National Assembly for Wales

Welcome, everyone, to this meeting of the Local Government and Housing Committee. We’ve received one apology for today’s meeting from Lesley Griffiths MS. As usual, the meeting is being held in hybrid format. The public items of this meeting are being broadcast live on Senedd.tv, and a Record of Proceedings will be published as usual. The meeting is bilingual and simultaneous translation is available. Are there any declarations of interest from committee members? No.

We will move on, then, to item 2 on our agenda today, which is our first evidence session on digital local government. And I’m very pleased to say that we have with us the Centre for Digital Public Services, in the shape of the joint chief executive officers. Would you like to introduce yourselves, please, for the record?

Bore da. Myra Hunt. 

Okay, thank you very much, Harriet and Myra. Let us begin, then, with some initial questions, and, first of all, on national strategic direction and priorities, and the tension between those national priorities and local delivery. How would you say local and national digital priorities align currently? Is there a coherent direction of travel within both local and national government?

Well, I think we would say that Wales, as a whole, has a really excellent digital strategy, and that is a national blueprint for our intentions around digital. And that is clear and set for everyone. And our goal, and, in effect, part of the intention of setting CDPS up, is to support the sector to fulfil that digital strategy. So, we have something that brought Myra and I to Wales because of the quality of the vision and the intentions behind it. So, that is absolutely a national blueprint that all can follow, and, in our view, all should feel that they understand which bits of it they are supporting the fulfilment of.

But I think the issue is the scale of the challenge. I think we mentioned in our written evidence that a lot of digitisation has been done over the past 25 years, but it’s been done pretty organically, and that has led to a varied picture. Many of the golden rules, in terms of how you get good digital services, for example, or deliver successfully in the digital space, rely on more of a standard approach, more shared standards, more data standards, more shared approaches to technology and gathering of data, and so on. But what we have is a very organic picture. And so to improve that, alongside all the other challenges we have, is a really significant challenge.

So, I would say that we have a great strategy and, actually, lots of really good people in Wales who have the very best intentions in terms of meeting that strategy. But in comparison to the scale of the challenge, the resources are low, and there are many other priorities, as we know. But on the other hand, digital isn't going away, and it is really important.

In terms of—. Under that strategy, do local government and central Government have the same stated priorities? I wouldn’t say that that’s the case currently. I think there are many shared priorities, but I think if you said, ‘What are your top three?’ to central Government, they would be different to the top three in local government. Local government, for example, has a really strong focus on social care, because that is the kind of the major issue in terms of delivery for local authorities. That’s where many of their greatest issues for their citizens occur and many of the greatest pressures on their service provision are. So, that is a really high priority for local government, for instance, whereas in central Government we have the First Minister’s four priorities, and they’re different. And so that can bring in tension where, for instance, in the projects that CDPS is asked to support, they are in general, quite correctly, cross-sector projects. And yet, there may be differing levels of priority given, more tension around the resource that’s available to deliver in those areas. So, that does lead to, I would say—it’s quite difficult to come to agreements that are clear and that enable the swift delivery that we would like to move on.

I would say that we do have some real strengths. There is the service standard for Wales, which is agreed pan sector, and that has a lot of agreed commonality around efficiency in the right areas, supporting in the right areas, and our goal in CDPS is to support everyone to work towards that service standard because it really is the kind of tried and tested global standard for good public service delivery. But I would say that there are tensions between that general, 'Let’s have a rising tide that floats all boats', and, 'What are the priorities in local government versus the priorities in central Government?' So, we have this great overall national blueprint, but certainly some different feeling for the priorities on the ground.

And as you point out in your evidence, Harriet, the resource of local government is obviously limited, so that limited resource goes into their priorities and then there’s not always enough resource for the priorities of Welsh Government on a national level. That’s the sort of picture that you’ve found.

That's absolutely the case. Yes, absolutely. We could offer some illustrations of that, if that’s helpful.

I know you’ve given us some examples, haven’t you, in your evidence?

Yes, we have.

Okay. In terms of the standard you mentioned, the digital service standard, are you reasonably content with the way local authorities are working towards the gold standard that will produce those better more efficient public services, and where does responsibility lie in terms of ensuring that the standards are embedded in local government in Wales?

I would say, and I often do say, that if those delivering public services in Wales were all meeting the service standard, CDPS wouldn’t need to exist. Because they are now, as I’ve said, with decades of global learning—they really are a simple set of best practice, tried and tested, not-rocket-science principles that you can deploy and, if you follow them all, you will have an excellent public service. But the issue, as we’ve discussed, is the resource level. The resource level is low, and there are many pressures competing for the time of these small teams, from keeping basic systems going to the really pressing priorities in local government.

So, I would say that there’s a varied picture. I would say that some are really exemplary in their work to understand and work towards the service standard. There are 12 principles in the service standard, which are—10 of them you would recognise globally, two of them are specific to Wales because they relate to fulfilling the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 and supporting Welsh language goals in Wales. But, yes, the resource level, the depth of skill, the depth of experience—all of these can be problematic, and I would say that certainly some local government teams are much smaller than others. Some would describe themselves as much more like one man and a dog, whereas others have something much closer to what I would call a multidisciplinary service team.

Our service standard is an absolute priority for CDPS. We are going to be investing a lot of our resource in working out how we can best support local authority teams to work towards the service standard, and in no way is it a, 'Here they all are, meet them'; it's a, 'Here they are, this is the direction of travel, this is what "good" looks like. Where can you start? Where can we start to support you in the key areas where, at this moment, we've got the best chance of meeting that standard before we carry on through to some of the more challenging demands?'

I think a really key issue—a really important issue for us, and we're discussing it with our new Cabinet Secretary and our partnership team, and with stakeholders at the moment—is that the repeated point is made that there are no carrots and no sticks in terms of use of and applying the service standard. So, how persuasive can Myra and I be today with the CEO of x local authority so they'll think, 'That's a really great think to do'? We have no carrots and no sticks. We have to be as persuasive as possible; we have to bring as much evidence forward as possible.

You never meet anyone who doesn't want to improve their service, but we know that GDS, the Government Digital Service in the UK, had great impact because of what were called 'spend controls'. So, if a service had not met the standard, they could be prevented from progressing. And I don't think that's what we're discussing in Wales, but we are very interested to consider this subject of mandate authority and what kind of mandate we could devise in Wales to go beyond that 'no sticks, no carrots, no incentives, no penalties', and yet we all know that this is best practice, globally agreed and not rocket science.

Okay, thank you very much. Let me bring in Lee Waters. Lee.

Just a couple of follow-ups, if I may. You mentioned there that you have no levers, so, in effect, this is an aspirational statement, and the Audit Wales report showed that progress towards it was uneven at best—I think that's being kind. You mentioned there leadership and that you were meeting with some chief executives, I think you said. I'd be interested to know how many chief executives you have met with, and where you think the system leadership is coming from. Who is responsible in this ecosystem for driving change?

I think there are a lot of forums of collaboration. So, for example, the local government digital advisory group is really strong on sharing collaboration, sharing good practice. In terms of driving change, I would say that the examples that we see of that are at local authority level and are usually the result of a cabinet and executive coming together, being absolutely determined to modernise their services and build a vision of their local authority for the future. And the greatest example of that is in Caerphilly. And there is a massive task to move from a really super, informed, knowledgeable network of chief digital officers in local authorities, or senior members of staff in local authorities who specialise in digital, and to bring their knowledge and energy and passion for change right into the executive at the highest levels of the local authorities. The passion, determination, expertise that we see in Caerphilly are outstanding, and that's because there is a small group of people there who really care about modernising their services. 

Across the whole of Wales—

Can I jump in?

Yes, go ahead.

Sorry, it's just that some weeks, we're not clear if people on Zoom can hear when we're trying to interrupt, so apologies.

So, I think that's a good example—Caerphilly—because they're still an outlier, aren't they? That's an organic, bottom-up-led approach. My question was: where's the system leadership coming from? So, there are some good authorities that get it, that want to do it. Where's the drive for those that are not in the same place?

I think we have tried to create that drive between the CDO for health and local government, Welsh Government and ourselves, but my response would be that the verb 'drive' depends on governance and mandate, and, at the moment, we're in a situation where people choose to participate. It's persuasion, it's cajoling, it's sharing best practice. The sort of scale and suggestion of not command—. I don't know if you're pushing for command and control, but the notion of a governance body that can look across local authorities and drive change, mandate change, run a portfolio of complex programmes and transformation, that's not how we're able to work at the moment, to be honest.

No. You mentioned the absence of spend controls, didn't you, so it's clear from your evidence that you feel there's insufficient stick and insufficient carrot. So, if it's down to persuasion, that involves engagement at a senior leader level, so how much engagement at the senior leader level, at chief executive level, are you having?

That comes to us through the CDO of local government, because she owns that relationship with the digital advisory group, which we're members of and the CEOs of local authorities. Having said that—

So, you as the leadership of the digital centre don't meet directly with chief executives, is that what you're saying?

We do, and we have done, but the line—. Sorry, Harriet, do you want to come in? We do, and we have done, but the main line of responsibility is through the CDO for local government.

I'm just trying to gauge an appetite, because, obviously, at the beginning of this, the absence of leadership was a real problem, and the absence of an understanding at leadership level of what digital was—rather than some backroom function, as a tool for service transformation—was absent. So, I'm just trying to get a sense of has that changed, are you directly engaging with chief executives, are they coming to you, saying, 'We want to change; we want your help.' And it sounds to me, from what you're saying, that they're not.

Some are; certainly, some are, and I would characterise it—

How many?

That's a good question, and I think we might have to come back to you with a specific number of chief executives that we've met over the past three years. I'm going to stick my neck out and say it's probably less than half of chief execs from local government, although we've probably had conference discussions, rather than one-to-ones, with more. What we find in those kinds of conversations, particularly with some CEOs in some areas, is there's real enthusiasm from the CEO, and, with us, they might agree to something very ambitious, but that doesn't tend to be, then, driven down to further layers of leadership.

As you say, we have identified leadership as being a really critical area to address, and so we have created the digital leadership academy, and that's going to be the focus of all of our innovation in training for the current year, at least, because we have clocked that leadership at—. It's not just the CEO, but the whole C suite and on down into senior managers. It's critical that those people have the informed knowledge and the understanding of the kinds of decisions they need to make and the kind of leadership they need to give to lead their teams, to take this seriously, to understand how they need to respond to the questions that are put to them, what are the decisions that will lead to improved public services. And really critically, my feeling, quite strongly, is that there is a lot of support and help available, and those leaders and their teams need to reach out for the support and help. That's a really important factor for me. If you look out, there is support. If you look out for learnings from other people, the learnings are available, and I think there's definitely a—. Why is leadership so important? Why is informed leadership so important? Well, many of our leaders have not—. Their careers haven't been through the digital period, they've become very senior and they don't have the digital habit, as it were. I think it is that kind of openness to learn and reach out and get support that is really critical if we're going to see a faster pace of change. We think a lot about the pace of change. Without the carrots and the sticks, the pace of change is going to be different than if we've got some carrots and sticks or incentives and penalties. But I think we also need that kind of leadership openness to really clock (a) what's different about digital stuff and how you have to make different kinds of decisions for digital stuff, and (b) that digital is not going away, and how well we do it now is critical. If we do it badly, there are real implications for our citizens and our businesses. If we do it well, there are real implications for our citizens and businesses—things that we want. And I think it's that level of seriousness and that level of openness to learn and reach out that is really critical in leaders, and that's why we've identified leadership as a critical goal for CDPS, at least.

Okay. We are halfway through our 40 minutes already and we're probably about 10 per cent of the way through our questions, so, we'll have to move on. Peter.

Yes. Thank you. And you've covered half of my first question, certainly, around some of the leadership around senior officers, and we hear of good practice—in Caerphilly, for example—I know, though you have concerns perhaps that this whole thing isn't perhaps still being taken seriously enough, where we see only four local authorities with a CDO put in place, so, it begs me, as a past council leader myself—. How on board are leaders and cabinets—political leaders and cabinets—to this agenda, and is there evidence to demonstrate within corporate plans or service improvement plans that the digital agenda is being embedded?

I think that's the absolutely key question for me, and then, how we move from local authorities to get scale and pace. I think it's really important we think about enabling. People want—. CDOs know and understand the service standards. They take that into their executive. Service improvement and service modernisation is what this is all about. Digital needs to move—and data—from being something over there and brought right into the heart of the executive and seen as the changes—. And one way of sort of enabling this—because digital transformation now has a multi-year history and has certain baggage attached to it—is to come back to that service design. This is, ultimately, about service improvement, where digital is one of the tools that is available to the executive. And, as Harriet said, they can bring in external expertise or use their internal expertise. The reason why Caerphilly is such a good example is they're doing the service design, the process mapping—all of the things that everyone will recognise from many decades of transforming services—but they're employing agile techniques as well and running a single backlog across the council, but it's very much embedded about meeting the needs of their users and using front-line staff to redesign their services.

I'm sorry, take me back to the thrust of your question again, because I feel like I've not directly answered it.

