Transcript
“From my perspective, there's sort of three things that I really appreciated from working with CDPS. I suppose, firstly and possibly most importantly, they clearly had access to people who absolutely knew what they were all about. So, that's been really important, I think the second thing is that they're independent, so they come from a place where they can give you their honest view, and I think that's really been useful to us as an organisation, we value that. And finally, I think the fact that there's no kind of, commercial relationship long term, that's sitting behind it, means you can kind of just trust them in an open way and that's been really really helpful.
I think the long-term impact of what we did with CDPS has been to create something which is self-sustaining, and has given us the confidence, really, to try things out for ourselves and do things that we hadn't done in quite the same way before. it's certainly given us the sense of wanting to try and be more open in the way we work and definitely we have created an energy which is self-sustaining, which I don't think we could remotely have done without the work we've done together with CDPS.”
We asked Neil Butt, Interim Chief People and Communications Officer, to talk about the progress of Welsh Revenue Authority since setting up their own Agile service team:
“We set up an Agile service team to look at how we can create less debt, have less people in debt, and for people to spend less time in debt. This change was championed from the ground up by our operations and finance people who were unhappy with the internal processes and felt frustrated for themselves and our users.
This was our first independent Agile team, and we were supported by Jamie Arnold (Delivery Manager) from CDPS. We genuinely couldn’t have been true to Agile and achieved so much without Jamie. Jamie’s challenge, ideas and support kept us learning throughout the process.
The project was an overwhelming success; our team loved Agile. The iterative way of working enabled us to deliver some small changes early on. Show and tell sessions have been inspirational for governance and peer review, in ways I’ve never seen on traditional change projects. We’ve developed a statement portal that can give an instant debt figure, not easy as we calculate debt interest daily.
We’ve reduced correspondence and have automated pre-payment reminders. Our KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) show a reduction in debt that we can contribute in part to the service team. We’ve left many legacies, both technical and cultural, we got some things wrong and learned from them. For some in the team, it’s the first time they’ve felt truly empowered; for me, this is key to Agile being a success. We’ve learned new skills, developed confidence, and inspired other parts of our organisation. It’s been a transformative process for many of us, and we’re keen to keep learning.”
2.4.2. Tech Net Zero discovery
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
Five Ways of Working: Involvement, collaboration, prevention
7 well-being goals: A globally responsible Wales
Welsh Government have set out a plan, committing to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050 or sooner. The Digital Strategy for Wales outlines the opportunity for digital technology to contribute to decarbonisation. This 12-week discovery explored current and potential good practice in linking digital use and lower global heating emissions.
CDPS partnered with science park, M-SParc, who worked with Welsh digital agency Perago to find out how the public sector can use digital technology to help Wales reach net zero gas emissions and whether public servants have the right support to implement good practice.
We interviewed:
-
public servants across Wales
-
public sector exemplary practitioners
-
public cloud providers
We also spoke with large corporations such as Amazon Web Services and Google and experts at Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Central Digital and Data Office and the UK government’s Sustainable Technology Advice and Reporting (STAR) team. In Wales, we spoke to housing associations Adra and Grŵp Cynefin, the chair of Socitm Wales and Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board’s Green Group.
At the end of discovery, we had 6 recommendations:
Recommendation 1 – Raise awareness
The team found that technology leaders, and practitioners, often lacked a full understanding of:
-
how digital could support net zero in general
-
their organisation’s net zero goals specifically
-
what meeting net zero meant in their professional context
Recommendation 2 – Make net zero a priority within digital
Our research revealed a disconnect between the climate emergency and digital priorities within the public sector. Sustainability is rarely a driving force for digital teams.
People working in the public sector in Wales need to see sustainability prioritised from the top, where it will filter down to digital team objectives.
Recommendation 3 – Help people follow net zero good practice
The team found that, where there are sustainability professionals within organisations, they are not joined up with digital teams to influence and support them.
The sustainability professionals we spoke to often had a good idea of how digital can support net zero but less ability to see those ideas through to delivery.
Recommendation 4 – Measure the carbon footprint of a digital service
The need to evaluate services’ climate impact came up in our user research. The team found there was no clear and easy way to evaluate the climate footprint of a digital service.
