17 January 2022

Our mission is to build digital capability in public service organisations through a comprehensive training and support programme. 

This blog post outlines our recent experience in selecting a supplier to help us achieve this.  

A thorough procurement process has led to the appointment of ‘This is Milk’, who will help co-create, deliver and review the programme during the alpha phase which will run until March 2022.   

Purpose  

Digital ways of working are new for many staff and senior leaders delivering public services.   

Whilst there are pockets of experienced and highly skilled staff leading the digital transformation of services in some areas, a general lack of digital skills and capability has been identified as a key barrier to transformation.  

The procurement process 

Our goal was to procure excellent training and our process was rigorous.   

The bids were evaluated in two stages, first by an internal panel and then by an external panel who independently evaluated and moderated the bids.   

The process included a written tender, the delivery of a presentation and an interactive session so we could experience training delivery in practice.   

What This is Milk will be working on   

This is Milk provided an excellent technical response and delivered a great interactive session and presentation.  

During the alpha phase, they will be working to fully understand our users' needs and to co-create and deliver a bespoke learning programme to build skills and capability for leaders and multidisciplinary digital teams. 

Their focus will initially be on co-creating three courses and an accompanying coaching programme:  

  • executive training: For senior leaders who need an understanding of the transformational potential of digital to deliver better public services, the organisational and culture changes required to support this, and their role in enabling this to happen 
  • service owner training: For service owners who need an understanding of how Agile, user-centred design and the service design standards for Wales can help them deliver better public services, and their role in supporting the organisation and culture changes required to enable this 
  • service teams training and coaching: For service teams who need an understanding of agile, user-centred design and the service design standards for Wales, and how to apply these in a service team context to design and deliver better public services  

Ways of working   

A multidisciplinary team with members from the CDPS and This is Milk will deliver the project. We will be working in Agile ways, collaboratively and transparently.  

We will be co-creating the training content and iteratively developing it with our stakeholders. The first round of training courses will run this week.  

We'll listen to our users, enabling iteration of the courses with a strong focus on user centred design.  

We will continue to share our progress via future blog posts... watch this space!  

Blog post by: Peter Thomas, Head of Skills and Capabilities