No, I think you've covered it. I suppose I was trying to get to the bottom of how embedded is this in the political psyche and into the cabinets. And is there evidence, or have you not been able to ascertain if those corporate plans and service improvement plans have this embedded so that it becomes part of the norm?

Yes, I think we're in a stage of immaturity at the moment, and the stage in which most local authorities have been is that they will have a digital strategy, but it's not embedded in the way that you're implying. And Harriet's right; CDPS offer training and we offer support, but I think it has to be understood that that support is available in the context, as you'll be very, very familiar, of people feeling that the capacity for change and the enablers for change are very difficult. It is hard to drive change in local authorities where there are front-line service challenges.

Thank you for that. I think we've got a flavour. Another issue I just wanted to flag with you—I think there might be some differing views on where the digital team should be sited. It's currently with the Welsh Local Government Association and there have been some concerns perhaps around that. How do you stand on that? Do you think it's the right position? Is it doing what it's supposed to do?

I think it's—. I think it's the only place for it to be. I think the period—. There was a long period of questions about whether it was the right place and whether it felt slightly anomalous within WLGA because, obviously, WLGA is a strategic leadership organisation, and the digital team is an operational team. But I think it is the only place for it to be. That question should be put to bed. The question for me is the level of commitment shown to the role, and it's great to see that role has now been advertised as a permanent role. It was an interim role for a long time. The team is small. Obviously, Myra and I, what we would like is to see WLGA champion the digital team and the digital operation and really take in, embed and own that digital as integral to anything we want to deliver now. Because that's the case. Any desire, any policy goal, any initiative from a public sector organisation will, at least in part, be delivered digitally, through digital channels. And that's certainly how citizens and businesses expect to engage with Government, and it is certainly what Government wants. We are here, others in the digital space are here, because Government wishes to use digital tools and channels to deliver its services. And therefore we need to get better at it, because, at the moment, we're affecting citizens' quality of life, we're clogging up business in Wales, because I would say it's this wider phenomenon, of having digitised, but having digitised quite partially and having digitised in a very organic way, which goes against many of the golden rules of how you get better success in digitising. And I'll give you one thing that I think is really problematic, which is that there's this double spend that I see, where digital has been invested in, but it hasn't been properly delivered, so that we're still spending all the money on the manual fulfilment as well, and that is really a problem.

Yes. Many thanks. Thanks, John.

Thanks, Peter. Lee.

Just a quick follow up on that. You mentioned that the digital team within the WLGA was not an operational one. Surely, it should be a leadership role as the chief digital officer for local government. So, I'm not sure why it is an operational role. It does speak a little bit to how seriously the WLGA are taking this role. You mentioned it had been vacant and then interim for a long time. This is a highly competitive field, obviously. Are they pitching it at the right level? Is the salary level at a sufficient range to get the people we need to provide the leadership that's required?

It's a difficult question, this, isn't it? Is this a strategic role, or is this an operational, delivery role? So, the role is responsible for running a small project team, with a small capital budget that is, typically annualised, and delivers a role of projects. You're seeing the interim CDO later today, and I think she'll say, potentially, that she's on something like 26 governance forums. 'Is this fish or fowl?' would be my response to that, Lee. Do you want an operational, a small project management team of about six or seven people, running a project budget of about £1 million, typically cut into four small programmes, or do you want a higher level strategic role? And which way should this be cut? Harriet and I would have our views on that, but that's the quandary that you face, because, at the moment—

What are your views on that?

Sorry?

What are your views on that? That's my question.

Personally, I would go strategic and I would go—. You asked about the relationship management. We have 22 local authorities, all of which have slightly differing views on strategic direction and the way in which they want to tackle digital transformation. For me, there's a very strong argument for the local government association having a strategic, almost like a strategic business-management type role. Or, you say, 'No, this is an operational role, and it's going to deliver operationally.' It depends on the fit within the Welsh Local Government Association.

Could I come in, just with a quick comment? Because I think the bottom line is that, as we've been saying, digital is here to stay, digital is fundamental to anything you want to deliver, therefore every organisation needs to be capable digitally. So, I don't think, in any way, the local government sector can look at the CDO for local government's team as coming in and doing everything for them. It has to be a leadership position, because service owners must know how to own and run their own services. It's not feasible for anything else to happen, and so they must take that responsibility. And the WLGA and the CDO and her team can provide leadership. So, for me, it is primarily a leadership and strategic position, because there is no option but for service owners to own and run their own services. 

So, very briefly, given that, are they pitching the role at the right level?

Well, the salary is not what I would call—. I guess you would say that it's not necessarily market level for the level of expertise that I would hope they are looking for.

The role is a member of the senior leadership team in the local government association, so I would assume that the role would need to be on a par with other senior leaders representing their sectors, such as education and social services.

But just a last point: the mission is very attractive. Myra and I came to Wales on a big pay cut because we want to work for this mission. People who work for CDPS could earn more elsewhere, but they want to deliver this mission for Wales. 

Okay. We have nine minutes left. We're going to have to have short questions and short answers. Siân Gwenllian. 

I'm afraid we're going to have to have the translation, because I think when we were put into the waiting room, our setting changed back again, and we've just realised that that setting has changed back on interpretation. Could we have the interpretation, please?

You have to press the button—click on interpretation. 

I think you need to press the button that says 'more' at the bottom, scroll up to 'interpretation', click on 'interpretation' and click on 'English'. 

Yes, we've just done that again, but I think that that setting had changed again when we were in the waiting room, I think. 

Could we possibly have the question again? I'm so sorry.

Yes, and Wales is a wonderful, wonderful place—local government and Government—for collaboration and sharing and coming together, and there are many forums, which I'm sure colleagues here attend, where there is collaboration, learning and sharing. The difficulty comes in taking that collaboration to the next level and pushing it into delivery. There is an irony here, because local authorities, very often, are delivering statutory services and working on statutory services.

I think it's important, when we talk about standards, to talk about enabling standards as well and what really enables people to move from talking and sharing good practice to adopting good practice. And perhaps the Welsh Government needs to think about who carries the cost of collaboration. How could national Government support collaboration between local government? How can we reward beleaguered executives and senior officers to collaborate, because that is difficult and demanding and risky? And the projects I've worked on where we've really striven for collaboration, around procurement, and taking that upstream and procuring together, I'm really aware that local authorities, to deliver better services, are managing really complex supply chains. And I would like to emphasise procurement and planning for procurement as being a really important part of that. We need to move upstream and join together upstream, and then reward and incentivise collaboration, to move from great examples within local authorities to those being replicated across Wales.

I was just going to add, to give you some facts and figures around that, CDPS have certainly felt that we needed to provide forums for collaboration and provide forums where people might find ways to collaborate together. We've set up six communities of practice; these are in each—. They are in specialist digital areas, and people come together informally once a month and share experiences and hold conversations. There are 600 people across the sector now who attend those and, of those, 100 come from local government, and we would like to see that driven up.

We have created, with the chief digital officers, two pan-sector governance forums, the goal of which is to ensure that we do things in a less organic way, and in a much more joined-up way. So, for instance, we have the standards working group, which champions the service standard, which are those golden rules: if you're doing all of this stuff, you'll know that you'll have a good service. So, it champions those standards and it is mandated by the Minister to do that, and it also selects new technical and data standards, where needed. That's a pan-sector group, with representations from across local government, health, arm's-length bodies and central Government, and, in fact, the third sector.

There's a similar one around AI, because I think the backdrop to our conversation, in some ways for me and Myra, is that we need to get our house in order around digital, because, otherwise, we are going to do the same thing with AI. But there is an awareness that we don't want to do the same thing with AI, and the sector asked us to set up the AI steering group, in order that we can have a much more standard approach to how we implement AI. I would like to see a groundswell from attendance at all of these forums and collaborative communities, so that when leaders call on their staff to work in these more modern digital ways, they find their staff have more knowledge perhaps than they anticipate.

Okay. Siân, I think we're going to have to move on, I'm afraid—we have such little time, sorry. Perhaps we could go to Lee Waters now, on user-centred design. We've covered some of this, Lee, but did you want to probe a little further?

I'm conscious, Chair, that I've asked a lot already, so I'll keep mine very brief. I guess this relates to a number of the themes you've discussed already, in terms of leadership and maturity of understanding. The concept of user-centred design is central to the Welsh digital strategy; how well is that understood, and how well is that being reflected in practice?

It will have to be a brief answer, I'm afraid.

I would say, briefly, improving. It's improving, and being implemented in patches and good examples being shared, as Harriet was saying, through the communities of practice, but not yet adopted as the primary way of working, alongside other digital delivery techniques. But moving in the right direction. The dial is shifting.

Can I add—? I think a lot of that is around, 'We ought to be doing this, oughtn't we?', and there is not enough recognition, which needs to come, that the reason why we do things in a user-centred design way is so that we get things right first time and don't have to spend the money to retrofit, or spend the money for the manual fulfilment because people cannot engage with what we've designed.

The user-centred design is, in the end, a value-for-money tool, and that isn't recognised as it needs to be. At the moment, it's, 'We've got to work in this modern way, haven't we?' The reason why we do that is for value for money, so we deliver the correct piece of work, rather than something that only half works and it either just has to be lived with as something that only half works, or we have to spend the money to do it again. We don't want those things. User-centred design is a value-for-money approach, which also happens to improve people's lives.

Okay. Laura Anne Jones.

Thank you, Chair. Thank you for your comprehensive answers. You've answered most of our questions, which is good, but if I may just drag you back to skills and capacity just before I move you onto resources. I've just got two quick questions. The first one: you've already given us a comprehensive answer on how you support digital skills development across local government and what the challenges are, carrot and stick, all that sort of thing, and all the challenges—low skills, being stretched for resources and lack of control over spending—but you mentioned, when you were talking about a carrot-and-stick approach, penalties as well; I heard that come out of your mouth. I just wondered if you could expand on that. And also how would you support local government in recruiting the right people with the right skills from the offset, so you don't have to train once they're in post? Thank you.

I'll pick up on talent and then Harriet can talk about spend controls. The battle for digital talent is really intense, and national Government as well struggles to find and retain digital talent. I think it's another argument for greater local authority collaboration to make the value proposition really attractive; digital staff need to have exciting projects to work on and the potential to grow and the potential to move around. So, I think again, two points that Lee was making earlier: greater collaboration between local authorities and national and local government. If they worked in that way, alongside CDPS, we can build a very attractive offer so people can move across sectors and really make a difference. So, it is difficult, but I think there are opportunities to improve the value proposition that we can offer to attract and retain digital staff.

Yes, penalties. I don't think there's any appetite for spend controls in Wales, but having a service standard is a really good, potentially simple way to encourage organisations to run good services, because it's pretty simple, you can be assessed against it, and benchmarked. And we can discuss all sorts of ways of making that visible, making people feel competitive about improving their services, or there are other top-down ways of doing it, which are some of the things we wanted to discuss with our Cabinet Secretary around a simply strong ministerial mandate. We approve these, we adopt these. The service standard has been adopted by Welsh Government, but how aware are Ministers that these are the golden rules? And how much can we get Ministers to mandate and support all of their teams to support and deliver against these standards? So, I think we would probably go more with the kind of assessment, benchmarking, do we make that public, don't we—. I think we want to co-design something that is far more high profile in terms of the need to comply with these tried-and-tested global measures of what is good.

Okay. I'm afraid that's all we've got time for. We'll have to leave it there. Thank you both for giving evidence to committee this morning. You will be sent a transcript to check for factual accuracy. Diolch yn fawr.

Okay, committee, we'll break very briefly while we have our new witnesses, who are with us on site, take their places.

We move on, then, to our second evidence session today on digital local government and we will hear from Audit Wales. I'm very pleased to welcome, joining us here in committee on site, Tim Buckle, who is local government audit manager; Andrew Strong, audit manager; and also Stephen Lisle, audit manager. Thank you all very much for coming in to give evidence today. I think we learned from our first evidence session that there's a lot to cover, and we need fairly brief questions and answers if we're going to get through our questions, so I hope everybody will understand that.

Let me begin, then, with some questions on national strategic direction and priorities, that potential tension between national priorities and local delivery, and whether, in your work, looking at strategic approaches to digital, you've seen any differences in digital priorities between individual local authorities and also between local and national priorities. In essence, I guess, is there enough coherence in Wales at the moment?

Thanks, Chair. So, I'll take that question initially. I suppose, through that work, what we didn't do was undertake a mapping exercise to look at all of the priorities in the round and whether they're linked to each other, so I think that's probably relevant to point out first of all. But we did pull them all together in our reports, and you can see in a national summary report we published from this review that we summarise those priorities set out in local reports, and we summarise those under some broad groupings of improving services and access to them; supporting growth and regeneration; supporting council functions and ways of working; and then some around facilitating transformation and better use of data.

So, as I say, we didn't necessarily map out all the priorities and look at them and whether they were similar or different and so on, but what we could see, for example, through our look at digital strategies, was clear links between things like the digital strategy for Wales, some of the themes in there around data and collaboration, digital services, digital economy and so on. So, they have relevance to those key themes we pulled out.

