Wales’ Centre for Digital Public Services (CDPS) has set out seven priorities for the digital transformation of public services in the country.
This follows its review of the digital landscape, and a process that has involved whittling down an original 16 proposals through research with 50 organisations.
Five of the priorities are rated as high in relation to CDPS objectives. They include building digital maturity in health and care services, with a focus on shifting from waterfall to agile service design, and potential annual savings estimated at £7-10 million.
The second covers the reduction of manual processes in case management services, which is still common practice in Wales. CDPS has identified savings of £6-8.5 million per year through digitalising the processes.
It points to savings up £2-3 million through making content on public sector websites more user centred, helping people discover what they need to know and in processing information.
User accounts
It also prioritises the wider development of user accounts to prepopulate forms by local authorities and health bodies, with a projected saving of up to £2.5 million. While most councils are developing accounts, CDPS said many could benefit from applying user centred design.
Fifthly, it aims to improve the measuring and tracking of services to save up to £2.5 million. Currently there are no efforts to measure the performance of around 50% of services in Wales.
A further two initiatives have been given medium priority: to improve digital procurement, with projected savings of £6-9 million; and to increase the use of online forms, with savings of up to £2.5 million.
CDPS said it has teams already working on issues related to digital maturity in health and care and digital procurement, while actions relevant to the other five cases are still being prioritised.
