Wales Publishes Digital First Vision

The Welsh government has outlined its vision for public services in Wales to provide consistent and excellent services digitally.

The Digital First document outlines the next steps the government intends to take to provide high quality online services for both people and businesses in Wales.

According to Wales, it will be identifying and adopting best practices within the country, the UK and the world, using the new .cymru and .wales domain names as default in the public sector and making use of common platforms.

The document claims that Wales has already completed a number of digital projects successfully, including Rural Payments Wales, an online service developed in collaboration will stakeholders including farmers, farming agents and faming unions so the service would meet user needs.

This services has fared much better than its English counterpart, with almost a third of Single Application Forms being submitted in 2014.

The Welsh government has also introduced My Local School, an online services designed to provide access to schools’ data for patents and anyone else taking an interest in their local school.

This service provides a single point of contact for a wide range of data, including performance data to staff and finance information.

“There is a growing trend of consumer expectation that services, whether they are delivered by the public or private sector, should be available at anytime, anywhere and accessible digitally through an increasing range of devices,” claimed Welsh Deputy Minister for Skills and Technology Julie James.

“There are numerous examples of digital service delivery developing through the efforts of multiple organisations across the public sector in Wales.

“I’m very pleased to announce the publication of Digital First which sets out the Welsh government’s vision to enable responsive, consistent and excellent public services through transformed delivery,” James added.

Adopting Best Practice

The Digital First document reveals that building a common government platform similar to the UK’s GOV.UK website is one step that Wales is intending to take, claiming it ensures a consistent style and approach to digital services.

It also notes that GOV.UK receives 10 million visits per week from customers and has also been a catalyst for a major rationalisation in the number of government websites.

Other steps that the Welsh government is intending to take include adopting the digital by default strategy, developing the country’s infrastructure and ensuring people have the relevant skills to live and work in the digital world.

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