The other thing I think we will probably come to on that work is that when we looked at the digital strategies, where councils had them in place or had a clear strategic approach in place, there was, generally, evidence that they considered national priorities, whether those were the national well-being goals in particular, which we asked questions around, or the digital strategy for Wales, and also their own well-being objectives. But where councils didn't have a clear strategic approach, it was less obvious and more difficult for them to demonstrate that.

The area I think that was more mixed was consideration of other public sector bodies' well-being objectives specifically, so we looked for evidence of the extent to which, in their strategic approaches, councils considered what other partners were doing, looking for opportunities then as a consequence for multiple benefits or to avoid duplication and so on, and that was mixed. So, as I said, some councils did that and some we found either difficult to find whether they had, or less clear if they had at all, really.

So, I suppose, coming back to what all that means from our perspective, the risks of not aligning those objectives, priorities, is what we've spelled out in our reports, really: duplication, potentially, but also a failure to identify opportunities for multiple benefits. So, overall, a mixed picture, I think, in terms of the national, local, but also the between-public-bodies part as well.

Okay. Lee.

Can I just quickly ask, in terms of the audit team who did this work, was there digital specialism within that team?

In general, no, in terms of who delivered the work, but in terms of the project development, there was. And Andrew, who is obviously here today, is our digital specialist, in effect, audit manager with responsibility for that, and was involved in the scoping at different stages of the audit.

Because it does feel like, if you don't mind me saying, in reading it, a template approach to an audit, rather than a particular understanding of what digital transformation is about. For example, you quote the Welsh Government's national strategy for Wales—the heart of that is user-centred design; not once in your whole report do you mention the term 'user-centred design', which is a pretty standard, well-understood term in digital transformation.

I guess in response to that we would point to the rationale for the audit. So, this comes down to our duties, so we were looking to discharge two specific duties as part of the audit. One was around the extent to which councils have proper arrangements to secure value for money, and the second one, then, is around the application of the sustainable development principle. So, the question hierarchy and the questions we were looking at were all focused around that, and the audit criteria and questions are published in our national summary report, as well as a local report. So, that's the perspective we came from, I guess—from a value-for-money perspective primarily. So, no, in answer to the question, the people delivering the work in the main weren't specialists in digital.

Don't you think it's ironic that a report criticising local government for having a lumpy or patchy understanding of digital has been done by a team and organisation with itself a poor understanding of digital? Doesn't that reinforce the problem?

If I can come in, just to say that we are reflecting on our approach to digital. So, we're reflecting on our audit offering at the minute, so we've got a new vision in draft and digital is a big part of the context for that. So, we realise that, internally and externally, we need to do more on digital. So, internally ourselves, we need to modernise, we need to adopt a digital mindset more and we've got similar challenges to the bodies we audit—we'd recognise that. And externally, we know that we need to reflect on the digital projects for the bodies we audit, we need to be better at auditing the digital mindset of other bodies and the culture of other bodies. So, yes, we realise that and we're thinking about that, that's in train.

Okay, thank you.

Okay. Digital service standard: to what extent was it apparent that local authorities were working within that standard, the Wales framework that applies, so that they would work towards better and more efficient public services?

Thanks, Chair. We haven't done any direct audit work on the effectiveness of the adoption of the digital standard for Wales and how local authorities have embedded that in designing and implementing new digital and IT systems. But in our future work, we can build into our methodology about how the 12 points and the standard have been reflected in that digital development across Wales. We do have an awareness that the Centre for Digital Public Services are doing some work in this area with regard to the digital service standard, and they have an assessment framework in place around that.

Would you have a view on the fact that the standards are not—there's no mandate at the moment? Would you have a view on what benefits local authorities, and I guess public bodies more generally, would gain if they were required to sign up to the standards and actively work towards them?

I think it would. Aiming to comply and follow the best practice in the 12-point standard would certainly go some way in terms of designing better digital systems, yes.

Okay. Peter Fox.

Good morning. I just wanted to get into where senior leaders, both officers and political leaders, are with this digital agenda. Have they really got it? Is there a consistent approach that you're starting to see through your work across Wales, or is it sporadic? I know there have been views that there are 22 different definitions of what digital ought to be. Where do you think they are?

I'll take that one. So, through the digital strategy work that we undertook, we didn't necessarily deal with that completely, but we did ask questions around the extent to which the strategic approach was widely understood by both senior officers and members as well. I guess, not surprisingly, where there was a clear digital strategic approach, we did find, generally, that was well understood, and there was understanding of what that would mean in terms of service delivery. Where there wasn't, obviously it's more difficult to evidence that, and we didn't necessarily see that, and a part of that would be a clear understanding of what the council is trying to achieve through digital. Stephen, do you want to come in on the cyber security work—a few observations from our cyber security work specifically around leadership as well, to add to that?

Yes. I've been leading work on cyber for a couple of years, and we looked at digital leadership in several ways. I guess it's worth saying that that was work was pan-public sector, rather than LG specific. We looked at leadership arrangements for cyber, and one of the things we found was, in some organisations, there was a tendency to rely on the IT team for digital project delivery and leadership. So, we flagged that as a risk and we said that it's important that the IT teams develop relationships properly with the business, that they understand the business, but also that senior leaders really get it, they really understand digital and are on board with it. I guess that was a finding specific to our cyber work that applies more generally. Senior leaders must have that digital mindset, so they understand it, because digital is as much about culture as it is about technology.

For your audit work, are you seeing that risk assessments are actually flagging digital appropriately, certainly from a cyber security perspective, but more generally? Because if it's a priority, and it's captured within a corporate plan, or service improvement plans, it ought to be flagged in a risk assessment. I wonder if that is the case, because that gives us a clear definition of how serious this agenda is being treated.

The work on cyber is a little bit old now, and we didn't look specifically at risk registers, but we did take the temperature of how much of a priority it was. The picture was quite mixed; it was pan-public sector. There was some recognition from some bodies that they needed to invest more upfront in cyber. So, there's clearly more to do on that.

Yes, okay.

I just think—one further point on that. The point we made again in our national summary report picks up on the fact that I think it was approximately half—it was half—of councils that have an up-to-date digital strategy. I think that's relevant to the point you made how engaged leaders are. It's not necessarily a straight, 'There isn't a digital strategy', but you can see we found that some were out of date, some were quite out of date, and we found, in some councils, there wasn't a clear strategic approach. So, I think that that probably provides some indication, if not evidence, to support the answer.

As a past council leader, you can have strategies coming out of your ears, but unless they're embedded in a corporate plan, they tend to get little attention. Thank you for that.

Just to add about cyber security, on the corporate-level risk registers for the local authorities, that is a red risk on their strategic-level risk register. So, yes.

Good. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you. Laura Anne Jones.

Diolch, Chair. Good morning, firstly. To what extent are local authorities, in your view, balancing the need for their long-term digital planning over the short-term needs and, of course, funding? Thank you.

I think it's probably helpful to set out what we mean when we look for long-term thinking in terms of the sustainable development principle. So, from our perspective, it's not about the length of time of a strategy or plan, it's about giving appropriate consideration to what long-term means in the context of, in this case, digital. As you can see in our report, in most cases, that was around about three to five years that councils felt was an appropriate timescale.

Clearly, we recognise the financial situation that local authorities are operating in, and, inevitably, there will be some balancing, as the question says, about short and long-term needs. I think some observations from our work, which I think are relevant to this, would be, as we set out, again, when we undertook the work, many councils—I think most councils—hadn't fully costed or identified funding, or both, for the digital strategies. That makes it more difficult, then, to plan for the longer term. It makes it more difficult to assess value for money over the longer term. Taking into account we wouldn't expect for everything to be fully costed over the longer term, but we would expect to see some idea of is the funding available relative to the ambitions and the strategies, and have they been costed, where appropriate or where possible. 

The other key important point around that, then, is the lack of arrangements to monitor value for money that we saw in many councils, because again, in the absence of those arrangements it's difficult to monitor that over the longer term. But it's also important to recognise that we did see quite a few examples of longer term thinking in terms of digital projects or priorities that are extending beyond the lifetime of set-out strategies. So, it's not to say that we didn't see any evidence of longer term thinking or attempts to invest in technology over the longer term, but I think the point about lack of funding for the plans over the longer term is probably the most relevant one.

The other thing I think it's probably relevant to note is that a number of councils set aside transformation funds, either specifically linked to digital or just generally, which work with the idea of investing over the longer term to deliver benefits as well. So, I think that's probably relevant too. It's difficult to say where the balance lies. It’s probably not for us to comment on where we think the right balance is, but certainly there's evidence of some of that longer term thinking as well.

Thank you. You just spoke about, which is also in your evidence, that councils lacked an explicit focus on that value for money and sustainable development. So, what do you think the risks are associated with that, and what needs to change when sharing best practice? What do you see as a way forward? Thank you.

What we mean by that, I suppose—it's the things like examples we found in the work around not setting out what the intended benefits of strategies or projects are, not monitoring either whether they're delivered, or often monitoring whether they're delivered but not monitoring the impact. As a consequence, they're not being able to assess the value for money of strategic approaches or individual projects. The lack of formal and systematic arrangements to capture lessons learned and to share those, again, in relation to strategies and projects regarding digital. And also an observation that where there are arrangements to set out and monitor value for money, they're not always consistently implemented as well. And sometimes, for example, planned savings from strategies are not articulated, and sometimes where they are set out, they're not always monitored in terms of achievement as well.

So, those are the kinds of things that we were talking about. I suppose the risks to all of those would be them not achieving value for money, and I obviously heard the evidence in the previous session around user-centred design. I guess a lot of this also comes in there, because we maybe didn't use that phrase, but we did talk about engaging local communities and the full diversity of those communities and the importance of that. We articulated in a fairly similar way that you end up designing solutions that maybe don't meet people's needs and therefore don't secure value for money.

Thank you. Yes, you said that one of the risks is things not being implemented. It doesn't matter how much money you're putting into it, if they're not being implemented, there's obviously risk involved there. How do you think such risks can be avoided?

I think we set out in our national summary report probably the sort of framework where we think councils could improve in these areas more broadly, as well as recommendations and individual reports. But some of the things that we highlighted were drawing on a broader evidence base to inform digital approaches and certainly to help develop a citizen-centred approach to digital. I’ve already talked about aligning strategies, so the importance of aligning strategies, both within councils and with other partners to avoid duplication and to identify multiple benefits. Simply, in response to what I said earlier, I guess, setting out what the resource requirements are for strategies or projects alongside intended benefits then provides a framework to monitor value for money based on those things, and then putting in place arrangements to monitor the impact and value for money of digital strategies. So, those are the sorts of things I think we think could be put in place, then, to reduce those risks.

Diolch. Thank you, Chair. 

Okay, diolch, Laura. Siân Gwenllian.

Tim, did you not get that question?

Not fully. I understood it was to do with collaboration, but not—

Siân, do you want to just briefly—?

Thank you and thanks for repeating the question. So, I think our main observation in terms of partnership working and where we think there's scope to go further—in the review we undertook we asked the question, essentially: do councils consider the full range of potential partners when developing their approaches to digital? So, that could be, for example, through some form of stakeholder mapping exercise. And our main finding in this area was that, in many cases, that didn't happen in a comprehensive or systematic way. Where we did see lots of examples of partnership working, what we didn't see was that structured approach to considering the full range of potential opportunities, and then seeking to take advantage of them would be the next stage. 

So, the issue I think, then, for us becomes potential lost opportunity costs, so it's not necessarily in terms of what's currently happening but it's what could happen. We also did highlight in some of our reports around where there were partnerships in place, they weren't necessarily, again, being monitored in terms of their effectiveness or value for money as well. So, there are two angles to that. But I think it is important to emphasise that we did see quite a few examples of partnership working, and those specific examples are in our reports as well.

Yes, I think it's important to—. In terms of what we looked at, we didn't go into great detail on individual projects. So, I think we probably wouldn't say that that project or that project was a great example, simply because we wouldn't have gathered sufficient evidence. We did see examples, though, of cross-sector working between health and local government; we've, again, highlighted some of those. And in particular, I think, around the regional economic regions, so city deals, particularly, for example, in north Wales and in the Swansea bay area, there were clear cross-sector working through digital strategies, with broader objectives set by either city deals or also through the public services boards as well. So, again, there are specifics in the reports but I don't think we would say that that example or that example was good practice, because we wouldn't have the evidence basis to support that.

Okay, Siân? 

Diolch yn fawr. Lee Waters. 

You mentioned in your report that something like 7 per cent of people are digitally excluded. You don't really make the read-across that the whole point of user-centred design is that it designs services for people regardless of whether they're digitally excluded, not that they can access the services. But you also mentioned there's very little collaboration, as Siân mentioned, and very little joint procurement. So, overall, the picture you paint is pretty bleak, isn't it, and as said yourself, even though your lens is from value for money, in terms of the raised expectations that citizens have living in the digital world, if you use Amazon versus your council website, they're worlds apart. What are your concerns about that gap widening between citizens' quality and experience of public services because of that? 

I guess that we could start with—. Stephen, do you want to start on the digital exclusion point, and then I'll move on from there?

They're all related, really, aren't they? It's the same theme. 

