CDPS wants to know how our Agile and digital training can better meet your needs
9 June 2022
Starting in late 2021, CDPS has trained more than 600 people from across the Welsh public and third sectors in digital and Agile skills. The Skills and Capabilities team have met lots of committed and enthusiastic public servants on our courses and witnessed many penny-drop moments. Our satisfaction surveys point to a positive experience for participants.
Training makes better services
With our launch training completed, we next want to help course participants put the skills they’ve learned into practice to help deliver better public services in Wales. Even the best training won’t have the impact we want in isolation. If participants encounter barriers in developing and sharing their new skills, how can we help them and the organisations they work for overcome them? What else do we need to do to help civil and public servants fulfil mission 1 of the Digital Strategy for Wales: "Deliver and modernise services so that they are designed around user needs and are simple, secure and convenient."
With these questions in mind, we’ve decided to pause our training over the summer to understand our users’ needs better. We’re reviewing what we offer to identify what a more comprehensive service would look like: one that would consider participants’ whole ‘journey’ from thinking about enrolling, to attending a course, to building upon their training afterwards in the workplace and elsewhere. We’d like to launch this holistic service under the banner of Campws Digidol – ‘Digital Campus’.
We'll continue to work in the open, updating everyone on how we’re getting along through monthly show & tells, our weeknotes and blog posts.
What success looks like – and other questions
We’re in the middle of a service assessment to understand what about the training has worked, what hasn’t and what we could do differently – all backed up by feedback and other data.
Three sets of questions are emerging.
1. What does success look like?
We need a clearer understanding of what training success looks like and how to measure it beyond attendee numbers. For example, how does an organisation change after its staff have been trained? Are organisations ready, willing and able to make use of the skills that course participants learn? Are their services closer to meeting the Service Standards for Wales once staff have been trained?
2. Who should we train?
How do we know that the right people are on the right courses? We need to be clearer about who will benefit most from our training and why. We want to be sure we attract people, and organisations, who might benefit the most. That might include supporting public sector staff at the start of their careers or staff interested in moving into digital roles.
3. How should we grow?
We need to be able to expand our training to meet demand. The courses that we’ve run so far have been free but that won’t be sustainable to support all public services in Wales. The courses have been intensive to administer – we need to review these processes while safeguarding ethics, privacy and security. We need a range of training to suit people in different roles. Leaders will need a more strategic understanding of different ways of working, while team members need more practical, hands-on skills
‘What’s next?’
We regularly hear ‘What’s next?’ from course attendees. We’d like to answer that by providing a joined up experience with clear options that are not just another course.
We have a prototype in mind of the wraparound service Campws Digidol could offer, but we’d really like your input. If you deliver a service for a Welsh Government funded organisation or a charity, we’d love to hear from you. We’re not just after the kinds of courses you’d like to attend. We’re keen to understand your challenges in running a service and how our support could help you move towards meeting the service standards.
If you’d like to take part, please drop us a line on learning@digitalpublicservices.gov.wales.
Sign up to the CDPS weeknotes (a weekly round-up of the work CDPS is doing across Wales) by emailing comms@digitalpublicservices.gov.wales.