Digital by design? Lessons from our digital strategy review across councils in Wales

Digital by design?

Lessons from our digital strategy review across councils in Wales

Digital by design? Lessons from our digital strategy review across councils in Wales

This interactive page provides an overview of our digital strategy review

You can click through headings to access further information. You can also find links to the full report and the reports for individual councils.

Councils deliver hundreds of different services to over three million people living across Wales. Digital solutions offer the potential to enhance citizens’ experience of those services and increase efficiency.

Financial pressures mean that councils need to look for new ways of delivering more for less. Digital is likely to play a pivotal role in councils’ change programmes, as they seek to deliver modern, cost-effective public services that meet the needs and expectations of their citizens. We could, therefore, see an acceleration in council’s application of digital solutions, particularly as technology continues to develop.

This presents opportunities, but also significant value for money risks. It will be important for councils to define what they want to achieve over the long term, to guide investment decisions, while responding to the here and now.

Putting value for money and the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act’s sustainable development principle at the heart of their work on digital will help councils deliver the most value, both now and in the future.

Our digital strategy review...

looked at councils’ strategic approaches to digital.
focused on a). the extent to which strategies had been developed in accordance with the sustainable development principle and b). that they would help to secure value for money in the use of councils’ resources.
included reviews at each of the 22 councils across Wales.
builds on our previous ‘springing forward’ review on assets and workforce, which we carried out between 2021 and 2023.

Why we undertook it...

to provide assurance that councils’ digital strategies will help to deliver their well-being objectives in a way that secures value for money in the use of resources.
to provide assurance that councils are acting in accordance with the sustainable development principal in the design of their digital strategies.
to explain how councils are using/planning to use digital technology to meet people’s needs and deliver better outcomes.
to inspire and empower councils and other public sector bodies by identifying and sharing examples of notable practice/approaches where relevant.

Some key findings can be summerised as follows:

Only half the councils in Wales had an up-to-date digital strategy at the time of our review. The remaining half were at varying stages of refreshing their digital strategies.
Councils were, to varying extents, thinking about how they could use digital to deliver better outcomes and achieve their strategic ambitions over the long term.
However, we identified consistent weaknesses in resourcing and monitoring that pose value for money risks.
Fundamentally, councils would benefit from have an explicit focus on value for money and the sustainable development principle.

We identified some common areas for improvement across the 22 councils. They are lessons from our work that represent the main opportunities for councils to strengthen their application of the sustainable development principle and arrangements for securing value for money.

However, they will apply to each council differently. They are not intended as an additional set of recommendations. We would encourage councils to consider them in the context of their own reports and note the practice examples included.