Yes. So, we looked at digital inclusion a couple of years ago, so that 7 per cent figure was used in that report, and it's a really important issue, isn't it? If we're going down this trend of digitising services, digital inclusion needs to be at the forefront of everyone's mind because we can't be leaving people behind, and in that report there are testimonies from people who were feeling like they were left behind because they weren't able to access digital services for various reasons—affordability of devices, access to a good internet connection, lack of skills or lack of willingness. 

Sorry, with respect, my question is about the design of services that enable people, regardless of their own digital maturity, to be able to access public services, and the ability of public bodies to meet raised expectations. 

Yes. I think what I was coming to was that public bodies must engage with this digital inclusion thing as they're designing services; it must be at the forefront of their minds, and that report does quote some findings specifically from local government. At that time, we found that most local authorities were considering digital inclusion. Some of them were mentioning it in their digital strategies, but there was plenty more to do on that.

And I guess, in terms of our specific local government work, our main finding probably relating to understanding, to use the phrase, 'user need' was around the extent to which—again, bearing in mind the focus on digital strategic approach overall—councils were undertaking involvement activity to inform that approach, which is very much around all of that, in terms of solutions, what strategic approach they follow. And that picture was very variable. So, in some councils, there was little or no engagement activity, particularly around the public, that was undertaken. In others, there was quite extensive engagement activity and it was targeted at specific groups as well. So, I think that, probably, is where it starts, in terms of the work we looked at, which is, again, an understanding of what the needs are from different groups, different perspectives, and then using that to inform, not just individual services, but the entire strategic approach as well. And through some of that work as well, there are specific examples where digital exclusion features within that, and councils identified those issues and set out specific commitments in their digital strategies, not to leave people behind in that sense, and to maintain two channels and so on.

And to what extent did you look at examples of where organisations or systems have been able to bring about change, and what we can learn from that?

That wasn’t the focus of this review specifically; it was more about—. I suppose we posed the overall question to start out work in this area, really: 'Is there a strategic approach?' Now, as Stephen said, we are looking at what further work we can do around this. And at the time, we had that very much in mind. This will be our first specific look around digital for a while in local government, and the first starting point would be, 'Is there a strategic approach initially?' So, that was the main focus at this point.

So, one of the reflections earlier, in the earlier session, was about how do you drive system change. In the UK Government, the Government’s digital service, back in the 2010s, introduced spend controls, which we discussed in the last session. There’s evidence from the previous witnesses that there’s no appetite in Wales for spend control, as they said to us. So, in the absence of that, how do you get compliance and change on the digital service standard, for example, or just generally in the system? Because this is about culture change, it’s about upskilling, it’s about leadership. From an audit point of view, how do you recommend that system change is achieved in the absence of any sticks?

I think we’d be careful about suggesting solutions too much and getting into the realms of policy. It’s clear there are some judgments around some of that. But I suppose leadership, clearly, is important in all of that, and any systems change would flow from leadership. Traditionally, in that sort of area, there are different ways of doing it, in terms of support for, as you said, more directive action. I guess it’s difficult for us to comment on what we would see as what would be the most appropriate choice at this stage. I’m not really sure we’ve looked at that through our work, or there’s much we can add to that in terms of our audit work.

But you looked at leadership.

We looked at the extent to which—. We didn’t look at leadership, we looked at the extent to which there was a strategic approach, and that that had been communicated and was understood, in the sense of a very kind of simplistic way of looking at it: 'Is there an approach that will result in decisions that will mean changes to services that, for example, members and councils are signed up to, or is it a strategy that’s being developed by officers, by the IT department?' So, we were really looking at that issue, fundamentally, in terms of the leadership questions and the buy-in and so on of the standard.

Okay, thank you. 

Siân. Siân Gwenllian. 

In terms of timescales for delivery and urgency, we didn’t set our expectations of what those timescales should be. We did look at the timescales within the strategies. I think, in terms of our recommendations to those councils, for example, who didn’t have a strategic approach, we did recommend they develop one, and we did highlight that as a weakness in those arrangements. It’s not for us to say what the priorities of public bodies should be, but, in essence, we did certainly think there should be action taken to address those. So, yes, in part.

In terms of the switch from analogue, it’s not something we specifically examined, but I think we’ve already covered the change in emphasis, the need to get up to speed with this agenda quickly. It's absolutely something we would recognise. As Steve has already mentioned earlier, that’s something we’re also doing as an organisation. So, I think the theme certainly we recognise, but in terms of the specifics, it’s not something we particularly picked up on in terms of what the timescale should be.

Okay, Siân. I don’t know if you’re able to help with this, but as part of working towards the standards required for digital services, there are Welsh language goals as well. I think there is concern that perhaps the technology that exists isn’t really very useful in terms of having Welsh language content and allowing service users to use those opportunities through the Welsh language. Is that something that you would have addressed or become aware of at all?

It’s not something we specifically would have looked at, but it does come back to the point about integration of different objectives, because clearly councils have a Welsh language strategy and Welsh language responsibilities under legislation and so on, and most have objectives around that as well. So, I guess that comes back to integration and ensuring that whatever approach you’re following also takes account of other things as well, and one of those would be the Welsh language as well. But in terms of specific work, I don’t think we’ve looked at that as an issue.

Just to say, we’ve mentioned those standards several times this morning, haven’t we? And going back to us reflecting on what we do, I wonder whether audit is part of the answer in terms of ensuring compliance with those standards. Could we build those standards into our work more routinely as something we’re looking for in our audits? I think that would be a good way forward for us.

Yes, I think it would be interesting to get your view on the work of Audit Wales and the importance of the digital transformation that I guess we’re fairly well into now, but obviously has some way to go for local authorities and other public bodies. In your work, what sort of prioritisation are you likely to give in the short term, as well as the longer term, to try and ensure that, in Wales, our local authorities, our public bodies, are as up to speed as they can be with that digital transformation, given, as you say, the value-for-money benefits and service-effectiveness benefits of doing that?

I think specifically from a local government perspective, going back to my earlier answer, we undertook this work as a first stage, really. The first question we were asking in overall terms was, ‘Is there a strategic approach?’ But we certainly recognise as an organisation that digital is something, as Steve said, we need to look at more and we need to reflect on our own audit approach in that area as well. Whether that’s using digital in terms of how we audit, but also then how we audit digital projects or the approaches of other organisations, that’s something very much on our radar already organisationally, where we’ve got some work already under way in terms of how we might do all those things and consider the opportunities for us to get into that space more, but also then improve and change the way we audit some of that as well. So, yes, this certainly is a priority, I think, for us.

Okay, thank you very much. If there are no other questions from committee members, it just falls to me to thank you very much for coming in to give evidence to committee today, and to tell you that you will be sent a transcript of this evidence session to check for factual accuracy. Diolch yn fawr.

Okay, committee will break before our next evidence session.

Okay, we have reached our third evidence session today on digital local government, and we will hear from the Local Government Information Unit and Cwmpas. And I've very pleased to welcome, joining us here in person, Jocelle Lovell, director of inclusive communities with Cwmpas, and Marc Davies, who is their lead consultant on digital. And joining us remotely, Jonathan Carr-West, who's chief executive officer of the Local Government Information Unit.

Welcome to you all. Thanks very much for attending to give evidence to committee today. Perhaps I might begin then with some general questions, really, as a general overview. And firstly, how would you assess the current digital landscape within the public sector generally and specifically within local government here in Wales? Who would like to begin?

I'll kick off then. Well, obviously, we're still, in my view, recovering from the impact of COVID. There's been a hell of a lot of change over a short period of time, and forced change. A lot of it was good, in that it's accelerated the take-up of digital, which is what we want in Wales, but with that has come maybe some rushed take-up of digital, and some of that has led to maybe some bad habits starting. And we just need to reflect, really, on what we've learnt over that period and start looking back at some of the strategies that were in place pre COVID, and whether they are fit for purpose now, post COVID. I think digital is such a fast-moving field, some of these strategies are out of date and they're not adaptive enough to keep up with the pace of change.

We think the landscape is patchy, isn't it? So, there are examples of really good practice for people who are really embracing digital, and I'd say overall that most people accept that we need to go with digital transformation—they're not necessarily against it, but it's the journey that people need to go on to really buy into that process.

So, we know that, in some areas, there are some great things happening; there's some great collaboration, but that's not consistent across 22 local authorities. Twenty-two ways of doing things isn't the best way to work, and it's how we can look to streamline and get the best practice shared across those local authorities that really are embracing the digital, but then again, it also comes down to capacity, it comes down to funding. There are a lot of difficult choices that local authorities have to make on budgets. Yourselves, you're in a difficult position in Welsh Government in terms of budget setting. And then when you have to prioritise, sometimes, even though there's money set aside for digital, is the funding mechanism right? Is it the right amount of money to enable what really needs to happen to transform digital public services?

Okay. Lee.

Can I just ask Marc if he could elaborate on the bad habits he thinks have developed?

I think there's been a big focus on service design over the last couple of years and the end users involved with accessing services. I think, somewhat, we've forgotten the operational staff that local authorities employ in delivering services. So, very much they should be as involved in the service design process as the end user. I think, sometimes, there's more focus on the end user than there is on the operational teams involved in delivering services, and they've been left behind a little bit.

So, there's more focus needed on the culture of staff within local authorities and how they deliver services and adjust to technology. There's a limited number of people with digital confidence and capability. And those who have 'digital' in their title are very limited in number compared to the whole critical mass of people involved in delivering services. So, I think there needs to be more spread—. And maybe the word 'digital' scares a lot of people, I feel. I see that on a day-to-day basis, in that, you say 'digital' to a public service team, and 70 per cent of them will hide behind the sofa type of thing, because they're worried about it; they're not comfortable with it. I think if we try and approach it more from a business improvement angle, you'd get more buy-in from a wider range of people than a select few.

Do you think that the terms 'digital' and 'IT' are used interchangeably, whereas they shouldn't be?

Yes, I think people use them and mean the same thing, and they're not the same thing. 'Digital' is the platform; 'IT' is the technology that can enable you to improve that service or deliver whatever you want to deliver. And I think, quite often, people don't understand the difference between them, and they, as you say, use them interchangeably, and that confuses people.

Funnily enough, when I was walking in, and in the queue with the apprenticeship event that's going on at the other side of the Senedd today, I was talking to the chair of an organisation, who said that AI has been brilliant for them in terms of improving their work and their output, but it's also meant job reductions. So, when you get messages like that coming out, and we're trying to change the culture of people to embrace digital and to move forward with that transformation, if, in the back of their minds, they're thinking that all this is going to mean job losses, then, actually, it's going to make them resistant to it. So, I think there's a real piece of work that we need to do—and that's not just in public sector. In terms of our digital inclusion work, I lead the Digital Communities Wales programme, and we see that across all sectors. There's a real worry about what it means for people, and I think we need to do more work—back to what Marc said—in terms of setting the culture of organisations and the understanding. Because, at the end of the day, this is about service improvement. Digital is just the means, the technology is the means to deliver it. All we want to do is improve services for people.

There's a lot of change. Business improvement leaders, you get more of those than you get digital leaders at the moment in Wales. It will take a long time to establish a critical mass of digital leaders. But everybody's interested in improving, continuous improvement, or business improvement, and to do that, technology will automatically—. It needs to be utilised for that to happen. So, it's a subtle way of bringing digital into the agenda without maybe forcing it.

Okay. Thanks, both. Jonathan.

I would very much build on the points that have been made. [Inaudible.]—this is not a uniquely Welsh challenge; I think we see exactly the same thing in the rest of the UK, and indeed in other parts of the world. It's just as was said, that we have these pockets of excellence, but we don't have—. It doesn't add up to a system change; it hasn't yet become the new normal. I think, too often, we see some digital innovation, and I think we—[Inaudible.]—the change to the way we think than a change to culture. But that's challenging for local authorities because they have such a broad range of responsibilities. So, they have the need, the potential, to really transform how they're delivering services by embracing digital, but they also need to be part of curating and initiating and facilitating a much bigger public digital ecosystem that goes across the public sector, and indeed beyond. And, of course, they need to be supporting communities, supporting digital infrastructure, supporting digital inclusion. So, it's a complex—. The local authority role in this is really wide ranging, so it's perhaps not surprising that we still haven't completely normalised this. I think one of the ironies here is that there are so many changes in the digital space, and it moves so quickly, and yet, in a way, we're still having the conversation we were having 10 years ago, which is, lots of great initiatives, lots of great pilots, but we don't yet see systemic wholesale transformation.

Jonathan, I hear what you say, that these are issues across the globe, but would you say that local government in England, for example, is more or less in the same position as local government in Wales? Are there key differences there?

Broadly, I think, people are in the same—. A lot of the barriers are very similar. So, you have a series, I think, of quite entrenched barriers, moving forward on this, whether that's the legacy systems that we have in place, which are pretty ubiquitous, whether it's budgetary constraints, as Marc and Jocelle both mentioned, whether it's that we still have procurement frameworks that haven't really adapted to this new world, or whether it's culture of leadership. I think those are the sorts of barriers to change, and those are the same in England and in Wales. And, of course, we could pick out English councils that have done great work. I think of Essex County Council or Leeds or Barnsley, all of whom have amazing digital strategies. But I think I would say it's the same picture of pockets of really good work and that we haven't yet achieved system-wide change.

