A somewhat abbreviated week-notes from the Digital Team this week as we’re approaching the business end of two significant pieces of work in SRoC and the Corporate Plan.

The Strategic Review of Charging (affectionately known as SRoC) has involved most of the team at some point and been the main focus for three or four of us since Christmas. It’s involved new and amended web-pages and application forms across all of the Environmental Permitting regimes, species and water resources. From the 1st April, we’ll have charging information on the website for each regime alongside the other web content in that area, which will hopefully ensure users can find it more easily and work out their fees without having to navigate the EPR Charging Scheme document.

Sam had a really good meeting with the waste permitting team, presenting 6 application prototypes and getting their initial feedback.

Seeing their paper forms and guidance in a different way, as a digital journey, could have been a shock. But the team really warmed to it and had some great ideas for how we could solve some of the remaining problems for users. They also said they felt the digital service would improve things for them and users. They’ll be reviewing the content over the next week and helping us correct any inaccuracies.

It really feels like we’ll be able to find the space to continue working together positively. That way we can make iterative changes where the service isn’t working.

As the dust settles following the launch of SRoC, we’ll undoubtedly discover improvements we can make to the web content and application forms and we’d encourage anyone to get in touch if they find common mistakes being made by users – we can usually find a way to help.

Thank you to the Translation Team for graciously handling the deluge we’ve sent your way.

The completion of this work will also mean all water quality application forms are now in electronic format and therefore accessible to users with disabilities. Andrew has worked tirelessly creating, amending and improving these forms using feedback from users and permitting.

We did find time on Monday for a trip to Shrewsbury to meet up in person and talk over successes, issues and questions. Thanks to Catrin for taking the time out to join us. We had a swift couple in the Loggerheads afterwards (other pubs are available) and then a pizza in Oil and Dough (no other pizza emporiums should be considered).

Post-it notes time for pizza

Phil and the team from DXW have been working on acid sensitive river catchment content this week. Phil has also updated the grey squirrel content on our website as this will soon become a hot topic, due to changes in legislation.

In the world of user research, James’ week involved:

  • two and a half days of a service design course with Lucinda
  • arranging user interviews about starting to work with NRW
  • doing the prep to roll out the Flood Risk Map and Coastal Erosion Map on their new platforms next week
  • meeting with Defra to discuss user research about ‘Get a fishing rod licence’ in Welsh

Sophie and Laura have been busy doing an audit of all the comms content we have. They have been unpublishing content they know is no longer needed and will be talking to the team about the next steps.