Here’s what we’ve been up to this week…

  • We had an extended team meeting to reflect on we’re doing well as a team and what we can improve. We worked in breakout rooms and had plenty of discussion about our strengths and weaknesses. This will help us build and develop as a team.
  • This week, we’ve updated our website with a new summary homepage and splash image for our visitors.
  • Sophie and Mary worked with Angharad to publish new guidance to staff about using our volunteer days to support community projects.
  • Kim has started work publishing our annual report.
  • James shared user needs insights with Shaun and Mary from his intranet workshop with the Fleet team last week.
  • Sam and Jane launched new forest management plan service. This is the culmination of 7 months of work. The new online process aims to make it much easier to apply for a forest management plan by using tried and tested design patterns. Sam and Jane created a clear step-by-step journey which was validated through user research interviews. This was a real team effort with James doing the user testing, Lowri Jones from our Translation team working on some bilingual pair-writing, Kim testing form flows and Lucinda and Owain’s input into the step-by-step navigation pattern.
  • Jane did a demo of the new forest management plan service to DdAT leaders with Sam taking questions and explaining how we approached the work.
  • Hannah published two big web pages this week: the Sustainable growth and value strategy 2027-2031 (previously called the Commercial strategy), and the Timber sales and marketing plan 2027-2031.
  • Heledd attended a Flood Risk Management and DDaT Future Strategies day in Cardiff. It was an opportunity to hear about the challenges and opportunities around making better use of data, digital and technology to continue improving services for users and increasing organisational effectiveness. It is a significant area of work, with many positive developments to build on, but also difficult decisions about what to prioritise.
  • Heledd also joined a call with Laurence and Lauren from Siteimprove. It was a fascinating discussion on a topic that many of us have been considering: the longstanding content issues that organisations face are likely to become increasingly visible and more problematic as AI-driven search and discovery tools become more widely used. They shared insights from their AI Readiness report, which highlighted the importance of content quality, governance and structure in ensuring organisations are prepared for these changes.