Phil: January is now over. Thank goodness it’s February and we can move one step closer to spring. I hate the dark nights, cold weather, and wintery conditions. What about you Shaun?

Shaun: Aye Phil – the dark’s a killer. Walking a black dog up a dark hill every night presents its own set of challenges. I’ve tripped, slipped and bounced my napper off tree branches. We’ve lost an entire tournament’s set of tennis balls and wrecked a pair of shoes so far this winter. It’s not without its occasional rewards though, like the current planetary alignment, culminating in a couple of weeks, or this view of a silvery path to Birkenhead taken, appropriately, on the wolf moon:

image of the moon

CDPS’ Leading Modern Public Services

Heledd attended the first two days of the Leading Modern Public Services course, organised by CDPS.

Some of the goals of the sessions were to:

  • Articulate what is meant by public sector and digital transformation
  • Reflect on and assess the digital maturity of our organisation
  • Identify and prioritise challenges we’re facing when leading digital transformation
  • Recognise the wider context
  • Identify ways to act as a system leader to break down silos, gain support and buy-in
  • Create psychological safety and behaviours

Some of the highlights over the 2 days were:

  • Opportunities to learn together with Matt and Mark from the DDAT management group at NRW
  • Meeting leaders from several other public sector bodies – despite different remits, most of the challenges we face are the same
  • A reminder of the Future Generation Commissioner for Wales’ ambition, and the interlinkages with digital and transforming public services
  • A discussion about the ethics of AI
  • The questions and discussion in the room – including hearing some practical examples (early proofs of concept)
  • Discussion around digital maturity, and different levels of transformation – a reminder that transformation is something that happens over time and has multiple levels (not a one-off programme of works)
  • Starting to define our challenges and problems together – we’ve not solved them yet! But looking forward to the design sprint session at the end of March where we will give that a good crack!
  • Great facilitation over the 2 days with the fab Tash Willcox from TPX Impact, and Peter and team from CDPS.

It was a nice surprise when Ben Holiday, as part of the session on ‘Different levels of digital maturity’, shared our work on designing better content and online forms as an example of a service at Level 3 in maturity. Level 3 equates to great work going into designing the “front door” and user experience and iterating. Well done Sam on documenting and sharing in the blog post: How we created then iterated a form so it better meets user needs and organisation goals.

image of a goosander bird

The picture is of a Goosander bird siting on the water.

Sam and Phil continue to work on species content and forms, we have been busy:

  • building the bird licence change, renew and report forms
  • creating web pages for change, renew and report on your bird licence
  • mapping out the apply for a bird licence form
  • creating web pages for bird licensing
  • working on the structure and content of the bird licence form

We started to create the apply for a bird licence form. We looked at the structure and the flow through the form, now it’s time to work on the content.

We have found a lot of issues with the current process of applying for a bird licence. This has created more questions than answers for poor Sam and Phil. One of these issues is who applies for a species licence.

Now the forms make the user pick if they are:

  • an ecologist
  • an accredited agent
  • a lead licensee

If you don’t know who an accredited agent or a lead licensee is, you are not alone, neither do we.

This is what we are trying to find out. Who are they? ….and are they needed as part of the licence process? Why do we ask who the person is?

In the future we could ask, the person who is applying for the licence to complete the form and apply. This would stop so much confusion for the user.

User needs

It wouldn’t be Shaun’s stint on week-notes, without his now long-standing plea/rant on the importance of being led by user needs. We’ve had a few requests lately for web guidance written for multiple sets of users – usually staff and permit applicants/holders but could also be planning authorities and developers or septic tank owners and water companies, or farmers and waste companies….you get the picture.

In most cases the guidance is different and we don’t want to force each set of users to wade through the guidance for the other set of users. People scan web content for the answer to their query. When we make them scan stuff that’s irrelevant to them, it makes their task much more difficult and increases the likelihood of them just not finding their answer, thereby decreasing compliance and increasing frustration and lack of trust in our website.

User needs are usually recorded something like this:

  • As a user (farmer/planning authority etc),
  • I need to know the task (how to apply for/ comply with etc),
  • so that reason (I can operate legally, comply with rules etc).

Keeping this at the forefront of our minds when writing web-pages helps us ensure we make our guidance easy to find, follow and act upon, whilst also meeting the user’s…errm…needs.

You can read more about user needs on the Gov.uk service manual.

Water discharge permit transfer

Shaun has been reviewing the electronic form for transferring a water discharge permit. We’ve made amendments to this form in the past at the request of the regulatory team but unfortunately piecemeal amendments have resulted in the form becoming confusing for applicants. Issues also arise from the fact that two sets of users are involved (the current permit holder and the new permit holder).

Thanks to Sam for providing the road map to transferring waste permits. If we can make the forms more uniform across the different regimes we should make things easier for users and our staff processing the applications.

Other things we’ve been working on

  • Sophie has audited various evidence reports this week, making amends wherever possible to bring them in line with the accessibility requirements to publish on the website. Keep an eye out for new reports and research appearing on the website in the coming weeks!
  • Shaun has been looking at a few pieces of stand-alone guidance on planning implications of siting telecommunications equipment, spraying herbicides on or near railway tracks and requirements for electricity grid developers.

time to talk day image

Time To Talk Day

February 6th marked Time To Talk Day, aimed at stimulating conversations on mental health. With that in mind (ahem), we thought it would be apposite to bring back the intermittent week note book recommendation.

Title: Letting Go

Author: David R Hawkins

In brief (sorry for butchering your lifetime’s work David):

A systematic approach to identifying and releasing unhelpful emotions.

  1. Become aware of the negative emotion you’re experiencing. Acknowledge its presence without judgment or resistance.
  2. Concentrate on the physical sensations associated with the emotion, ignoring any thoughts. Allow yourself to fully feel the emotion without trying to change or suppress it.
  3. Relax your body and choose to let the emotion exist without fighting against it. Allowing yourself to experience the feeling enables the emotion to run its course naturally.
  4. Make a conscious decision to let go of the emotion.
  5. Repeat as necessary