Digital Landscape Review
What’s the goal of the review?
The aim of the Digital Landscape Review (DLR) is to develop a better understanding of existing digital public services in Wales to:
- identify where we can link up teams and services
- prioritise areas for development and investment
What problems could the project solve for people?
Services have done great work to keep running through the pandemic and teams have had to revolutionise almost overnight how they’ve worked. Three-quarters of the public sector services the DLR team have spoken to are now online in some form. The DLR team has discussed with service teams how well their services meet the needs of the people who use them and how they align with the Digital Service Standards for Wales.
The data we have gathered will help us prioritise our work and provide support where it will have the biggest impact for people – service users.
Who’s involved in the review?
A very diverse range of government departments from areas such as mental health, through substance misuse, early years education and environmental protection; sponsored bodies such as Natural Resources Wales and the National Library of Wales; local authorities and health and care organisations.
What has CDPS done so far?
Through the project’s discovery and alpha stages we have:
- identified several hundred Welsh public sector services
- spoken to hundreds of people within more than 30 public sector organisations
- run workshops to reveal common problems across services
- devised criteria to help us prioritise where our support could have the greatest impact
From the resulting evidence, more support is needed to help organisations adopt and embed the digital service standards for Wales. Other broad challenges include:
- designing bilingual, Welsh-English services rather than simply translating English to Welsh
- encouraging widespread use of service analytics
- embedding good cybersecurity and information security
- broadening user research techniques beyond surveys
- making services broadly accessible, so no one gets left behind by digital transformation
- building better, digital forms – not paper-emulating PDFs
- encouraging a culture of continuous improvement, even when the service is live
What’s coming up next?
The next phase of the Digital Landscape Review is the beta phase. (Read our end of alpha report.)
This includes gathering more data on services across Wales to give us a fuller picture of where our support could really help.
We will be speaking to new organisations and service owners, as well as filling in gaps in data we gathered in our alpha phase.
How does the review help to deliver the digital strategy for Wales?
The Digital Landscape Review helps to deliver upon three of the strategy’s missions:
Mission 1: digital services
Deliver and modernise services so that they are designed around user needs and are simple, secure and convenient.
Mission 2: digital inclusion
Equip people with the motivation, access, skills and confidence to engage with an increasingly digital world, based on their needs.
Mission 6: data and collaboration
Services are improved by working together, with data and knowledge being used and shared.
The Digital Landscape Review team is committed to working in the open. Watch our project updates on YouTube.
If you’d like to get involved with the Digital Landscape Review, or have questions about the project, email digitallandscapereview@digitalpublicservices.gov.wales
Blog posts
Which local authorities can show the digital way?
Shared or common? Using the same software in Wales
7 practical challenges for digital services
Removing blockers in beta: next steps for Digital Landscape Review
Digital Landscape Review – an insight into recent discussions
Digital Landscape Review – end of discovery findings
Digital Landscape Review – learning from the international landscape
Digital Landscape Review – engaging with service owners
Digital Landscape Review – beginning to zoom-in to the details