Looking back: CDPS year in review 2022 to 2023

In its second year of operational delivery, we have worked with organisations to design and deliver services that put the needs of Welsh citizens first. 

This review looks at our activities during the financial year 2022 to 2023. It shows how those activities, and their outcomes, map to our objectives and the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015. 

Like our last annual review, we’re publishing this review as HTML web pages, rather than designing an outdated (and poorly accessible) PDF. We’ve also continued to use multimedia content – video interviews with public sector colleagues we have worked with, as well as our minister and chair. 

But first, our joint Chief Executive Officer, Myra Hunt, and Harriet Green, reflect on the last 12 months. 

It’s been a real privilege to lead the team at CDPS this year, our first full year as joint Chief Executive Officer and our second full year in operation as an organisation.  

It’s been a year of consolidation for us, and our review looks back at how we’ve done this, as well as hearing from partner organisations about the work we’ve done together to improve digital public services. 

People 

This job is all about people. We’re a knowledge-based organisation and this knowledge comes from our amazing people. 

This year we’ve grown our permanent team to 29, 22 more than we had 12 months ago. 

This includes people with expertise in user-centred design, product, delivery, skills, communications, technology, finance, and procurement. 

Our people have been and will continue to work in multidisciplinary teams with specialists from public sector organisations across Wales to design and develop services focused on the needs of users. 

Our relationships with other digital leaders in Wales are important if we’re going to make a difference. We’ve strengthened these relationships with the offices of the chief digital officers in health and social care, Welsh Government, and local government over the last 12 months. There’s lots of opportunities to work together cross-sector, and we’ve identified several priority areas where we can provide guidance and support. We’re looking forward to building on this next year.  

Processes 

We’ve firmed up our process. We have a clear vision (aligned with the Digital Strategy for Wales), mission (supporting organisations to think about people, process, and technology for lasting change), and values, being transparent, bold, and collaborative. 

We have identified the outcomes we want to achieve by the end of this Senedd term. We’ve created a 3-year road map, which as you’d expect will be reviewed regularly in line with our agile approach to how we do things. 

We said goodbye to our interim board in July and welcomed in a new board, appointed by the Welsh Government. We’ve been working with them on our strategic direction and putting processes in place to provide assurances that we’re doing what we’ve set out to do, while also providing value for money to the public purse. 

And finally, our portfolio... 

Our purpose is clear! 

We’re here to support you, the Welsh public sector to design and deliver better public services. Services which are designed around the needs of the people who use them. 

Our portfolio has supported a diverse range of organisations this year. 

We signed a partnership agreement with Digital Health and Care Wales and have supported a number of projects including the Digital Medicines Transformation Portfolio. We’ve worked with Welsh local authorities led by Caerphilly, exploring options for a schools' information management system and we’ve led a coalition of organisations to co-design bilingual content to support people to access Welsh Government’s School Essentials Grant to help during the cost of living crisis. 

As part of this review, it’s fantastic to hear from people and organisations who are on this journey. A journey of advocating for user-centred design with an Agile mindset! Their stories are inspirational – and we should be looking to them to see what good looks like. 

There’s lots more information on all of this in the review, so make yourself a cuppa and pull up a seat. 

- Harriet Green and Myra Hunt, Chief Executive Officer, Centre for Digital Public Services 

We don’t deliver services directly to the public. Our remit is to support the Welsh public sector in doing so. This year, we’ve supported teams across health, local government, arm’s length bodies and Welsh Government. 

The projects we’ve worked with organisations on this year include: 

Local government 

Local Government Digital Transformation Fund – working with the Welsh Local Government Association, we supported 4 projects with local authorities on content, digital skills shortages, digital exclusion, and a learning management system. 

Schools' information management discovery – working with the Welsh Local Government Association, we ran a discovery and extended discovery to produce requirements for a schools' information management system based on school and local authority needs. 

Cost of living crisis: making it easier for people to access advice and support – working with local authorities and Welsh Government, we wanted to learn how we could work together to share content to meet user needs, improve service delivery and understand ways to improve Welsh language and bilingual content. 

