After 352 days in January, it’s now February…..phew! The digital team has had a very sombre week. Andrew, who has been with us for four years, has left us and moved on to a new job. He will be missed but we wish him all the very best of luck in his new job.

Time to Talk Day 2024

This Thursday (February 1st) was Time to Talk Day, an annual awareness day that encourages everyone to be more open about mental health. The theme for 2024 is ‘feelings’, so I thought I (Toyah) would talk about how it has felt to join NRW.

Well, I’ve been an NRW employee for just under a month now, and I’ve just about managed to shake off the habit of automatically putting my previous payroll number into the laptop login screen. Small victories!

I hadn’t realised just how much residual knowledge I carry around with me from that job, and how automatically I default to the thinking patterns and habits built up over my (very long) time there. Unlearning that and learning a whole new way of working is proving to be so much harder than I expected!

It’s not just the industry-related things: the areas of business, the jargon, the acronyms, who does what and how departments and people interconnect. I totally expected to need to spend time here getting to grips with all that.

What’s caught me by surprise is being baffled by how to do basic tasks or where to find…anything. Not knowing what I don’t know, so not thinking to ask about it - that kind of thing. Having been swaddled in comforting familiarity for so many years, I now feel like I’ve moved to a new country where I don’t even recognise the language, let alone speak it. It’s how I imagine a small child might feel as they try to grasp the basics of the alphabet, and it’s pretty humbling as a 43 year old, I can tell you!

I’m the sort of person who feels anxious when I’m not on top of things. Any sense of a loss of control has me feeling like I’ll never be able to regain a calm and settled state. Add to this my habit of overthinking…well, everything really…and wow, has January been a month. 😅

Thank the stars then I’ve landed in such a lovely and understanding team, who have been phenomenally reassuring and supportive at every opportunity. As Bob Hoskins taught those of us old enough to remember, it really is good to talk!

I still find it really hard to accept that I can’t immediately dive into doing everything I’m here to do, but then, patience has never been my middle name (as the IT system proved when it outed me as a Dawn on day one). I’m sure that as I get more tasks under my belt and work up to doing bigger and more complex things, I’ll start to feel settled again. The proverbial duck to water…hopefully!

And speaking of birds…

Barn Owl and the Dartford Warbler

There is a drive to protect more wildlife and to stop habitat destruction. Did you know that hedgehogs will be on the species danger list soon?

The new forestry act hopes to protect more wildlife and stop some habitat decline.

It will do this by:

  • preventing the cutting down of trees if wildlife has made their home in a woodland or forest
  • encouraging the user to leave more deadwood in their woodland or forest for wildlife to make a new home
  • protecting rivers to help water voles and otters
  • stop the cutting down of trees when birds are nesting

A subject matter expert from the bird licence team sent Phil a spreadsheet. The spreadsheet wasn’t very clear, it wasn’t accessible, and it wasn’t suitable for the web. Phil needed a solution to this problem, and fast!

screenshot of the spreadsheet sent to us

The only solution was to call upon the hive mind of the digital team, and what a collective mind they have. They offered some great advice, as always.

After much discussion we decided to create a new online check service. The new check service will help our users know when they can cut down trees throughout the year. It will prevent the damage to wildlife or their habitat destruction.

screenshot of the check service

This new check service isn’t only for birds, oh no! Tweet! Tweet! The hive mind of the digital team is so good that we will be expanding on this new service. We can grow the check service to help the user decide if they need a wildlife licence. It can help them choose what licence they will need. This will help to remove lots of very complicated content from the website.

Thank you digital team for your help.

Just in case anyone is interested, this is what a Dartford Warbler looks like:

image of a Dartford warbler bird which has a brown chest and a grey head

Flood Land and Launch event

Lucinda and Heledd spent two days working on the train and meeting people in person in Cardiff. Lucinda started working with the flood product team last month – so it was a chance to spend time getting to know the big group of multidisciplinary people from NRW and BJSS (our technology partner), who are working as a blended team on this big project (more on this in a blog soon!).

Heledd gave the room an overview of the digital standards for Wales, and talked through the service standard review we did with some of the team recently. It was a chance to recognise and celebrate where the team is already well aligned to the standards, and share examples of where we can work together to do more – such as user needs, bilingual design and working in the open.