Some of the people we interviewed had strong views on how to design and run services sustainably but found it difficult to measure services’ environmental impact.
Recommendation 5 – Support sustainability work across boundaries
Our research found that reducing duplication, and moving towards shared services across the public sector, were important ways to cut emissions. Both within and across organisations, teams are often siloed from each other. That lessens their ability to replicate good sustainable digital practice from elsewhere.
Many participants talked about the perceived efficiencies and environmental benefits of shared service work.
Recommendation 6 – Make sustainability part of procurement
Our policy research and our conversations with public servants both highlighted the opportunity to procure digital products and services in a way that reduces carbon emissions.
Users said they lacked knowledge about how to make digital procurement environmentally sustainable. However, they advocated building sustainability into wider procurement policy and platforms, rather than leaving it to individual organisations to interpret.
What’s next?
CDPS has now recruited a permanent product manager who will prioritise and take forward the recommendations from the discovery.
Read more
Tech Net Zero discovery report
2.4.3. Digital inclusion mapping
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 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
Five Ways of Working: Involvement, collaboration, prevention
7 well-being goals: A prosperous Wales, a healthier Wales, a more equal Wales
This project picked up on a particular thread of the Digital Landscape Review – how accessible digital public services are to all residents of Wales. It was commissioned by the Digital Inclusion Unit in Welsh Government to review what’s being done in Wales to get people online and digitally included.
The Digital Strategy for Wales defines digital inclusion as “equipping people with the motivation, access, skills and confidence to engage with an increasingly digital world, based on their needs.”
The goal of this project was to produce a directory of digital inclusion activity across Wales. The directory would give us an opportunity to spot similar inclusion activities and see if they could be joined up. Geographic and demographic analysis of those activities would reveal how Welsh regions differed in the amount they spent on digital inclusion and whether they were targeting different groups of people.
A number of stakeholders were involved in gathering this information, including Digital Communities Wales and Digital Inclusion Alliance Wales.
Digital inclusion activities in Wales were mapped across the following areas:
-
broadband
-
data
-
devices
-
accessibility, including affordability
-
basic digital skills
-
confidence
-
motivation
This information was compiled into a single directory, which is now live and hosted by DataMapWales.
Read more
2.4.4. Digital identity in Wales
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 5: Continuing to promote shared use of the technologies and create and embed common and shared standards in digital, data and technology
Five Ways of Working: Long-term, integration, collaboration, prevention
7 well-being goals: A prosperous Wales, a resilient Wales, a globally responsible Wales
This year, we were commissioned by Welsh Government to research digital identity in Wales. From this, a report was presented to Welsh Government’s Chief Digital Officers in January 2023, and we agreed how to take this work forward.
A digital identity is a digital representation of a person, enabling them to prove who they are, online or in person, when using services.
In Wales, some digital public services are already using digital identity, such as the NHS Wales App and some local authorities and individual government bodies are drawing their services together under a single login. But most online services in Wales are provided by forms or email submission.
There is currently no detailed policy or standard that governs how public services should use digital identity in Wales.
There is opportunity to create a standard for using digital identity for those providing public services in Wales, that fits with the Digital Strategy for Wales with the goal of making citizens lives easier by using a standardised, shared system that all local authorities would use.
Digital identity could help improve public services by service integration, verifying proof of identity, reducing the number of accounts, passwords and ID numbers needed and adding personalisation, with users being able to choose their language preference and using the service in Welsh.
What next?
We will be responsible for setting up a steering group and governance, outlining an agenda and terms of reference and tracking actions, risks, and progress.
We will conduct research into the challenges around digital identity in a bilingual context, using existing best practice and create a Wales-focused report for solving these issues.
We will create a digital standard on digital identification for public services to start implementing, likely to support adopting a ‘One Login’ system for Welsh Government.
We will also engage with digital service owners to support the implementation of a single login and identify common verification services that would be supported by all public services in Wales.
We will hand over this work to Welsh Government to manage at the end of 2023 and start work on getting local authorities to move away from legacy platforms and move toward a one-system approach for Wales.