Co-designing content – working together with Welsh Government on School Essentials Grant content, we wanted to find ways to facilitate collaboration and co-design of content across Wales to make it easier for people to find, navigate and understand. 

Health 

Digital Medicines Transformation Portfolio – we ran 2 discoveries with Digital Health and Care Wales to understand the needs and views of those directly involved in prescribing, dispensing, administering, managing, and receiving medicines in both primary (GP practices, local pharmacies), and secondary care (hospitals). 

Digital Priorities Investment Fund – this year we were on the scrutiny panel of the Digital Priorities Investment Fund, examining the transformation of health and social care in Wales. 

Arm’s length bodies 

Sport Wales grants: improving access and impact – working with Sport Wales, we worked in partnership on an extended alpha to increase the reach and impact of community investment grants. 

Natural Resources Wales: Waste services: showing the value of user-centred design – our second Agile phase with Natural Resources Wales looked at the challenges with the content of the waste exemptions service. 

Learn by making – working with Natural Resources Wales, we ran a short experiment to explore how people learn by making things in a digital lab with a focus on building digital products and services. 

Welsh Government 

Welsh Revenue Authority tackles debt and builds a data platform – working with the Welsh Revenue Authority, we embedded a multidisciplinary team who built a working proof of concept to demonstrate how data can support simpler, fairer, and more efficient devolved land and property taxation. 

Tech Net Zero discovery – working with M-SParc and Perago, we found out how the public sector can use digital technology to help Wales reach net zero gas emissions. 

Digital inclusion mapping – commissioned by the Digital Inclusion Unit in Welsh Government, we worked with Digital Communities Wales and Digital Inclusion Alliance Wales to understand how accessible digital public services are to all residents of Wales. 

Digital identity in Wales – commissioned by Welsh Government, we conducted research on digital identity in Wales and agreed how to take this work forward to adopt a one login approach for authentication and verification for public services in Wales. 

This year, responsibility for the Digital Strategy for Wales transferred from Lee Waters (Deputy Minister for Climate Change) to Vaughan Gething (Minister for Economy). 

Here are his reflections on our work and the role we play in the Digital Strategy for Wales.

Transcript

“Since taking on cross-government responsibility for digital and data last year, I can see the enthusiasm and desire that exists in our public services to use digital to make people's lives better in Wales. The Centre for Digital Public Services is a key part of this. 

Whilst it's a young organisation, the Centre has created a buzz in our public service organisations about how digital can help us to solve common problems together. It's this digital approach based on collaboration, iteration and user-centred design that puts people at the heart of what we do. 

This year, the Centre supported the Welsh Government in using digital effectively to respond to great challenges. This includes our nation of sanctuary program to support those fleeing the war in Ukraine and ensuring people could access help during the cost of living crisis. More widely, the Centre has worked in partnership with a wide variety of public service organisations who want to provide better user-centred services. It's worked with Digital Health and Care Wales for example, to modernize the way medicines are prescribed and administered in our hospitals. It supported delivery of local government transformation projects, explored how best to attract, recruit and retain digital talent in our public sector and champion new digital apprenticeship pathways. These are really important pieces of work and will help to drive us towards the ambition in our Digital Strategy for Wales for public services to be modern, accessible and convenient.  

Harriet and Myra, along with Chief Digital Officers for local government, Welsh Government and health and care have made real progress in leading an open and digital culture in Wales. Of course, it isn't all plain sailing, in times of crisis, so when budgets are stretch, it's easy not to prioritise modernising services. I want us to collectively see, however, that digital is not something that's a nice to do, it's a critical enabler to help solve problems in a more efficient way, now and for future generations.  

In the coming year, the Centre has much to do. I'm looking forward to seeing what supports us to realise the benefits of investing in digital and bringing people together to design better public services based around the needs of those who use them.” 

This year, the Welsh ministers appointed a board of non-executive directors who took over from the interim board in July 2022. 

Hear from our chair, Sharon Gilburd, on her reflections of the last 12 months.

