This week our team has been busy as always, supporting on a wide range of different projects. Find out more about what we’ve been up to in our latest weeknotes…

Autumnal leaves in a forest

Accessible Word templates for colleagues to use

Kim and Sam are working on a new template for colleagues to create accessible strategies and plans that we can publish more easily as HTML. As things are, it can take up to week of needless work to turn a document like an annual report into something that can be published as web content. The biggest problems are: tables, missing alt text, too many links with many described as ‘here’ or ‘click here’, as well as walls of text.

More species licence user interviews

James has held another 7 user interviews about species licences this week. That brings the total to 13.

He spoke to:

  • 3 ecologists
  • A housing developer
  • A NRW staff member who had to apply a species licence to clear shrub at a protected site
  • 2 pest control businesses.

There are some interesting themes coming through again this week:

  • Many of the biggest issues for users are NRW policy decisions, not web content that we can easily fix
  • Users wanted a pre-app service. This saw this as more efficient than trying to get things right through ‘email tennis’
  • Users wanted NRW to be more directive about what mitigation etc they needed to do to get a licence. Users were happy to follow this but were often left to guess at the ‘right’ solutions
  • Little evidence that our users looked on our website for guidance
  • Comments about vague or undefined terms on our website and application forms, e.g. ‘adequate information’ or ‘simple/complex amendment’

James will analyse and synthesise the research findings and present these to the Species Licence team in a show and tell session.

Painting of a wave

Marine licensing transformation

The old cliché about waiting ages for a bus and then three coming along at once rang true this week, as two more applications using the new band 1 form dropped into the inbox. Although none of the applicants have used our mini feedback form to leave any comments or opinions on the changes, this is potentially great news as it means they had nothing to complain about!

The first submission has now been reviewed by the marine licensing team, who had some feedback for us about small tweaks we need to make. Despite all our careful testing and preparation, it takes real world applications to properly indicate areas where we might have misjudged something. Such is the nature of content design and agile working.

As the band 1 licence form has a relatively low volume of submissions compared to others, this pace of returns is proving perfect for showing us how our new design is working and then allowing time to iterate it before the next submission comes in. We’re hopeful that there shouldn’t be too much more to do to it before it fully suits both applicants and the licensing team.

A custom domain for online forms

We use a form builder called Smart Survey for all our online forms. It’s a very useful tool that helps our users complete their tasks online. However, all the forms, until very recently, still used the Smart Survey domain name, exhibit A: https://www.smartsurvey.co.uk/s/IHUPYO/

We thought this was very confusing as the rest of the form template was branded in our colours and fonts. We set out to get what’s called a custom domain. Lucinda in the digital team did lots of work to try and get us a new custom domain name.

After a lot of work, Lucinda and our ICT team created the custom domain name: https://ffurflenni.cyfoethnaturiol.cymru/ for all our online forms. Now we have a form that is properly branded it will hopefully provide a better user experience. We believe that having this custom domain will give our users more confidence that the service they are using is legitimate, that they haven’t been directed to a dodgy third-party site to provide their details.

Thank you, Lucinda, and to our ICT team for helping us with this piece of work.

Screenshot of the felling licence declaration screen

Digidol 2024: Reflections from North Wales’ Leading Digital Conference

Heledd attended Digidol 2024. Possibly the best event about digital ever in North Wales. Well done to the team at M-Sparc for putting such a great day together.

Highlights:

  • Glyn Jones, Chief Digital Officer for Welsh Government opened the day with progress on Digital Strategy for Wales and how the standards are supporting organisations. It was nice of Glyn to mention of our team’s work on the “six forms into one” work that he’d read in our blog post last week (instant value of working in the open!)
  • Avril Lewis shared the ambition for “Tech Week 2025” - putting Wales on the global stage and pushing for better opportunities to grow and invest in local talent. She described Wales as “culturally timid”, and we need to be bolder.
  • Rhyn ap Iorwerth (Plaid Cymru leader), Chaired the Cross Party group for Digital with a focus on the Digital Strategy for Wales and Inclusion. Great to hear examples from others in the room of projects to create more inclusive opportunities, as well as some honest perspectives about the lack of diversity in technology.
  • Session on how SmartTech is helping Wales with decarbonisation. For example, monitoring water and energy usage. Lots of opportunities for NRW to join in work in this space (possibly some colleagues are involved).
  • A lead developer at Google talked about their approach with developing developer tools, and also shared some of the practical tools they were using and trailing in their teams.
  • A short but insightful talk about “the 10 billion pound problem” in football –challenge of too much data and information everywhere, and the cost to the industry. How a small tech company in Wales is helping football analysts across the world to make better decisions, and use their money wiser.
  • Peter from CDPS announced the second cohort of their leadership academy. Interesting that key blocker to digital transformation is leadership itself—a theme that’s come up a lot lately. Sharon Gilburn (Chair CDPS), shared her insight on leadership. Be bold and be more in your face.
  • Having a mix of public sector, tech companies, data specialists, creatives, Welsh language tech specialists and many more all in one place.

Key takeaways:

  • Ambition to stop doing things “22+ different ways”. Not new, but with more collaboration and standards are we getting closer to avoiding duplication of effort and designing more joined up services?

A selfie of Heledd and Glyn Jones and Sharon Gilburn

Heledd also met Glyn Jones, Welsh Government’s Chief Digital officer and Sharon Gilburn, who’s the Chair of CDPS at the event this week.

Standards working group for Wales

On the topic of standards, Heledd joined the Standards Working Group. Dyfed Alsop, CEO of Welsh Revenue Authority is now the Chair, and with Harriet (CEO CDPS) and Glyn Jones are shaping the group and ways of working. The group is mostly focussed on reviewing and endorsing existing common standards, and making sure they are available and all public organisations encouraged to follow them, and feedback to help future iterations: Standards catalogue.

Close up photo of an eye

Taking care of your eyes this October

Eye Injury Prevention Month is observed every October and seeks to promote awareness about eye safety and prevent injuries, at home, work, and during recreational activities.

We only get one pair of eyes, so it’s imperative that we take precautions to protect them both at home and in the workplace. Experiencing fatigue and stress is common at the end of a workday. But in the digital age, there’s a new set of struggles from staring at a screen all day long, including headaches, dry eyes and double vision.

As remote work has expanded in recent years, so has the amount of time we spend working with screens for our jobs. According to a survey by All About Vision, remote workers spend almost 13 hours a day looking at screens, compared with just under 11 hours for on-site employees.

The common symptoms of eye strain include:

  • Headaches
  • Blurred vision
  • Dry eyes
  • In extreme cases, neck and shoulder pain.

Here are some ways to look after your eyes while working on a computer:

  • Apply the 20-20-20 rule – every 20 minutes look at something 20 feet away for 20 seconds. That will give your eye muscles a rest.
  • Try to blink regularly. Focusing on a screen may make you blink less, which may make your eyes dry and uncomfortable.
  • Make your workspace as ergonomic as possible: Your computer screen should be 20 to 28 inches from your eyes, with the centre of the screen 4 to 5 inches below eye level.
  • If you often look at documents while working at the computer, set them next to the screen so you don’t have to change focal distance too often. It’s also important to consider lighting and screen glare, as these can cause strain to our eyes.
  • Make sure your room is well lit and your screen is not brighter than the surrounding environment. Tilt the screen away from overhead lights and use blinds, shades or curtains to reduce glare from windows or backlight from the sun.
  • Blue light blocking glasses are a good investment for reducing eye strain, but not in the way many once thought. It turns out that these glasses do little to deal with symptoms of computer vision syndrome directly. However, reducing blue light at night can help to minimize disruptions to your sleep cycles, thus helping you get good rest.

Other stuff we’ve been up to:

Fun Fact Friday

Speaking of eyes this week… did you know Eyes are able to process 36,000 pieces of information in a single hour? Phew! No wonder they get tired quickly!