Language matters. The stories we tell, the papers we write and the presentations we give, can inspire, motivate or halt and derail. To improve public services across Wales, many of us need to change.

The Centre for Digital Public Services (CDPS) was set up to support change, but making this change happen at pace is difficult.

I have yet to meet anyone working in the public sector in Wales who doesn't agree that we need to change. Everywhere you turn, services are faced with increased demand, tightening budgets and often challenges with finding and retaining staff. Our public services now and in the future must be sustainable.

Over the decades that I have been working in this area, the ideas and language of modernisation have been born, adopted, matured, and withered on the vine, or been put to bed. Some have endured, but maybe now it is time to question their use and validity to ask if the language we use still meaningfully addresses the challenges we face.

So, what is digital? I'm asked this a lot. Here is our understanding at CDPS:

Digital means:

  • having online services so good that people choose to use them
  • you've used technology as an enabler
  • everyone in your organisation takes responsibility for it, not just a small team
  • you prioritise the needs of your users, not the needs of your organisation
  • you continually test and refine to make services the best they can be

And of course that is only the start. In day-to-day life, digital is just the way you live and do things. But for the public sector to get to this place (where this is just a natural part of delivering our services), there is devil is in the detail and that detail matters.

In the hands-on pieces of work we do with partners, we are anchoring our digital work much more in the language of service design and improvement. That is what motivates most people I have met who want to make a real difference and who provide great services which do just that.

There is a risk that the phrase 'digital transformation' is not helping us build coalitions and instead is alienating staff faced with the challenge it presents. It can easily be reduced to the simplistic currency of call centre staff losing jobs as internal cost is transferred to pay for expensive digital, data and technology teams.

Is the phrase 'digital transformation' fit for purpose? Is it tired and even demotivating?

We are all aware of the traditional blockers to 'digital transformation' that we repeatedly reference in the public sector: Data sharing and quality, legacy technology, staff lack of understanding and capability, pay, recruitment and retention of staff, funding shortfalls and siloes. But should we now add language to this? And start to develop new common ground to build on?