Agile working – progressing in small stages, constantly testing – is fundamental to CDPS. In our first year of operation, individual CDPS partnerships have mainly been in the first and second Agile phases: discovery and alpha. Working in partnership with other public sector organisations, we’ve done intensive research with users of public services from health to environmental protection and community sport. That research has resulted in a bank of knowledge about users that we can use to help build digital services based upon people’s real, demonstrable needs.
CDPS’s primary healthcare discovery, done with Digital Services for Patients and Public (DSPP), has involved many hours of interviews with GPs, practice staff and Welsh residents. Recently completed, it has given a very detailed picture of provider and patient experiences. Using the discovery results, CDPS has shared evidenced statements about user-centred primary care services for DSPP to consider acting upon.
The first service CDPS worked on, Access to adult social care, was a partnership with 3 local authorities to improve communication with social care users. Research showed that social care recipients needed more personalised information, including how long they would have to wait for help. The CDPS team on the service worked with councils to bring user text messaging in line with modern tailored communications from, for example, banks and hospitals. Neath Port Talbot Council has now been able to take the ‘Track my request’ service inhouse.
The hazardous waste discovery has been a chance to build a user-centred digital service, on Agile principles, with Natural Resources Wales (NRW). The combined discovery team researched the needs of hazardous waste treatment users by speaking to NRW experts and the waste treatment industry. The team are now testing prototypes of an end-to-end service intended to make treatment more efficient and to help more people follow the law.
CDPS’s public sector hubs discovery, done for the Welsh Government, addressed a big need from the pandemic. The need was to find an alternative workplace – a ‘hub’ – for people who could no longer work from the office but who also found it difficult to work from home. CDPS did research into the reasons for this need with diverse workers including Welsh speakers, disabled people and people with mental health needs. That research backs up the recommendations CDPS has now made to the Welsh Government about choosing an online hub-booking provider.
The Sport Wales discovery came from the need to make community sporting grants more accessible. Research showed that the Sport Wales grant application process was too complex and used formal language that put people off. (One user said: “That ain’t for me. I don’t have a degree.”) During the alpha stage of Agile development, the team tested prototypes of a new service. These service models use simple language that more users understand and pare back content to give only the information applicants need at each stage. A more inclusive service will open sports funding up to everyone who’s eligible, while reducing administrative costs for Sport Wales.
CDPS is also working with the Welsh Revenue Authority (WRA) on a land and property data proof of concept. The combined CDPS-WRA team have been investigating how a data platform could support fairer, geographically varied land taxes (and possibly grow to be a data source for the wider Welsh public sector). The WRA wants to become a fully digital organisation, and this taxation prototype is a big steppingstone to that aim.
CDPS has, finally, been able to support other organisations facing urgent circumstances in 2021-22. Our digital experts helped to reduce the impact on children’s learning of a school web-filtering incident involving the Welsh Public Sector Broadband Aggregation network. A discovery is now looking at how a future web-filtering service could meet the needs of schools and learners.