Thank you for that, Jonathan. In terms of the Welsh Government's role, the Welsh Government's digital strategy and action plan, do they provide the right foundation and structure for public bodies to develop and plan for digital innovation, or could the Welsh Government be doing more? I'll just begin with Jonathan and come to you.

I'll be brief. I think it's a really good plan, and I think the fact that the plan exists at all is a really good thing. The missions are broadly right. I think the emphasis on citizens, on workforce is encouraging. I wonder if we need something more about joining up across the public service landscape—so, having more innovation, more approaches that bring us together, aligning cultures and leadership, particularly around health and care, aligning procurement frameworks. So, I think it's going in the right direction, but there are, maybe, some of those specifics that could be tightened up a bit more to broaden it out.

Okay, Jonathan. Thank you. Sorry, Marc—go on.

That's all right. We're asking local authorities to enter into an iterative change process, so the strategy needs to, somehow or other, align with that. It's clearly time for it to be refreshed, because it was pre-COVID, pre-AI, pre loads of things. Connectivity has moved on considerably since then. I do a lot with connectivity across Wales, and, since the Starlink revolution, there's no corner of Wales that can't be connected now immediately. So, that's not a problem any more, if you adapt systems that are out there. That wasn't to be when the strategy was launched. So, I think, somehow or other—. It's difficult, because it was put in place for a term of government, and a lot of things happened during that term. That iterativeness within the strategy, I think, is important, because of the field of technology, because it is such a rapidly moving area. Having something set in stone for four or five years, I don't think, is fit for purpose, personally.

Okay. Thank you, Marc.

When I was doing my homework last night, just refreshing myself about how we even got to a digital strategy, I came across the 'System Reboot' report that, really, fundamentally led to having a digital strategy in Wales. And through my work, certainly over the last four years, I cite Wales as best practice by having that strategy, having that cross-Government responsibility for digital, that it's not just one person's problem—everybody needs to be involved in it.

I think, for me, it's definitely time for a refresh. Like Marc said, so much has happened since the launch of that strategy, but I don't think we should beat ourselves up. It was a vision. It was a great starting point, and it was ambitious, and a lot has been achieved. If you look at the overall purpose of digital in Wales improving the lives of everyone through collaboration, innovation and better public services, have we achieved that within four years? No, we haven't.  Are we on that journey to achieving it? Yes, we are, and I think that's fair. But it's time now to, maybe, just have a look at, okay, what the barriers are, what's holding us back from achieving this, and maybe strengthening the framework that sits alongside the strategy to better support and enable the deliverers of public services to do that transformation journey, and maybe some more accountability written into it. I think, for me, probably the one area where it could be strengthened, when we're looking at a refresh of it, is that accountability, because, whilst we want to be co-operative and collaborative, sometimes we do need to say to somebody, 'Is this being done? Is it being achieved and, if not, why not?'

Peter.

Yes, it's great as a strategy. I get it needs to be updated. But what's fundamental is those barriers, isn't it, and changing that wider mindset. Are you seeing there's a willingness within the leader cadre to actually embrace this and take it forward, or is it so disparate that, I don't know, there's something missing? Is there a leadership void somewhere at either this level or across local government? What's missing?

Yes, there are gaps in leadership, and I think that's across different areas. There is leadership from Government to the degree there's a Minister that the strategy sits under, and then you have the CDO's framework, the CDPS, so there's a framework there. That works. But then we’ve also got to think wider than that, and some of the leaders that we're expecting to drive this transformation forward, they've not bought into it themselves. They're not part of—. They haven't been brought into that digital era, on that digital journey themselves. It could be that, in the next four or five years, they're thinking of not being employees and possibly retiring. And I'm not saying it's an issue about old people—from the digital inclusion work, it affects everybody—but, sometimes, if you're having to make decisions on how we deliver social services and how we do this transformation, then your social services are going to be the key thing, because they're the people in your constituency or your local area that are going to be shouting at you. That's where you're going to focus. And if you're not digitally minded yourself and if you've not bought into the digital agenda, then it's that mindset that needs to shift

So, that mindset’s holding back improvement in a service area that really needs it, because—

Absolutely. I was going to say, social care is probably a bad example, because there's been some brilliant work going on in that area. But, yes, that mindset will hold back the transformation, definitely.

Thank you.

Okay, Peter. Siân Gwenllian.

Okay, who'd like to begin?

I'm happy to respond. I come across, in my day-to-day work, a lot of the digital strategies that local authorities have created or adopted. To be frank about it, in a lot of them, there's a big disconnect between what the strategy outlines and what the operational teams and departments are actually delivering. And that's a worry for me because a lot of these strategies are more outward facing than inward facing, I feel. It projects a vision, which is great, for where they want to go and what they want to do, but when it boils down to the day-to-day nuts and bolts of operational work, there's a bit of a disconnect as to how some of those strategies match that operational business plan, or how they feed in, in my experience, and that's a worry. I think, again, that's an area that needs to be explored.

It would be nice to see some more, maybe, regional co-operation when it comes to local authorities and strategies. Is there a need for neighbouring local authorities to have bespoke strategies for themselves when, perhaps, they could be working more collaboratively? I think there's an opportunity there.

A little bit is starting to happen with the city deal kind of operations across Wales. That is encouraging a lot more collaboration across more than one local authority, so to speak, or regions. Maybe there's something to build on there. But, again, to move the agenda forward within each local authority, I think there needs to be a closer focus on delivery teams, because there's a lot of—. You've got a lot of silo working within local authorities. They're independent businesses in themselves, really, and you want to try and encourage digital transformation or change or adoption to happen within each of those service delivery sectors. And, yes, you might see one or two of them excelling, accelerating or going forward, where others are quite stagnant then, and it's a tough job to move that forward in some of those other areas. And they're big departments, some of those departments, employing a lot of staff, and it's a difficult thing to kick-start, really, if it hasn't happened.

A lot of local authorities have got limited digital teams, so some of those teams will be working on specific task and finish projects. So, it might be social care, for example, and they'll take that as a task-and-finish piece of work and they won't start another piece of work until that's finished. And, in some cases, that piece of work in itself might take 18 months to two years. So, you've got an intensive piece of work happening in a local authority in one area for a considerable period of time, with nothing happening in other departments of those local authorities until that has finished, because of the size of the digital teams that are involved in supporting that transformation to happen.

There are some—

Well, there are some good examples in Scotland, for example. They've adopted some good approaches ahead of Wales. They're probably six or seven years ahead of Wales on their digital change programme, so there's some learning to be taken from there. I think that they seem to be—. In my experience, we've got the public sector and the third sector being independent in Wales, whereas in Scotland—. A lot of service delivery is delivered by the third sector for the public sector, and they're independent in Wales, whereas, in Scotland, it's transformation across the board. And I think that that, aligned to the work that we do on a day-to-day basis, seems to be a good model that has worked quite well. 

Let me bring Jonathan in as well. Jonathan.

Well, look, I'm not sure that there is any country I would point to and say, 'Look, they've cracked it. That's what we should be looking at.' There are fantastic examples: Estonia, digital governance in Estonia is brilliant; there are places like Singapore that do this very effectively, although they are, obviously, very, very different jurisdictions. And I think that that's the challenge. It can be difficult to just import best practice wholesale from other places, because it's developed in such different contexts. We've got pockets of excellence in the US. I mentioned Denver earlier, where they've got some great work around digital equity, and there's work in Queensland around community-led digital transformation. But I think, for me, the challenge is that what we also see are some of those challenges around connection across the public sector, particularly between local government, health and care. There's a great project in Norfolk, in England, where they've tried to do digital transformation across the integrated care system.

The challenge here is, in a way, yes, you can—. We talk about, and Jocelle mentioned this, the challenge if you silo digital as a thing in itself—that there's a digital strategy, and someone owns that, and that person over there does that—and we know that that doesn't then have a transformative effect. And I guess that my thing is that we are really bad at working across the public sector and having that collaboration, full stop. And that's not just about digital; that's about culture, that's about systems, that's about budgets. And I think we need to be careful about thinking, 'Oh, digital can fix that for us.' I think that digital can model some ways of doing it, but if we're rubbish at doing collaboration in every other respect, we haven't got any chance of doing it in digital because that bedrock, that foundation just isn't there. Digital can be transformative, but it's not just going to magically come in and save us if we're doing everything else wrong.

So, we're back to leadership and changing—

I think we are. I think it always comes back to leadership—not heroic leadership, where we say, 'Well, you just need the right person', but leadership that really gets into systems, that thinks about how money moves around the system, how different institutions are incentivised, how we are starting from people and bringing services together around them, rather than expecting citizens to engage with this service, this service, this service. So, it's leadership, but it's also leadership that can do systems thinking that manages the whole system.

Jonathan, could I just ask: in terms of England, with health and social care being together, does that help them in terms of digital, or not, do you think?

Well, bringing health and social care together is very limited in England. You have places like greater Manchester where there have been some moves towards that, but by and large, part of the challenge in the English context is that health and social care remain essentially fairly unintegrated, and we've taken some baby steps over the last 10 years, but we haven't really brought them together, and they have very different digital systems. And frankly, the NHS—how do I put this diplomatically—is not necessarily a pace setter in terms of digital transformation.

Indeed. Okay, let's move on, then, Siân, if you're content, to Laura Anne Jones.

Diolch, and that's very true. Good morning. The CDO identified digital skills as a key cross-cutting theme that needs addressing if digital is going to improve the service delivery and generate efficiencies and create the public trust, which we've discussed this morning, that we all want to see. How do local authorities tackle this with the finite budgets that they have and the competitive market for those skills and mindset that we so desperately need in order for this to work, as you've just said? How do we futureproof these services by making it so attractive to come to local government to help sort this out? Thank you.

Yes, it's always going to be a challenge when there is a limited or a finite amount of money, but ultimately, if you want to transform public services using digital, then you need to attract the best people with the skills to do that whilst you're creating your own workforce, so, thinking back to the skills agenda, back to colleges, back to schools, how we're embedding the digital skills that we're going to need through the future, so we're actually creating, and thinking about the well-being of future generations Act, that we've got the skills that we need for Wales in the future. But in the short term, if we don't have those skills, then we need to find the money to bring those skills into Wales and actually make Wales the type of place that people want to come as part of that transformation journey. And I think, sometimes, that does come down to finding more money, whether that's money that comes from Government into local government to enable that to happen, but if we're serious about this happening, then there are a few things that need to be in place to enable that and, unfortunately, funding is one of the key issues.

Yes, of course; we recognise that. You've all talked about pockets of excellence of best practice in other countries—Scotland, Estonia, wherever it might be—is there a country that you could point to that looks at those challenges of attracting the right skills, and is achieving in that area? Thank you. Jonathan.

Jonathan.

I'm not sure this is quite an answer to your question, but I think Ireland is really instructive, because I agree with what Jocelle said, but the problem is, I'm not sure—. If I was being a bit glass-half-empty, I'm not sure we're ever going to have the money in local government, because in digital, in particular, there are these vast amounts—. You can get paid an awful lot of money in the private sector, and realistically, I'm not sure we can never compete with that. Maybe we need to try, I don't know, but part of the answer might also be working in collaboration with other sectors.

So, Ireland I think is an interesting example, because you have a big presence from all of the big digital companies in Ireland—Amazon, Google, et cetera. It is very hard across—. By the way, we have a recruitment and retention crisis across public services, it's not just digital. In Ireland, it is particularly hard, because basically, if you're a good, bright graduate in Ireland, you can go off and work for Google and earn a lot of money very, very quickly. So, what we're seeing in Ireland is councils partnering with those organisations. So, Dublin City Council, for example, doing a collaboration with Google to measure air quality in really precise ways and really predictive ways to try and manage traffic around that. Fingal county, they've done 3D modelling for the public realm, coming in again. I'm not so familiar with that example. I think it's collaboration, bringing expertise in. I worry about our ability to grow exclusively in-house talent on this.

Thank you. Do you think there is a sufficient emphasis on funding directed towards public bodies, including towards local government, to develop and attract the right skills? And do think there'd be a benefit in having a user-centred design specialist in every local authority? 

There isn't enough funding directed towards public bodies full stop. I guess, in a sense, the answer to that question is, 'Yes, that would be great, but in every place you're going to have to look at the trade-offs.' If you're bringing in that person and you're funding that, what are the things that you're not funding? Again, we can try and break down those distinctions. It goes back to Jocelle's point. If someone says, 'I can't afford to spend on digital, because I have to spend on social care,' maybe those are the same thing. Until we start seeing them as—. But, again, the way in which we organise budgets doesn't help with that, because they sit in little silos. So, 'yes, but,' I'm afraid, is the answer.

So, changing the mindset, yes.

Yes.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you, Laura. Lee.

Can I ask Marc Davies to elaborate on his comment earlier about Scotland being six or seven years ahead of Wales? In what way, and what can we learn?