Heledd and Lucinda at Flood Land and Launch event

The day was well structured and fun - despite lots of serious thinking and planning all the work that needs to happen between now and go live in July! There was lots of sharing, listening and collaboration, and we loved the questions people were asking us – there was a real feeling of respect and appreciation for all the different skills, experience and knowledge in the room. It feels like everyone’s been on a journey already with this, the shift and understanding for user-centred design and agile delivery, and the commitment to deliver our digital strategy was great.

post its in the window

Well done to the whole team for the work so far! It was great to see Jeremy Parr, the Head of Flood risk management, spend the whole day with the team – something I hope we’ll see more senior leaders do.

A taste of Veganuary – a digital social

As Heledd and Lucinda (who are based up north) were visiting Cardiff, it seemed only right that we all got together for a catch up – with drinks and food of course!

You may be aware that January is the month of ‘Veganuary’ – a month-long challenge to encourage people to try out plant-based diets for 4 weeks. Some of our team were taking part, so we headed to Wagamama’s to try their tasty new vegan items. Wagamama’s recently made 50% of their menu completely meat-free, and since have become known for their Veganuary special menu items, featuring plenty of delicious plant-based dishes including a vegan version of chilli squid (using oyster mushrooms) and sticky ribs. Lucinda went for a vegan showstopper – a vegan ‘chicken’ kare lomen ramen bowl with Udon noodles and a delicious coconut based sauce. Pictured below, the meal is quite a large portion so you won’t be going hungry (and might even have leftovers to take home!).

a big bowl of delicious ramen

If you’re not sure what your favourite dish might be, you could go Sophie’s route of trying a few starters such as the chilli mushroom ‘squid’, mushroom skewers and the new k-dogs:

a mixture of starters to sample

All in all, we had a wonderful time getting together to catch up and try some new cuisine! We even had the marvellous Garmon from Translation join us for the evening, which was wonderful!

Garmon from the translation team posing with his chopsticks

In the Bluebell pub, we discovered some great photographs of goats, including this one of the Goat Major of 1RRW with Taffy III in 1987:

The Goat Major with Taffy number 3 in 1987

The Royal Welsh, and previously its predecessors, have been using goats as mascots for centuries, with the tradition dating back to 1775 during the American War of Independence. It is thought the original goat was adopted by the Royal Welsh at the Battle of Bunker Hill in the Independence War after straying onto the battlefield.

Another story claims the tradition dates back to the Crimean War, when a soldier suffering from hypothermia stuffed a kid into their coat to warm up. The goat reportedly then made a noise warning him about activity from the Russian troops they were fighting. When one goat dies, another is selected and then caught at the Great Orme in Llandudno, before going through months of rigorous training to become the new Shenkin.

The permissions project - using land we manage

Big celebrations, as the team delivered on the using land we manage project this week.

Our Trello cards moved fast on go-live day as we:

  • added links to the new content from related content
  • set up featured searches
  • added a feedback form on each new page
  • set up email triggers so that the completed applications go to internal teams

Big thanks to the permissions team leader who allowed us the space and time to explore the data, speak to users and the team, and try new things. That’s not something we get to do very often.

Next is to deliver the report of our work and our roadmap for how we iterate the service.

Other stuff we’ve been working on:

  • This week, Sophie worked with Kate Lock to publish an accessible report on the Grey Seal Breeding Census 2023. The report contains a great deal of interesting insight into the life and breeding trends of grey seals, and investigates the impact that pollution, disturbance and disease has on the grey seal population in Skomer Island. Read more about Kate’s work with the grey seal census on our website.
  • James has been working on a presentation for Welsh Government’s user research community about our ‘Do something on land we manage’ service. He’s also been adapting templates for SoNaRR 2025 and publishing new content about Shoreline Management Plans.

Friday Fun Fact

Have you ever heard of a woylie? No, us neither, so it was an extra pleasant surprise to learn this week that although these adorable truffle-hunting critters had been critically endangered, their population is now on the rise in the province of West Australia.

So cute!

picture of a woylie