Transcript

“Hi, I'm Sharon Gilburd and I'm the Chair of the Centre for Digital Public Services in Wales. [In Welsh] Hi, I'm Sharon Gilburd and I'm the chair of the Centre for Digital Public Services in Wales (CDPS). 

CDPS is a relatively new organisation, so it's already in its second year of full operations, and until last year it had run with an interim board. In July last year, a new board was appointed by Welsh Government which is also when I joined the board as chair, so we have a whole new board, all starting at the same time. We come from diverse backgrounds professionally and personally, which is really critical to have a strong board. It creates that breadth and depth of challenge that the board should bring to the executive team, and we've been busy in this past year working with the executive team to ensure that CDPS has got a strong strategy that's well aligned with the Digital Strategy for Wales.  

We're also working with CDPS to ensure that we're building the operational capability and the capacity to deliver on that strategy. CDPS is still a young organisation and as a board, we've been really focused on working with the team to ensure it's built on solid foundations, for good governance in a maturing organisation, doing the right things in the right way, at the right time and also, we've been ensuring that processes are in place to make sure we can report on progress and the impact of CDPS's work to always ensure value for money and to help us inform future direction of the work that we take on.  

We've now got a strategy that's supported by a three-year operational plan and our mission and vision is really clear, and it's a great opportunity as a board to have gone through that process with the executive team because it means we  can now all collectively stand behind that plan and the board can play our role in assuring the progress towards that vision. It's also really important that we keep reviewing our plans and obviously, in the last few years there has been a lot of change and if it's taught us anything, it's that our plans have to be flexible and agile too. We've got a team that's agile and comfortable with change and if we need to flex or deviate to meet a need, we can.  

We should also acknowledge though that some of what we're trying to do is hard and we certainly can do it alone. Digital though, is here to stay and if we look to future generations, then the nature of our public service is going to transform even further. We're looking forward to working with the Future Generations Commissioner's Office this year and we really want to consider how we design for the future digital service needs of our citizens. Our collaborations across public sectors this past year to deliver some key projects as to has taught us a lot.  

CDPS has made some key appointments this year and it goes into next year with a really clear vision and an extremely strong team. Board and I are really looking forward to a year of delivery, change and continued collaborations to further improve digital public services in Wales.” 

This review will show how our activities have met the objectives set by the Minister and the progress we’ve made in contributing to the 7 well-being goals and The Five Ways of Working in the Well-being of Future Generations Act. 

CDPS’s objectives: 

Objective 1: Supporting the leadership and culture amongst public service leaders to drive good digital policy making and support digital transformation 

Objective 2: Support others to ensure that people can access digital public services by helping them create services that are designed around user needs 

Objective 3: Work with others to develop a digital workforce strategy for public services in Wales and support practical measures to create a pipeline of skilled professionals 

Objective 4: Using the output of the landscape review to shape CDPS priorities now and in future, with a particular focus on collaboratively solving shared sectoral, or geographical, issues and concerns 

Objective 5: Continuing to promote shared use of the technologies and create and embed common and shared standards in digital, data and technology 

Objective 6: Actions to help business in Wales better meet the digital transformation needs of public services 

Objective 7: The Centre should support Welsh Government to influence at the UK Government level to help shape policy priorities and help others to secure public and private investment into Wales 

The Five Ways of Working – Well-being of Future Generations Act 

Long-term - The importance of balancing short-term needs with the needs to safeguard the ability to also meet long-term needs 

Integration - Considering how the public body’s well-being objectives may impact upon each of the well-being goals, on their objectives, or the objectives of other public bodies 

Involvement - The importance of involving people with an interest in achieving the well-being goals, and ensuring that those people reflect the diversity of the area which the body serves 

Collaboration - Acting in collaboration with any other person (or different parts of the body itself) that could help the body to meet its well-being objectives 

Prevention - How acting to prevent problems from occurring or getting worse may help public bodies meet their objectives 

7 well-being goals – Well-being of Future Generations Act 

A prosperous Wales 

A resilient Wales 

A healthier Wales 

A more equal Wales 

A Wales of more cohesive communities 

A Wales of vibrant culture and thriving Welsh language 

A globally responsible Wales