Looking back: CDPS year in review 2021 to 2022

We said we’d iterate the Digital Service Standards for Wales and gain sectoral involvement through establishing a Wales Digital and Data Standards board.

The Digital Service Standards for Wales, which CDPS originated, underpin everything we do. Grouped into three areas (‘Meeting user needs’, ‘Creating good digital teams’ and ‘Using the right technology’) the 12 standards cover every aspect of designing and building a user-centred digital service, using Agile techniques, in Wales.

The Digital Service Standards are at an early stage. They form the framework of good practice but need user-centred guidance about how to adopt them. To do this, CDPS has created a Standards team and recruited an interim Head of Standards to research and meet user needs for service standards in Wales. 

The Standards team have drawn partly upon the Digital Landscape Review – CDPS’s comprehensive survey of digital public services in Wales – to assess the impact of the standards so far. Co-design is at the heart of the team’s work: feedback from throughout the Welsh public sector will be crucial if the standards are to have maximum impact.

To quote from a recent CDPS blog post asking for sectoral input:

[S]ome standards and guidance leave you more confused than before you started reading them. That’s why CDPS wants to work with you to develop guidance that makes sense. We think guidance needs to be:

– written in plain English and plain Welsh (not ‘expert speak’)

– practical – geared towards helping you design and build better services in your organisation

But that’s what we think. We need to hear from you – to understand your needs and get your buy-in from the start

With the Standards team now in place, CDPS will consider the original intention to set up a Wales Digital and Data Standards board.  A community of interest group to review and help to revise standards guidance and related content will be set up in 2022-23.