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
Five Ways of Working: Long-term, integration, involvement, collaboration, prevention
7 well-being goals: 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
At CDPS, we want our people to feel supported in their careers, and ensure our business is ethical, sustainable and offers maximum value for money.
6.1 Raising our profile
External events
CDPS is regularly invited to contribute to high-profile external events aimed at the public sector in Wales both virtually and in-person. This year we participated in 23 external events including the Sport Wales Summit, Digital Health and Care Wales Digital Summit, Cross-party Group on Digital in Wales, Procurex Wales, Comms Cymru and Services Week 2022.
In June, our joint-CEO made an appearance at the Society for Innovation, Technology and Modernisation annual conference held in Cardiff. The session focused on the digital ecosystem in Wales and Harriet and Myra were joined by Chief Digital Officer for Welsh Government, Glyn Jones, and Chief Digital officer for Local Government at the time, Sam Hall.
In February, Joanna Goodwin, our new Head of User-Centred Design, presented to Comms Cymru on our work to address the cost of living crisis. Following the event, Jo was approached to coordinate a steering group to tackle the issues raised in the presentation.
We also attended our first National Eisteddfod and GovCamp Cymru.
A bilingual organisation
At the Eisteddfod, we held an event publishing findings into the experiences of 144 Welsh language users when accessing services online. This research was carried out at the Eisteddfod by a team of Welsh speakers' earlier that week.
Jeremy Miles, Minister for Education and the Welsh Language sponsored our event and introduced the research. He spoke passionately about paying attention to the experience of people who use public services in Welsh.
Hear from Jeremy Evas, Head of Project 2050, Welsh Government on CDPS’s involvement in reaching 1 million Welsh speakers by 2050:
Transcript
“I'm Jeremy Evas. I'm Head of Project 2050 at Welsh Government.
We’re a multidisciplinary team responsible for the Welsh 2050 strategy. For the context of this recording, I'm responsible for the Welsh Government's language technology action plan and have been working with the Centre for Digital Public Services over the past year and a half leading up to the 2022 Eisteddfod, and after that too.
So, we collaborated with the Centre for Digital Public Services to look at what Welsh speakers think about Welsh language services and look at what might help them use services in their language more and looking at how to design content.
As part of that, we did trio writing with whoever had created the original content, and original content is very often created in English, with an interpreter or someone who was responsible for the Welsh side of the service, and someone more technical, to discuss and go through services, line by line, to say, well you’re saying this in English and this is what it means in Welsh. Have you conveyed the concept? Are people going to understand what you're thinking here? Or is it just a translation? And this is a very, very, very powerful process. Because there's a risk of sending something, some original content in any language, and in the translation the meaning isn’t anything like that of the original. So, this involves translators in the content creation process from the beginning, ensuring that the content is very valuable and convenient to use and read in both languages.
So, we looked at content that had been created on the subject of user-centred design - UX or user centred design in English - there wasn't a lot of that in Welsh but we looked at what was available - and decided to do our own research at the Eisteddfod in Tregaron, Ceredigion, and people worked together with the Centre for Digital Public Services, and us. Using iPads, we gathered people's opinions at the Eisteddfod, about what they thought of the Welsh language being used, and what would encourage them to use the Welsh language more.
We held a session reviewing the results on the Thursday of the Eisteddfod, a public session, to look at the results. Many people thought that the Welsh language used was a little too stiff, a little too hard to understand, and didn’t reflect what the content original content said, what the people who created the content in the first place meant.
From there came working together and trio writing... What was interesting was the enthusiasm of people to use, services in Welsh but their emphasis on the difficulties they were having. Namely, that the Welsh was a little too high tone, a little too stiff, not the Welsh that was spoken every day, the differences between written Welsh and spoken Welsh, so, then people just didn’t understand some of the language used, and from there came the need to work with them, to work in triads, to develop both languages; both sides – for services at the same time, so that each language enriches the other.
I see CDPS as very practical, helping other people, to help them use more Welsh. I see CDPS as facilitating and making Welsh services, and Welsh content easier to develop, and easier to use and I see trio writing as a central, and vital, part of that process.”
Media coverage
This year we have been featured in the Welsh and UK media 18 times, which has helped to raise our profile and demonstrate our expertise.
Some highlights include:
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Our joint-CEOs, Harriet, and Myra made the ‘Most influential women in UK tech: 2022’ longlist.
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UKAuthority picked up our blog post on the 7 Digital Landscape Review recommendations.
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Government Transformation Magazine published an interview with our joint-CEO, Harriet, on the progress made in the first 8 months in the role and why putting users first is essential to CDPS’s mission.
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Our Head of User-Centred Design, Joanna Goodwin, was interviewed for PublicTechnology.net on her new role and how CDPS is encouraging a focus on users across the public sector.
To mark our first gender pay gap report and to celebrate International Women’s Day, we wrote a blog post featuring staff from across the organisation. The blog post was featured on 3 media websites as part of their International Women’s Day coverage.
6.2. Building a permanent team
This year, CDPS became an Accredited Living Wage Employer and was awarded the Living Wage Employer Mark.
Over the last 12 months, we also worked with a talent partner to attract the best people to come and work for us.
This year, we hired 22 permanent staff, bringing our total at the end of this financial year to 29.
These include roles such as user researchers, content designers, service and interaction designers, team support, a Welsh translator, and a Head of User-Centred Design to name a few.
6.3. Redeveloping our website
The CDPS website is a communications tool that allows us to work in the open with everything we do. It acts as a knowledge hub for the public sector and includes case studies, resources, templates, and practical guidance. Our website also supports the services we provide, including events, digital service standards, guidance, support, and training.
Since November, we have been working to redevelop our website to meet the current and future needs of its users.
A team at CDPS began working with an external supplier, user-centred design company, Hoffi, who were embedded in the project.
During discovery, we looked at any improvements that internal and external users would like to see made to the website through user research. This was then categorised, scored, and a backlog of priorities was created.
During alpha, we created prototypes of the new website to enable further feedback from our stakeholders and user groups, which helped further prioritise improvements. We also began to work with the Welsh Government Global Experience Language (GEL) team on design standards, accessibility, and content structure.
During beta, we implemented a number of improvements and created our minimum viable product – which is now in public beta, where we will ask users to test out the website and give us feedback before the official launch.