Working and building in the open

Openness is more than communication: it’s about how you work.

In the public sector, working in the open means designing with people, not for them. It connects teams across organisations and helps everyone make better decisions with shared evidence. 

When you work in the open, you:

• build trust by showing progress and decisions as they happen
• reduce duplication by sharing what already exists
• improve services faster by inviting feedback early and often

This approach supports co-design, co-production and open-source across Wales. It strengthens transparency, collaboration and reuse of work across the public sector.

Making work visible and inviting feedback before major commitments helps to build confidence and reduces risk.

Openness helps teams reduce risk, strengthen collaboration and create shared understanding. Sharing progress regularly means you can spot issues early and adjust plans before they become costly.

Being open also shows accountability. Stakeholders and users can see what decisions you’re making and why. This builds confidence because people know they’re included.

Sharing what you’re doing helps others learn from your experience and avoid duplication.

Build openness into delivery from the start, not as an afterthought. Embed it across delivery phases:

• Discovery: share what you learn about user needs and constraints
• Alpha: test ideas and show early prototypes, even if they’re rough
• Beta: document decisions, iterations and what changed from feedback
• Live: keep showing what you’re improving and why

Learn about the phases of agile delivery.

Sharing work in progress builds confidence, it shows value quickly and demonstrates how insights shape your decisions and direction.

It can also connect you to other teams and organisations doing similar work or that can support you, saving you and resources.

Working in the open means bringing others in, not just updating them:

• co-design solutions with users, partners and other teams
• collaborate hands-on across disciplines to reduce handovers
• keep workshops and design artifacts focused on participation, not perfection

Rather than relying on formal approvals, this approach focuses on shared understanding. It makes delivery easier, more transparent and more human.

Talking about your work and documenting it openly, early and clearly helps others access and reuse what you’ve learned. Your work and what you show does not need to be perfect.

You can:

• run regular show and tells
• publish updates like weeknotes, blog posts and sprint summaries
• share your roadmap, priorities and design artifacts for others to see and use

Connect with others interested in your work through existing networks. For example:

• communities of practice
• Cymru Ddigidol Slack
• UK Government Digital Slack 

Good documentation benefits everyone. It tells the story of your service and helps others reuse your work. 

Keep your documentation:

• open: published or shareable by default
• accessible: plain language and easy to find and use
• traceable: explains decisions, evidence and trade-offs

Design histories, weeknotes and open backlogs help others follow your journey and learn from both challenges and successes.

These activities replace heavy final approvals with lightweight, continuous assurance. 

Read some tips for working in the open.

Openness only works when people feel safe to share unfinished work, embrace mistakes and discuss challenges.

Create a culture of psychological safety where:

• feedback is seen as learning, not judgement
• teams can discuss what didn’t work as well as what did
• challenges are shared respectfully and constructively

You do not need to share everything at once. Start small and:

• share an early prototype or research insight
• publish short weeknotes or sprint summaries
• talk about what you’ve learned from a problem

These habits build confidence and psychological safety over time, making openness part of delivery. 

Open source is an important part of working in the open. Publishing code, design systems, and content openly helps others learn from and build on your work.

Using and sharing open source tools can:

• make services more transparent and accountable
• reduce duplication by reusing existing components
• improve flexibility and sustainability across the public sector

When you publish your code or design assets, follow open government licensing and accessibility principles. Share your work in public repositories like GitHub or the Digital Sharing Hub where others can adapt and contribute.

Working in the open in different contexts may include:

• a health team publishes its digital service roadmap online so staff, partners and residents can see priorities and progress
• a local authority runs a public fortnightly show and tell where colleagues and residents can comment on prototypes
• a digital team shares weeknotes openly and with stakeholders to show progress and learnings
• a government team publishes its design history bilingually, showing how policy decisions shape the service

Watch one of our show and tells as an example.

• Designing user-centred services
• Tips for working in the open
• Why we should work in the open (Co-op Digital)