A joint blog from Glyn Jones, Chief Digital Officer, Welsh Government, and Harriet Green and Myra Hunt, joint CEO, Centre for Digital Public Services 

Darllenwch y dudalen hon yn Gwmraeg

From 1 April, the Centre for Digital Public Services (CDPS) will transfer into the Welsh Government, becoming part of a new Digital Public Services Wales Directorate.  

Following the announcement made by the Cabinet Secretary for Economy, Energy and Planning, we have been working hard behind the scenes to make that change happen as smoothly as possible. We know that this is the right move at the right time.  

Looking back over the last 5 years, we have built a strong foundation for digital transformation across Welsh public services underpinned by the Digital Strategy for Wales.

Stronger together  

Now, we are looking forward to the future and exciting opportunities to build on this foundation.

Digital Public Services Wales will continue all the great work CDPS has been doing, along with our Office for AI – led by newly appointed Deputy Director, Mark Jones – and our existing digital policy experts to take a truly holistic approach to digital and AI leadership, combining skills of brilliant teams working as one.  

Our focus for the first few months will be straightforward as we get ready to respond to the priorities of the next Senedd term. We expect to continue to:  

• advocate for Digital Service Standards as the backbone of good digital public services; 
• support organisations to fully use our bank of resources, including the service manual and tried and tested service patterns that save time and resource; 
• work alongside public sector colleagues to undertake service assessments;  
• deliver our successful digital training courses, including the Leading Modern Public Services programme; 
• bring people together through our seven Communities of Practice; 
• provide advice and guidance to the public sector on AI; and,  
• provide leadership on all cross-cutting digital strategy and policy matters.  

We will also use the next few weeks to shape how we work together and how we want to work with our public sector colleagues to help them in driving forward change. In doing so we will be ready to hit the ground running in supporting the new government with its priorities.

We are committed to continuing to work in the open and to share our thinking over the coming months as these priorities become clear.

And we will continue to put people at the heart of all we do. Because, ultimately, that is what digital is all about.   

Stay up to date with Digital Public Services Wales on LinkedIn and at digitalpublicservices.gov.wales.