10 June 2021

As we develop and focus our delivery we’ve been thinking about communities and how we create meaningful engagement. When we talk about communities, we’ve been thinking about the term in three ways: 

Communities of practice - people who come together out of a shared desire to develop and/or improve the way they do something. 

Communities of interest – people who come together around a shared interest or passion for a subject. 

Community engagement – identifying and working with community groups in Wales to make sure they have a voice in the development and design of CDPS and public services. These groups could be geographical or based around a cause or belief. 

Communities of interest and communities of practice

At this stage we’re looking at communities of practice and communities of interest under one piece of work. These communities need to provide real value, building a vibrant community, generating discussion and creating a sense of excitement around digital public services, sharing good practice and facilitating growth of digital skills. We’ve started by launching our first communities, one is focused on building bilingual services and the other on communicating digital change. We’re now looking at the next communities we need to create and these will probably be based around our Digital Service Standards.

It is expected that some of these will evolve to become communities of practice supported by a head of profession. At this stage though it’s important that we create a space where anyone with an interest can come together to share knowledge and ideas. This way we can engage a wider audience and have a better chance of understanding what’s needed in relation to digital professions in Wales. We’ll also get a better understanding of some of the work already happening, the challenges and opportunities.

As well as supporting our first two communities our next steps are to:

  • identify the communities needed to support, develop and share good practice around public service delivery in Wales
  • develop a roadmap for community development 
  • identify the roles, skills and capabilities needed to support ongoing communities 
  • establish a network of critical friends from across the Welsh public sector to encourage co-design and provide honest and constructive feedback on the emerging communities
  • make use of existing communities, research, tools and products, to make a quick start and avoid unnecessary duplication

Community engagement 

While we’ve done some work to identify our stakeholder and customer groups, we’ve more to do to identify and work with community groups in Wales to make sure they have a voice in the development and design of CDPS and public services. These groups could be geographical or based around a cause or belief. 

To support this, we’ve just kicked off a piece of work with Co-production Network for Wales to: 

  • understand the work done so far and the gaps in our understanding 
  • identify the communities that exist in Wales, their purpose and interests 
  • map these against the work of CDPS to identify the shared areas of interest around public service delivery in Wales 
  • identify the priority groups for our initial engagement 
  • identify and put in place an engagement plan for the priority groups identified

As this work develops, we’ll be blogging more about our findings and next steps. If you’d like to find out more about this work or join one of our communities, then sign up to our newsletter.