Weeknotes 10/02/2023
Another busy week, where a few of us managed to see each other in real life.
We’ve got standards
Lucinda, Heledd and Shaun went for a morning trip to M-SParc on Anglesey to attend a Centre for Digital Public Services Wales (CDPS) event on embedding common digital standards in public sector organisations in Wales.
The staff at M-SParc graciously avoided mentioning the fact that Shaun had sent them on a wild goose chase the previous week by turning up seven days too soon for the event.
The digital service standards set out what’s expected when designing and managing digital services. There are twelve in total but the discussion focussed on meeting user needs, having empowered service owners and multidisciplinary teams.
Many of us have looked to the GDS standards for years, especially for content design and user research, but it’s still early days for most organisations in Wales to adopt and start working to consistent standards. The intention with these workshops (also held in Cardiff and Carmathern last week), is to get feedback on:
- current awareness of the standards
- examples where we’re using the standards
- what do we need from CDPS to help our organisation to adopt the standards in practice
We had great discussions with people from Welsh Government, CDPS, and Anglesey council. Credit: CDPS
Some common themes emerged from the discussions, including the need for user research to build a comprehensive understanding of users’ needs. User research is the first step in creating digital services which are easy to find and use, it informs everything that comes after and ensures we’re putting the user at the heart of how we design our services. It was reassuring (or depressing?) that almost everyone felt that having ‘empowered’ service owners is a long way off for most organisations, and often digital teams take on much of the responsibilities for trying to stand up for our users.
It was great to meet some of the CDPS team in real life - after many online chats over the last couple of years. We also enjoyed sharing experiences with those working in digital teams up in North Wales, and hope for more events in this impressive venue again soon.
Officially opened in 2018 as Wales’ first Science Park, M-SParc is the home of innovation and excitement in north Wales.
Updated charges
The Strategic Review of Charges (SRoC) is bringing the biggest changes to how we charge for permits and licences since NRW began.
Work on web content to help users understand our charges (and other changes planned under the SRoC programme) has stepped up a pace. We’ve concentrated on water quality, radioactive substances and waste this week, with species pencilled in for next week.
We’re also working on web content guidance for Habitats Regulations Assessments – an area which is currently largely missing from the website but which impacts applicants in most regimes.
Kick-off of new flood warning service
Heledd and James were invited to a two-day workshop with colleagues in ICT and Flood, at the office of BJSS, the company who will support NRW to develop this revamped service.
It’s early days, but it was great to network and have a chance to share our experience and advice and make sure that user-centred design and Welsh language are considered from the beginning.
James has done a lot of work to help the team prepare for this, including user research with current users of the service. He also did some initial prototypes that will now be handed over to the squad from NRW and BJSS to take on.
Martin talking through the draft screens that James started for the new flood warning service.
Day 1 started with NRW flood talking about the vision for the flood warnings, and the context for this critical service. In the afternoon, BJSS shared their proposed approach - with a great overview of the value of an Agile approach to development, to help de-risk.
It’s great to see everyone in agreement about working in an Agile way, and a big focus on users - including making it easy for staff to use the system.
We look forward to seeing how this evolves, and James and Manon from the translation team are likely to work with the squad to help with user-centred design, and bilingual content over coming months.
Show and tell
From inside a booth called Stacey, Heledd presented our team’s new monthly Show and Tell session.
This month we focussed on the work we’ve been doing behind the scenes, such as the content request form, website proposition and other tools in our Content and publishing manual.
Despite feeling a bit uncomfortable presenting from a box in the middle of another meeting, we think it went well, and look forward to sharing more with colleagues in coming sessions.
Other things we did
Sam, Laura, Sophie and Lucinda got together to talk through our bank of ideas for working in the open. We’ve decided to start writing a few blog posts, and once we’re ready, we’ll publish on the NRW website, and start sharing far and wide!
Content types are looking good, with only a couple of really gnarly ones left now.
Heledd joined a great presentation with Jeremy Evas, called ‘don’t make me think’ - sharing evidence and practical examples of where we need to remove friction to enable more people to access services in Welsh online.
Kim and Owain have started “the great intranet cull”, which involves deleting hundreds of pages, and some interesting images along the way.