes functions, budgets and staff across portfolios. On the ground it lands like a surprise re‑platform: brand elements shift overnight, URLs and redirects multiply, and an information‑architecture map that made sense yesterday suddenly looks like spaghetti. The work still has to happen at velocity, yet public‑facing services can’t miss a beat—citizens never see the backstage scramble. Recognising that tension early lets digital leads focus scarce hours on the two things that matter most: continuity of access and clarity of ownership.
Leverage quiet publishing periods
Every site has natural lulls—budget purdah, policy pauses, holiday slow‑downs. Treat these moments as scheduled maintenance windows:
Run a top‑level audit – flag pages that are out‑of‑date, duplicated or legally mandated to stay live.
Identify soon‑to‑sunset programs – mark anything tied to initiatives or funds that may close after a restructure.
Capture redirect needs early – list domains or URL paths likely to change so the mapping work is half‑done when the switch flips.
- Establish a content‑lifecycle rhythm – bake quarterly or six‑monthly reviews into your governance plan. Pages that are no longer current get rewritten, archived or deleted, keeping the site lean and making it easier for users (and search engines) to find what matters.
Document everything in a red‑amber‑green register; it becomes your go‑bag the moment a MoG lands.
Assign clear content ownership
Governance beats guesswork. Build a living register that links each section or content type to a real human—name, branch, email and, crucially, decision authority. Mark any “orphaned” pages bright red to signal risk. When the organisational snow globe gets shaken, you’ll already know who signs off the new hero banner, who approves an archival move and who can answer a late‑night call about a critical URL path.
Review content in manageable chunks
Large departments often carry tens of thousands of pages. Break the mountain into slices so no one team is buried. Ask every business unit to triage its slice using a simple three‑option matrix: keep, rewrite, archive. Start with material older than five years—these pages cost the most to maintain and are least likely to align with fresh mandates. Central web teams can then focus on QA, accessibility checks and analytics tagging instead of rewriting everything from scratch.
Upcoming insights in this series
Episode 1 of The MOG sets the baseline. Future instalments will unpack:
Content ownership and governance when roles shift
Auditing and restructuring content/IA across merged sites
Aligning branding and design systems post‑MoG
Tech migrations, redirects and SEO continuity
Accessibility, compliance and stakeholder wrangling
Real‑world MoG war stories and lessons learned
Subscribe on to catch each deep dive, and share your own MOG moments with us at info@salsa.digital. Together we can turn every reshuffle into an opportunity for clearer, more resilient digital services.