It’s been a long time coming…

It was a big day for the Digital team on Wednesday (and not just because Kim and Sophie got Taylor Swift tickets). The Umbraco update was finally completed, meaning the end is nigh for the content freeze.

The development team updated the links from Umbraco version 7, to Umbraco version 8. The website is currently showing good stability and the upgrade has had minimal impact to internal and external users.

We’re hoping the freeze will end in the next few days. In the meantime, Owain has been quick to fix any issues that have cropped up. Kim, Andrew and Lucinda have been keeping on top of the inbox and making sure any issues or content requests are on the board, ready to be actioned when the freeze is lifted.

This has been a major project for NRW. It has only been possible because of all the hard work from both the development delivery team and the digital team.

We will have to do it all again next week for the Wales Coastal Path upgrade.

Are we out of the woods?

After many, many months of writing, waiting, detective work and swearing the new woodlands and forests pages are now live. Now we can finally see the woods for the trees (is that a thing?).

The area has updated content pages and a new information architecture. These improvements provide our users with better information to help them plant more trees and manage their woodlands and forests more effectively.

Online payments

It feels like the permissions project gets more exciting every week. After reading a blog about GOV.UK Pay, Sam was straight on it, exploring how we might use it for permissions. In the time it took Laura to make a cuppa, Sam had set up an account and mocked up a test payment system for horse riding permits.

We’re focusing on horse riding because it’s most frequently applied for - we’ve also seen evidence of users having issues and making complaints. We could make a real difference for users if we made it easier for them to apply for a permit. It will also help the permissions team (who we know are struggling to chase payments and incomplete applications).

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We quickly built a ‘Apply for a Newborough horse riding permit’. A simple form which (once submitted) allows users to then pay online. We showed the prototype at the permissions team meeting on Tuesday and they were excited by the potential opportunities.

This was our moment, the best opportunity to highlight some of the inconsistencies we’ve uncovered while working in the discovery phase of the project. For example, horse riders in the north pay £10 for a permit and it can take up to 3 days to process the application. Horse riders in the south pay £60 and it can take up to 12 weeks. There may well be valid reasons behind this, based on decisions made by different teams in the past.

While these inconsistencies exist, it’s very difficult to build a simple service. But if we can keep shining a light on these issues and showing people how things could be, there’s a huge potential to improve things.

We’re looking forward to joining GOV.UK Pay’s Google meet next Tuesday to find out more about how we could make it work for us.

Reviewing the content handbook

We all got together on Thursday morning to go through the content handbook with Christine and Rob from Crocstar. The handbook sets out the guidelines and processes for creating digital content at NRW.

It’s going to be a really useful tool to help us make consistent decisions about what content we publish and how we work with others. Helping us feel empowered to put user needs first.

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After going through the handbook we went into breakout rooms to discuss different topics:

  1. Updating the handbook
  2. Analytics & Hotjar
  3. Customer Hub
  4. User needs

Coming back together at the end to share our views and ideas.

Other things we’ve been working on:

  • Phil has been working on updating the accessibility statement. Following our recent audit by the cabinet office, we had to make some accessibility improvements to our website, we also had to provide an up to date accessibility statement. The results of the audit are now shown on the new accessibility statement. The language in the statement has been improved to make it easier to read. Phil is now trying to find out if we have to say things like “data table rows and columns are not marked up semantically” or we can use easier to read language and say “data table rows and columns are not labelled or described correctly”.
  • We’ve received positive feedback from colleagues about the SROC work. It’s really nice to hear that the efforts are being recognised. We’re doing a team retrospective next week to capture what went well, and what we want to do next.
  • Heledd has been doing loads of admin stuff.

Fun Fact Friday

And finally here’s a little fun fact to brighten up your Friday. This week is courtesy of Owain - did you know that sometimes an Octopus will punch a fish out of spite!