Looking back: CDPS year in review 2021 to 2022

To work effectively within the Welsh public sector, CDPS needed a map of the territory. We’ve started to create one – the first overview of the state of digital public services in Wales – which we’ve called the Digital Landscape Review (DLR). The DLR team have spoken to 100s of people working in the public sector, from leaders to frontline staff. Those interviewees come from more than 30 organisations including the Welsh Government, as well as local government and government-sponsored groups.

From that very broad consultation, the DLR team proposed 16 digital opportunities for CDPS to support delivery of better public services. From those opportunities, our board has proposed a shortlist for CDPS to work on, with partners, in 2022-23 and beyond.

No matter how technically advanced a digital service is, it fails if it doesn’t serve everyone that it could. One important finding from the DLR is how unequal digital access in Wales is. Too many people are missing out on the benefits of the digital world, including digital public services. They’re missing out because of their geography (if technical infrastructure is lacking), poor digital skills (due to their generation or education level, for example) or accessibility barriers (such as a vision or reading difficulty).

To address this kind of inequality, one part of the DLR has developed into a separate project – a Digital Inclusion Directory. The directory includes activities run by Digital Communities Wales and other Welsh organisations to include people in the digital world. It compares Wales’s approach to digital inclusion with the approach of the other UK nations and top-performing EU countries.

Civil servants, public servants and third sector staff in Wales need the digital skills to design and deliver user-centred services. Those services must make the public sector more efficient while better meeting the needs of the people who use them. Passing on such skills to people working in the public sector has been a crucial outcome for CDPS in 2021-22. We’ve achieved it through wide-ranging training and in other ways such as coaching, workshops and online seminars.

Our training in user-centred design (UCD) and Agile skills began in 2021-22 with ‘immediate needs’ courses. That training covered what our research showed to be the most pressing knowledge gaps among public servants. The courses, run by leaders from the UCD professions, have trained more than 600 people, at all levels, from 80 public sector organisations in Wales.

We’ve not just passed on skills in formal training. Feedback suggests one-on-one coaching within a multidisciplinary team can also be highly valuable. Using coaching, the primary-healthcare team, for example, helped a delivery manager to move from conventional ‘waterfall’ to Agile service development. Lunch-and-learn or drop-in sessions on user-centred subjects, such as those run by Natural Resources Wales and Sport Wales teams, have also been common.

Finally, CDPS’s webinars and communities of practice have been excellent ways to share knowledge. At webinars such as ‘Promoting the Welsh language’ and ‘Keep it simple: practising content design’, experts demonstrate techniques and processes. Meanwhile, our 2 communities of practice, Communicating Digital and Building Bilingual Services, are generating awareness and opportunities for peer support.