Well, the initial adoption, for starters. Their strategy and their approach was before us, a long time, and shortly after the Government's digital services in England. But they adopted this agile approach, where instead of focusing a lot on service design, they brought in a methodology of working in an agile manner that fed service design into that model. I felt that that, again, took a little bit of the focus off the digital, and put a lot of focus on the end user and upskilled the staff across a wider department set in a more rapid way. It's quite a clever way of doing it, I think, and it seems to be working really well.

Isn't that what we're meant to be doing? That's what the strategy says. It's just that we're not doing it.

No, you won't see an agile working methodology mentioned very much. You see a lot about double diamond and service design; you won't see much agile working in Wales at all. It's not something that's tried to be encouraged a lot.

And why is that?

I think we're missing an opportunity there, personally, because it's a softer way of going into that steeper service design model, and it's an easier way to change mindsets and lead people into it.

But is that because digital, at a leadership level, isn't understood as a culture, it's seen as IT, and that agile methodology is part of culture change, isn't it, about a different way of working and thinking? Isn't that all part of the problem, that we're paying lip service to a strategy, but we don't really understand what working differently looks like?

Yes, I don't disagree with that, I think there are elements of that there. Personally, I think you'd be better off trying to roll out an agile working model, coupled with service design, rather than a service design working model, because if you mention double diamond and so on to some staff in a local authority, they'll look at you and say, 'How does that affect me on a day-to-day basis? I haven't got time to look at it,' and that sort of thing. But agile working brings in a different kind of culture of working, and then you can slip in that end-user element within that, which Scotland have done really cleverly, I think, and again it's this subtle way of embedding a different way of working, and digital will be at the heart of it.

I'm really interested in what you're saying, because my understanding is that that's exactly what was meant by multidisciplinary team working, it's just never been adopted, in part because the evidence we've had this morning, both from Audit Wales and in the written evidence, is that there isn't really a mature understanding of what digital means at any level, really.

No, I think you're right.

So, where would you start? In terms of what we might recommend, particularly with a local government focus, where can we start to pull it back?

Well, I'd take a bit of focus off service design, because I think everybody sees it as a real specialism, whereas agile is just a way of working. It's a step below it. I think we've gone a jump too far; rather than a gradual, incremental journey towards it, we've done a leap of faith, almost. I think if you can bring it back down a level, so it's more operational, there's not that disconnect then with what the vision is saying and what needs to happen on a change basis. You will bring those teams with you, then. So, for me, it's some sort of model of training that teams can—. You don't have to have a digital specialism to work that way, and it'll bring those teams tighter together, and you can just slip in digital along that journey of transformation. I think there's a little bit too much of a step gap, of a leap of faith, where we haven't done those baby steps towards that vision.

Who should be leading that?

Well, as far as our day-to-day running—. There is more in the third sector, in the social business sector. I'm trying to enforce that within the small budget we have within a programme like Newid. I think the public body budgets that are involved with other departments are a hundred times bigger than what I'm working with, so—

Sure. This is an inquiry about local government, so who in local government—? Where should the leadership for taking this more agile approach that you recommend be coming from?

Well, I think the Welsh Local Government Association would be ideally placed to be enforcing it across the 22, and they've got a small digital team and they'd be well suited to start the journey.

Okay. And, can I just ask Jocelle in terms of digital inclusion?

Yes.

Do you think that if service design and user-centred design is got right, that will take care of digital inclusion, because you'd be designing a system that works for everybody, regardless of their digital skills, or do you think it needs a discrete approach?

In theory, that would be great, but in practice, digital inclusion has so many elements. You can design a service to be as intuitive and as simple to use as possible, but if somebody doesn't have the money to access data, they don't have a device or maybe they don't have the confidence to actually go online in the first place and use it—. So, it would certainly address a big element because it would make services more attractive. When my team are out there, working with organisations, working with individuals to help them with their digital skills and confidence, when you can point them to a service that's really easy to engage with, then they're going to embrace it a lot quicker and see the benefit and then spread that use.

So, recently, I was at a Centre for Digital Public Services leadership event on accessibility, and that was one of the points I raised: the public sector is the biggest employer in Wales, those employees are the citizens of Wales as well, and a lot of those people aren't going to have the digital skills and confidence that they really need to embrace their jobs and embrace this agenda going forward, for the transformation that we need to see and have to see. We can't get away from it; it's coming, it's happening, and we can't change that. So, if we can encourage those people to have the skills and confidence, then not only are they going to be using the services themselves confidently, they're going to be going home and going, 'Oh, yes, you can do this; you can do that.' So, it's almost a cascade model to help reach those individuals who are the most excluded, and quite often they're the people who most need the services that we talk about, whether those are public services or health services.

Thank you.

Okay, Lee? Diolch yn fawr. Jonathan, could I just ask you for your take on what we heard from Marc particularly, in terms of Scotland's agile working and that sort of different approach?

Well, look, I think they have done that reasonably well in Scotland. Again, as I said earlier, I'm not sure that I would be—. I don't think any part of the UK should be self-flagellating about this; yes, Scotland have perhaps been ahead in some areas, but I don't think if you spoke to the average citizen in Scotland versus the average citizen in Wales, they would necessarily see their lives as completely different in this regard.

I'd like to pick up on the point that Marc was making, I think, really well, about the strategy. If we're being cynical, we know that with any strategy, there's always a risk that people just adopt the words and say, 'Hey, we work in an agile way, or a design-centred way' and you sort of adopt the language and you just carry on with business as usual. What stops that is, I think, three things. So, yes, there's training, but there's also illustration, showing people what good looks like, showing them, 'Here is how you could do social care differently', 'Here is how you could develop digital infrastructure.' I mean, Jocelle was talking a lot about digital inclusion; you've got to have the digital infrastructure there to base the inclusion on. So, illustration of what success looks like, and then, finally, the final piece is accountability, whether that's through the WLGA or whether that's through the Senedd, or whether it's through the ballot box, or some combination of all three, in the end, you have to hold people accountable as to whether they are delivering on the objectives of that strategy.

Okay, Jonathan. Thanks very much. Peter.

Just quickly, do you think there's enough sharing of good practice across the local government family?

No, there never is. There should always be more.

Time to do that is at a premium, I think, because they're all stretched. It just seems to be firefighting all the time, and there's less staff to do more work. So, the time to actually showcase good stuff is very limited.

The trouble is, I think—. I sometimes get concerned that we're not proactive enough in the local government family. There are 22 authorities. We’re small enough to be able to be proactive in leading change, and, over my 25 years in local government, we were always reactive, and we shouldn’t be like that. So, I think there’s a lot more we can do. It has to be led by WLGA in that regard.

Whenever I talk about Wales, I always say that we’re a small enough country: if anybody can make change happen, whatever agenda we’re looking at, we should make it happen in Wales. We’ve got the legislative framework to do it, we’ve got the powers that are devolved to us to enable that to happen. So, if countries like Estonia can do it—I know there are different starting points completely—we should be able to do it as well. It's just those couple of things that need changing to enable that journey.

Yes. Thank you.

Okay. Well, thank you, all, very much for coming in to give evidence to committee today, Marc and Jocelle, and Jonathan joining us remotely. You will be sent a transcript to check for factual accuracy in the usual way. Diolch yn fawr.

Diolch.

We've reached our fourth evidence session today, then, on digital local government. I'm very pleased to welcome Lindsey Phillips, who's interim chief digital officer in Wales, Councillor Neil Prior, Pembrokeshire County Council, for the WLGA, and Councillor Dimitri Batrouni, leader of Newport City Council, also here for the WLGA. Welcome to you all. Thanks for coming in to give evidence today. Perhaps I might begin with some initial questions on national strategic direction and priorities, and, really, whether there's any tension between national priorities and local delivery. To what extent would you say there's alignment between what Welsh Government wants for digital and public services and local government and what local government itself sets as its priorities?

Do you want me to start? Thank you, Chair. I think broadly the content of the national digital strategy for Wales on digital is aligned with Welsh Government. It's broad, it has broad missions, and I don't think there would be any disagreement that we're all trying to achieve the same thing. But I think a lot of the discussion today is about the landing of the message, and I think we have got some significant challenges around the message about digital. Because I think what we need to think about is what are our priorities in a broader sense.

So, the First Minister, one of the key priorities is in social care and health reform—absolutely the same as what local government needs to do. We understand that we all need to reform the way we deliver social care. Digital should be the enabler for that. We shouldn't be talking about digital over there as if it's something separate from the key challenges and key priorities that we have in national and local government. So, I think it's much more important to talk about, ‘Are we aligned on our priorities?’, not, ‘Are we aligned on our digital priorities?’, because, as I say, I don't think we're landing the message. I don't think digital is sticking. It has kind of made itself a monster and something that people don't understand. The amount of times in the two years that I've been chief digital officer that senior leaders have said to me, ‘I don't do digital’—. Everybody does digital. We live digitally. That's how we all exist at the moment. Our work, our play, our learning: everything has a digital element. But the message—. We're not landing the message, and I think we've got to change the way we're conveying that message. I don’t know if anybody wants to add to that.

You go first of all. I've got lots to say, so I'll go last.

Thank you. 'Broadly aligned', I would say. Just looking at my own council's digital strategy, it's broadly aligned with the national strategy. So, there's nothing really that feels jarring. But I would certainly reiterate Lindsey's points around it's become this thing on its own, as opposed to feeling like it's—. Well, I think it is part of day-to-day business, what we get up to in local authorities. But it does feel like, as soon as you put the label on it, then you can create some level of fear, I guess.

Could I just go back to you, Lindsey? I’ll bring Dimitri in in a minute. From what you said then, Lindsey, there were so many issues around the culture that exists, the mindset around digital, that sort of fear that you mentioned. You call for a bold and current national digital strategy to help local government with strategic direction. Could you just say a little bit more about that?

Yes, I think we need a vision. I think we need a collective vision. We've talked a lot this morning, or you've talked a lot this morning, about things like digital standards. So, I think there can be some principles that underpin that in terms of where we're trying to get to. None of us would argue with that we want efficient public services, that we want to save money, that we want to look at the most effective ways of delivering services for all of the citizens of Wales. But, again, I think it's about bringing it back to basics. We need to understand our customer and we need to understand the services we deliver, and then we need to work out what the problem is that we're trying to solve in that interaction between the people of Wales and the services that local government delivers. And then we need to use all—. Digital is a collection of tools, techniques, approaches, technologies. They're ever evolving. We've been talking today about user-centred design, about user research, about different tools and techniques, but some of those are new, some of those have been around for a long time; it's an ever-evolving science, if you like. But it's all about knowing our customer, knowing our service and delivering the best services that we can for our customers. We need a national vision around that, but maybe it's more about a commitment to taking advantage of all of the digital tools and technologies that are available to us to best service that delivery of our services at a local level.

Okay, Lindsey, thanks very much. Dimitri.

What I would say is they're broadly aligned and they're both wrong. We need to flip this and we need to focus on data. So, we're looking—. From my perspective, digital is the end. Digital is the solution to the problem that you've identified through data. Data is the key and the least sexy thing any politician wants to talks about, because everyone hears the word 'data', don't they, and they go, 'Geek' and, 'We're not getting involved in that.' But, actually, it's the key to driving better public services. We all want, across all political parties, better public services, delivering for all our residents at lower cost for the taxpayer. I don't see any political party saying anything different. We have to get all our data sets aligned, collaboratively, speaking to each other, at local government level, at Welsh Government level. And then you move to: the data will tell you what is happening on the ground in your public services, where the pressures are, what the trends are. Then you can identify those real problems—not a politician thinking what the problem is, but what the problem actually is. And then the digital is at the end, where you reach the solution. As Lindsey's rightly pointed out, it could be a variety of different methods by which you would solve that problem. But I would say, looking at the Welsh Government's digital strategy—it talks about data—it's right at the end. It's the core, founding principle of doing anything, because you can bring any expensive digital solution—and the NHS has tried loads of times—and consultants will charge you big money, but, if we don't align our datasets, which I've been annoying all my officers in Newport about—. Getting the data clean, getting all the systems to talk to each other, understanding what it actually means and what it actually means for our services going forward, and then doing that across local government and in Welsh Government, I think you'll start getting the rewards that I think all of us want to see. 

Okay, Dimitri, thanks very much. You've mentioned digital service standards. We understand that not many local authorities in Wales are actually adopting those standards. Why do you think that is and how could that be best addressed?

Do you want to start again? 

Thank you. I think it's true; we haven't embedded the digital standards completely across our public services in Wales. Quite a few of the local authorities are working towards the Government digital service standards; they were in existence previously and are well recognised. I think one of the things about the GDS work is that they developed their own credibility to the standards by doing it to national government. The UK Government did a huge amount of work with GDS on proving the worth of those standards. We've talked today about giving local government the evidence as to why they should do it. We can't just tell local government, 'We think this is a good idea.' I think we have to show them the impact of actually embedding those standards in their services. 

I think there is also, for me, an issue of timing. We're not sitting here with a clean sheet of paper redesigning all 800 services that local authorities deliver. Different local authorities will be looking at different elements of their service at different times, and I think maybe what we need to think about is a position where, when you come to relook at a service, redesign a service—. It's rare that we're designing new services now in local government, because we have so many, and we can't deliver all the ones we have, but, when we're looking at redesigning that service, we can then bring the digital standards into the redesign of that service. But that's got to be in the service ownership arena. That has to be the service owners. We can't just, again, expect the digital teams to fix it, to be responsible for those digital standards. That's got to be embedded into each service area's review and looking at their service reform.  

We heard earlier that there's perhaps a need for carrots and sticks in terms of the standards, and perhaps some mandation in terms of working towards them and delivering on them. Is that something that you think is necessary, or not? 

Do you want me to answer, or—?

Yes, why not?

I think that the issue is capacity and capability. So, local government has been—. Our primary job is to resurface roads, collect bins, put the street lights on, as many of you know. So, local government—as Welsh Government, as all governments—has been under financial pressure, so that forces staff to focus on those front-line services and firefight, effectively. And then, as Lindsey says, the officers go to the digital teams, which tend to be small, tend to not be funded properly, and say, 'Solve it—solve our problem. We need to do more with less'. That's not going to work. You won't get sustainability out of that. In terms of the carrot and stick, the stick, yes, okay, mandate it. What's the carrot? A genuine question: what's the carrot?

Yes, well, that's something we might—

Better service delivery.

Okay, that's what we all want, but what's the carrot from you guys?

To take your example, in terms of doing more with less—and you're saying you haven't got the time to think about it because of the firefighting—I'd push back on that as a carrot, because the example of Caerphilly is—. There aren't many good practice examples we can quote, but one that is a few years old now is Caerphilly, where they've used automation to free up staff to work on the front line and not do processing forms. So, that's a carrot. You can deliver better services for the same amount of money.

Well, I think you'll find that most of local government is doing automation. I'd be surprised if you find any local government not doing automation. I suggest you read all those digital strategies, and they'll tell you there's automation. I can tell you, from Newport City Council, we're delivering savings from automation, but it'll nowhere near touch the sides of the savings we need to make. And there's so much you can automate, right? At the end of the day, most local residents—and Peter Fox knows better than anyone—want to speak to a human being and understand—. Social services would be a classic example.

You're misquoting the Caerphilly example, because that's not about automation as a way of saving money; it's about improving the way the service is delivered, so people are doing the things only people can do, which is talk to people, and the machines are doing the form filling.

Yes, and so does Caerphilly not have to make savings this year?

Well, that's a different point. You asked what the carrot is, and I'm saying that's an example of where you can improve services, you can get a better service using digital.

And I said we're doing that. We're doing that. I think all local government is doing that, every single one.

Well, I'm not sure that's true.

Have you read all the digital strategies?

Well, I read the evidence from your colleagues from the WLGA on the budget, and digital wasn't mentioned once.

Have you read the individual local authorities' digital strategies—every single one?

I think there's a disconnect on what strategy—

So, that's a 'no'.

Excuse me. This isn't a debate; we're asking you—. We're taking evidence. And, yes, I've read a number of digital strategies. The point we're trying to ask you about is that there's a disconnect with what strategies say and what's happening in practice. You mentioned yourself leadership and understanding, and your point on data is bang on the money. But wouldn't you agree there's a disconnect between what we say we're going to do and what is actually being done?

No.

So, you think it's all fine?

No. I said they're trying to do the best they can, with the money they have, and they're delivering automation in areas across local authorities. But it's not enough. From the Chair's point, around the carrot and stick, I took that as what can the Welsh Government or the Senedd offer in terms of carrot and stick, and the stick was mandation, so I assumed there'd be a carrot from the Welsh Government or the Senedd.

So, I think the point we're making on mandation is that, in the evidence from the GDS, which brought about digital change at Whitehall, some spend controls to avoid duplication and double spending, which we heard about earlier, are helpful to stop different people spending different money on different projects that duplicate. So, without that sort of clearing house to make sure that good practice is being followed, how else, then, do you deliver that uniformity of outcome?

Well, I can answer that, but I don't want to dominate. I want the others to have their voice.

Do you want to come in there?

Yes. Could I come in?

Yes.

I think, to the carrot-and-stick question, my honest answer would be somewhere in the middle is probably helpful. So, you know, it's local government, and it's local government for a reason—so, locally elected members making choices for their places. In some of my other work—. So, I've got, as we now call it, the corporate improvement portfolio. It kind of ditched the word 'transformation', so that we're getting people to think about how we continuously improve. So, there's something around the language here.

But in some of my other work, for example, as a PSB chair, it's helpful to have some kind of mandation, that you will have a public services board and this is what the objective is. But then you're also reliant on the right people being in the room, making sure that happens, and understanding that you're trying to do this for a collective good, and likewise panel performance assessments, which I think are a great idea to help councils look at how they're operating in general. So, there's probably a balance to be struck in the middle on the carrot and stick. I don't know the exact answer, but I think there's something helpful about giving some firm direction and clear direction, but also recognising that we are very capable in local government, and we understand local issues, and we all want to see services improve.

Okay, Neil—[Interruption.]. Please do come in. Also, perhaps, another view is that there should be, around the Welsh Government's national digital strategy, an action plan that actually has timings and measurability built in, and that that would give greater accountability and perhaps more confidence in terms of delivery.

Yes, possibly. Again, I think, for me, it goes back to that we should be building our digital approach into all of our strategies, particularly looking at some of our key service areas, like social care. So, how are we going to use digital tools to reform social care? So, for me, it's much more important that it's built into there rather than sitting separately over there. So, you could question if we need a national digital strategy at all.

I just wanted to make two really quick points on the carrot-and-stick situation. I think it is worth pointing out that quite a lot of the spend controls that GDS put in place were at UK Government level, where they had that control. They don't have the ability to do that in local government. But I will also say you will be unlikely now to find a local authority that allows individual departments to go off and buy software systems in the way they used to. That culture doesn't exist anymore. It has created a massive legacy problem for us because that's how it used to work; your social care would go off and buy a system, some company would come in and sell planning a really cool system that could fix everything for them. And there had been that culture of individual departments buying systems to solve problems they may not even have had, and that has created a huge legacy issue. But I don't think that culture exists in local government anymore. Almost all of them have controls over how new systems in particular are purchased and implemented in a local authority.

Okay, Lindsey. We'll move on. Peter Fox.

Thank you. It's good to see you all this morning. I want to just touch on leadership, really, and your views. I've heard what Dimitri says, and I know how hard councils are working, and how transformational they're trying to be, the best they can, up against so many other different things. But, generally, do you find that leaders across Wales are tuned into this agenda—senior leaders, not just political senior officers as well? Or is there fear, perhaps, as I think you've touched on, Lindsey—a fear that is holding organisations back because, I don't know, they're nervous to take the step, certainly to prioritise money toward those areas? Where do you think leaders are? Are we in a good place?

Do you want to answer the senior officers, because I think you've met all of them, haven't you?

Yes. So, I've met all 22 chief executives and a lot of the senior directors and leaders in local government. I work with all of the chief digital officers or equivalent across local government. I don't think you could question that any of them don't understand that we need to reform the way we deliver service, and they are all fighting for that. We had our conference at WLGA last year, where we brought all of the leaders at our finance conference, all of the section 141 officers, and all of the chief execs together, and, in the room, everybody's talking about service reform: how are we going to do things differently, how do we fix these problems we've got in not having enough funding and enough capacity to deliver the services that we need to deliver? So, from that point of view, the leadership is absolutely there. They might not all understand the level of detail of the tools, technologies, techniques and digital, whatever we call it—the mysterious thing over there that is digital. They may not understand all the detail of that. But we could question whether they need to understand the complete level of detail about networks and AI and different tech, and even, to some extent, user-centred design and user research and user-experience testing. What they need to understand is: do we know our customer, do we know our service, do we know where the problems are, and how are we going to use the tools in our box to fix those problems that we've got? And I think that's what we need to focus on. I think going around saying, 'There's no digital leadership' terrifies everyone. 'I need to be a digital leader. What does that mean? What does it mean to be a digital leader?' We need leaders. We need people to understand digital across the board. I do accept that. We need it embedded. We need it to become part of all of our skills. But, in some ways, it is part of all of our skills, because we all use digital in every part of our lives. So, I don't think we should make that the sole focus—that there's no digital leadership, so nothing's going to move forward.

So, you wouldn't agree with the assertion from the—which one is it—

The CDPS.

—that leaders don't take the digital agenda seriously enough. It's very clear that they take it seriously, and so I'm assuming, then, that if they are taking it seriously, we are seeing that very much embedded in corporate plans and those strategies are in there and being funded accordingly. Because, if not, what's holding that back?

Do you want to come in? I'm sorry—I don't want to dominate everything.

Well, on the political side, I would say that the leadership is there in terms that they know it has to happen. I think where we could improve is understanding how we make that happen. And there are real-life decisions, and I can understand why certain leaders—. I didn't see those comments, as to whether they were referring to political leaders and funding, but what I would say is that, usually, it's a fight between, 'Do I get a new website that's more user friendly and costs, I don't know, let's say £0.5 million, or do I do weekly bin collections?' You know better than anyone what happens to your e-mail inbox with those front-line services. And so, naturally, as politicians of whatever party, you tend to focus on front-line services that residents really, really, really want to see, and usually that will be to the detriment—the cost—of actually doing data and digital properly, which is a significant sum. 

I actually believe that it's worth the investment, worth the pain and worth everyone not understanding what we're trying to do and saying that it's a waste of money, because it's not. It's actually going to save the taxpayer lots of money. I'm one of those strong voices, I would say, in local government, and I know that Neil is as well, but I would say that there are other leaders—. I'm lucky enough, and I think Neil's lucky enough, to have professional backgrounds that are from this space, so we get it, but I can see why other leaders, who have definitely bought into that it has to happen, face those real balancing acts.

So, how do we help them to know that you can invest to improve, because investing in the digital agenda to improve service outcomes is where we need to be? So, where does the leadership come from to drive that change?

I'm just reflecting on the first time I met you at the WLGA council, where I put my hand up to be the spokesperson for digital and improvement, and I deferred to your superior expertise at that stage. 

Oh no, I was blagging it. [Laughter.]

But I think it's really interesting. So, at that time, I felt like, perhaps, I was a bit of an outlier, coming full of enthusiasm and fresh ideas from the technology sector into local government. And I think where you see the success is where you can have political and managerial alignment. I can't speak for all 22 councils, but I can say, in the seven and a half years since, there's definitely more of an appetite. I don't consider myself to be an outlier in that respect any more. I don't really agree with the comments that leaders in local government in Wales need to take this challenge seriously. The reality, as you well know, is that six months of my political life is spent working out where we're spending the money. Seven years ago, I was able to get significant investment into this agenda, and that's paid great dividends for us. But the reality now is that we're talking about how we manage decline. So, the capability is there. 

We've done some interesting UCD work with CDPS. I think that the relationship that Lindsey has brokered with the 22 local authority chief executives is certainly helping to raise the profile. But it's more about the broader improvement challenge that we've got in the context that we're going to take another 10 per cent out of the department's budget this year, and that's going to be the same next year. I am seeing that the, if you want to call it leadership, it's more pervasive throughout the organisation. So, we're doing a lot more system thinking and working through the end-to-end process so that it's not just someone having—. It's great if you can fill in a form online, but it's not so good if you've got to call up three days later and say, 'What's happened?' So, it's a tricky one. I heard the phrase 'heroic leadership' earlier. You've got to have the right people, but then this is a system challenge about how you get the right people standing for election, how you get the right people getting elected, how do you get them into cabinet positions where they can have some enthusiasm and some drive for it. I’m constantly working on my colleagues to make sure that they are on top of things. When we’re looking at the challenges around looked-after children, and taking 3 per cent or 4 per cent out of the education budget, you know, it’s really tough. That’s the reality, and I guess I’d like to see—. Maybe we’ll come on to this later, but there is a much greater opportunity for us to collaborate as a system.

Thanks for those answers. The CDPS have also made some concerns in their evidence about where the siting of the digital team is in with the WLGA. I just wondered what your perspective is on that.

Do you want to go first, since it's your team?

Yes, briefly. It’s sector-led, that’s the whole idea. We’ve worked really closely with Welsh Government to agree that this is a sector-led programme. It has a dual role, I think, in both delivery and strategic leadership. The CDO role is absolutely a strategic leadership role, but there is a head of digital that heads up a delivery team, and therefore it has a delivery role as well. We need to be close to the customer; our customer is local government, and as the WLGA, we are the organisation that represents local government, so I think that there are an enormous amount of benefits of us being sited within the WLGA.

And I guess my final reflection would be that we have asked local government whether they are supportive of that, and we have had significant support from across the local government family that they are supportive of that team being sited within. And it has huge amounts of benefits across other policy areas as well, because we can work with all of the policy areas within the WLGA remit.

And if not there, where? 

I think it’s in the right place. So, the WLGA has the respect of the local government community across Wales. Again, I’ve seen a step-change over the last couple of years, and it’s all about how you build those relationships. That’s how you make change happen, I think. We’re a people business, aren’t we? So, it’s relationships, and Lindsey, I know, has done an outstanding job in getting round the 22 local authorities, and more, so not just at that level. And there was a question earlier about whether it's a strategic role or operational; I think it’s both, and Lindsey seems to me to be leading that strategic direction with a very small delivery team and a limited budget underneath, but I think they're providing great value for money with what they’re doing.

Yes, thank you. Final question from me, Chair. The CDPS states that it’s unclear how consistently the DAG members have the ear of their chief executive officers and their leadership teams. What identifiable impacts has the DAG had on improving the speed and scale of development in digital within local government?

Shall I take that one, yes? So, the digital advisory group is a group of leaders of digital, so it’s the chief digital officer or equivalent from each local authority in Wales, and it is true that we only have four designated chief digital officers in local government, but there is a digital lead in every local authority, and they have all come together. And that group, although it has taken us quite a lot of time, I think is now having a real impact. It’s now chaired by local government, it’s led by local government, we have incredible engagement on that group, and we have started to see some real, real impactful results, one of them being Connecting Care, which I’m sure you’ve all come across, the social care programme. What we did was we brought the digital advisory group together with the Association of Directors of Social Services's group of directors of social services, and that’s allowed us to work together in that sort of sector approach, where the digital advisory group can bring that expertise to the table, but the SMEs, the subject matter experts, in the social care directors can drive what the service needs, what we are trying to achieve from a service point of view, and that’s been incredibly successful, and we’ve just had the business case for that programme approved by Welsh Government, and we’re really driving forward. And that’s part of a much wider social care programme that we are delivering and that we are working collaboratively on, and the digital advisory group’s been really key in that.

We’re also doing things like having workshops, all-day workshops, in person; they’re really keen to get back and develop those relationships again to get to know each other. I think that has been an issue. We’ve had to rebuild a lot of those relationships post COVID—trust, working with neighbours across independent organisations. But we do lots of case study sharing, lots of—. Again, we’ve tried to develop it into a process by which we don’t just say, 'Oh, look at this, we did it, it’s great.' We look at, 'Where did you start? What position were you in when you started that project or approach? What did you need—what funding, what political commitment, what did you need from a skills point of view?' So, you can assess it for your own organisation to see how feasible it is to then put it into your own organisation, and we've had some great successes in that. We've also agreed recently to carry out an evaluation of the work that we've been doing to support the digital advisory group and the impact it's having on the system across the board, so we'll be able to share that in due course.

Thank you.

Thank you, Lindsey. Okay, Peter?

Yes.

Lee Waters.

Thanks. I'm struck that the tone of your evidence is very positive, and the three of you are outliers, you're the ones who get it. It doesn't tally exactly with the Audit Wales report of the state of the sector in Wales, and I just wonder if there's a slight gap here between what you're telling us and what the rest of the picture is telling us. I'm struck by your evidence paper, where you say:

'From a skills perspective, almost 75% of councils have some user centred design capabilities within their teams, including user accessibility, user experience, service design and content design.'

That's a very broad definition of user-centred design, isn't it? I find it staggering that you'd really have 75 per cent, because no organisation has got that level of user-centred capacity. That's one of the weaknesses, that it's not a well-accepted skill. So, I just slightly worry you're giving us an overly positive view here.

No, it's a fact. We went out with a full questionnaire when we—

Well, it's a fact because you're broadening the definition. The definition is so broad, it covers almost everything, 'content design'—that's not user-centred design, is it?

It's an element of it. So, when you design services based around the user, you have to look at how the content is consumed. It is one of the defined digital, data and technology roles within user-centred design, so content design is a user-centred design role. So, the DDaT—

So, you stand by this assessment that 75 per cent of councils have user-centred design capability.

Have some amount of user-centred design, yes.

'Some', yes. So, how much to make that meaningful, to actually bring about system change?

I wasn't suggesting it would bring about system change. We asked the local authorities whether they had any user-centred design capabilities, and that is what came back. It isn't enough, and all of the local authorities would love to have a full DDaT team with all of the recognised DDaT skills as defined by the Government, but they don't have that capacity. They're finding that individuals within their digital teams have to be multiskilled, they have to have skills across.

But I think that goes back to that broader message—we need to get those skills into all departments. User-centred design should be a normal skill within services, it shouldn't be something over there that a separate team do, so we have to look at how we upskill everybody to understand those areas: how do you engage with customers, how do you then take the problems that we're seeing in service and solve those from a user perspective? That needs to be embedded across the whole of local authorities, and it isn't at the moment. We accept that.

This is a challenging agenda of culture change, isn't it, and I think we need a warts-and-all, honest assessment of where we're really at, which is why I think being overly positive doesn't particularly help us, because, clearly, we are not—and nobody is—where we need to be on this. You said at the beginning that local authority chief execs had said to you, 'I don't do digital', and earlier you said, 'Everybody does digital, and it's unreasonable to expect them to know the detail of digital.' But we wouldn't say that about procurement or legals, we'd expect chief executives to have a pretty good idea of some of the pitfalls in a way that perhaps—. We seem to be letting them off the hook when it comes to cyber or service design, so I'm not entirely sure that we're judging digital in the same way as we're judging other competency areas.

I think that's fair, but also if you compare it to, say, legal, the pace of digital change is incredible. So, expecting local authority leaders and chief execs to keep up with that pace of change—even in my lifetime, there was dial-up and we had to wait 10 years before you could get a website, and now we're in social media and now we're getting AI on phones, and I just think it'll get faster. So, understanding and keeping up to date with that and ingraining in services the pace vis-à-vis, say, legal or the other, procurement, it just moves faster and quicker. Chief executives do digital, they understand the basics of digital, but the cutting-edge bit of digital and the data space just move so fast, it's hard to keep up all the time. Can we do better? Absolutely. If you're saying to me, 'You guys are too rosy', I think what I would say is that I'm not, I would say, 'Yes, we need to do a lot more—a lot more', because I genuinely think that if local government doesn't get this right, as Neil said, we're going to be talking about decline.

But that's why you need—. To your point about moving fast, that's why you need chief digital officers at a senior level in the main teams, rather than some either not having them, or having them in an IT function.

That's one way—in the south-east region, Newport City Council working with Monmouthshire County Council, Torfaen County Borough Council and Blaenau Gwent County Borough Council, through their shared resource service. And you talked about content and user design, one of the ways we've complemented the skills we have in-house is that we've gone through Drupal, who have developed websites across England and have given us all their knowledge and understanding of how you design a website and how they should be laid out. That's given to all those local authorities to support them in their redesign of websites, in this case, but they do far more. So, we do try to work collaboratively. Do we have all the skills in-house? No, absolutely not.

I just wonder—perhaps I'll put this to you, Neil—whether the WLGA and the local government sector generally is taking this seriously enough. So, forgive me, Lindsey, I'd rather keep you out of this, I don't want to put you in an awkward position. But the way the WLGA has taken the seriousness of the team—the chief digital officer role is currently out to advert, and it's advertised at £78,000; it was previously £88,000 to £100,000. The average pay, based on the Glassdoor website, for chief digital officers in Wales, is £133,000. So, are we seeing this as a rare skill set, with scarce skills available, and treating it with the seniority that we should be, rather than this becoming a service function and not a system transformation function?

It's a great question, isn't it? And I think where the salary is pitched would give you the answer to that. I mean, I have been challenging the chief executive of the WLGA with the job evaluation that's led to this point and said that it needed to be quicker. So, I think there is still a lot to do. Similarly, I hope I'm not painting too rosy a picture here. I guess it's in the context of the realities of day to day, and personally, as a ward councillor and a cabinet member, how I've seen some of those priorities shift. So, yes, ideally, we would pay far more, wouldn't we, but then that's probably another whole-system review of the WLGA itself.

But you wouldn't be appointing a head of planning or a head of legal at that kind of step change behind the industry average, would you?

I guess not.

Okay. Thank you.

Okay, Lee. Diolch yn fawr. We will move on, then, to Siân Gwenllian. Siân.

Yes, if I may, Chair. Again, I talk about south-east Wales; I don't know if Neil will talk about the south-west. But Newport, Monmouthshire, Torfaen and Blaenau have the shared resource service, which works together to deliver programmes that are common to all local authorities, one of which would be websites. There was also a migration of clouds, systems and all the infrastructure pieces that embed the improvement of services. So, when your question is around, 'Do users feel it?', they probably haven't yet, because you need to do all the background work, all the infrastructure work, all the cloud system work, to then roll out those applied service improvements, which are now starting to be rolled out, at least in the south-east. For example, I mentioned the website, but that's just one example. We're also talking about the single view of a child. Again, that's about collaborating with our data sets to understand, for example, if we think a child is in the care system, or if there have been flags in the schools that suggest that the child might be having adverse at-home experiences, and making sure all those systems actually speak to each other and inform the social worker, or whoever relevant, that we need to intervene at an earlier stage. So, it's the key building blocks for the preventative work and improving the outcomes for the children across our local authorities. And I know that the SRS is super keen to move that agenda forward, and there are two other areas of collaboration that I'm happy to talk about, but if your question is, ‘Do users feel it yet?’ No. ‘Will they?’ Yes.

Okay. I don't know, Chair, have we got time to hear about the other two examples quickly?

Very briefly, perhaps.

I think Neil wants to come in on that one.

Neil.

Thank you. A very quick example of collaborating with users themselves, the public: so, in Pembrokeshire, just speaking from my own local authority's point of view, we've got something like 21,000 people who use the online self-serve facility on a regular basis. We've had over 3,500 responses to a recent consultation about how they'd like to see those services improved. It's not the first time we've done it. And we've also established a user group of 100 members of the public who are actively testing and trialling the way they can access council services online. So, whether that's making people's lives better or not, I couldn't tell you. But what I can tell you from looking at the data is that we are, as a result of that, seeing more people self-serving online, and fewer calls coming into the contact centre, which is helping us to manage some of those resources. So, it might be a slightly tangential example, but I'm really encouraged by that sort of approach. I hope that helps.

And that was one of the other areas, customer contact centres.

We have certainly focused on making sure that it is bilingual. The data doesn't suggest that it's hugely used, but it is used, and we've made sure we've complied with all the Welsh language standards. We've done a little bit of work around the translation and making sure that there's an appropriate user journey. I think CDPS did a little bit of work around trio writing. I'm not sure whether we adopted that approach or not; I'm not close enough to it. But it hasn't been flagged to me that there were any major issues.

And, yes, it's one of the key areas in south-east Wales, where the Welsh language still needs to grow and develop. And the local authorities, that's one of the active areas of collaboration, where we need to enhance the Welsh language offer and pool our resources to make it a better service. So that’s one of the other areas.

Okay. And Laura Anne Jones. Laura.

Thank you, Chair, and prynhawn da, everybody. Just circling back to skills and capacity, which we've already discussed at some length, but just going back to what Councillor Batrouni said at the very, very beginning, capacity and capability are key in order to get this right. The chief digital officer identified digital skills as a cross-cutting theme that needs addressing if digital is going to improve service delivery, create those efficiency savings and, of course, improve public trust in it. But could you expand, perhaps, on how you think local authorities can tackle this with those finite budgets and those choices that you outlined earlier that they have to make? And how can we compete in the market for the skills that are needed and the mindset that is needed to deliver this? As we've discussed before, ensuring that we've got people in the right places that understand that this integrated digital is not something separate; it is integrated into improving social care and so forth. And do you think that sufficient money is coming down to local government in order to support this? Because, obviously, the pressures are already on local government.

And have you looked—? In previous evidence we've had today, we've been told that Ireland are very good leaders in this field, in attracting those key skills, given it's very hard to have an attractive offer to come to local government, as opposed to other things that are paying higher wages. Have you looked to other places like Ireland in order to improve this area? Thank you.

There were quite a few questions there. One of the issues with Ireland as well, Laura Anne, was collaboration with the private sector, and Google was mentioned specifically, but, yes.

I'm happy to take some of them, and if I miss one, I apologise. So, we can't afford those skills as individual councils. They're too unique, they're too specialised, and I think Lee Waters was making the very credible point around pay. And if each individual council starts doing that, then we're cutting back more front-line services, which I think no-one wants to do. So, there's a role for the WLGA to enhance and fund and the Welsh Government, to be honest, as well, enhancing that capability and improving the digital team in terms of staff members' skills and wages.

But I think on your point on partnerships—and I'm very keen on this point—Newport has started discussions with the Office for National Statistics, preliminary discussions, to have a working arrangement, because they've got data scientists and we've got the data. Local authorities have the data that ONS wants, and we need the skills and the capability, because we don't have it; you're absolutely spot on. So, why don't we work together? I'm happy to work with the private sector as well where it makes sense, where it's prudent for the taxpayer, and where it makes sense for the private sector as well.

To answer your question, I don't think there will ever be enough money because I think it's too expensive, and the only answer is partnerships with the right bodies.  

Thank you. In terms of scaling up innovation and digital programmes, you've mentioned one of the solutions there that you think is key. Other suggestions have been national digital leadership initiatives and the sharing of best practice, which I'm sure we all agree is very necessary if we're going to get this right. And the best practice is out there. Do you see that the WLGA has a role to lead in this way, in terms of sharing that best practice, taking that responsibility to do so?