Further reading

By Lee Waters. This influential report outlines the urgent need for systemic transformation within the Welsh public sector. Setting the scene for our work, it highlights long-standing challenges and makes the case for a bold, new approach to public service delivery in Wales.

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System Reboot (2018)

By Centre for Digital Public Services and Welsh Government. The Welsh Digital Service Standard provides practical, outcome-focused guidance for designing and delivering public services that truly meet user needs. It embodies the ‘better way’ principles we’ve outlined, offering a tangible framework for teams across Wales to build services that are simpler, clearer, and faster.

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Digital Service Standard for Wales

By Andrew Greenway and Tom Loosemore. This foundational book provides a compelling blueprint for delivering transformative change within government. It offers practical guidance to the mindsets, approaches, and challenges of digital transformation, directly informing our emphasis on moving beyond short-term fixes and adopting new ways of thinking and doing.

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The Radical How

By Andrew Greenway, Tom Loosemore, Mike Bracken and Ben Terrett. Building on extensive experience from the UK Government Digital Service, this book offers critical insights into how major digital transformation can be managed across large, complex organisations. It supports our calls for bold leadership, multidisciplinary teams, and a focus on continuous delivery, and demonstrates how these principles translate into large-scale systemic change.

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ISBN: 978-1-9130193-9-6 Digital Transformation at Scale

By Giles Turnbull. Clear, open communication is essential for successful digital transformation — especially when working in the open. This handbook offers practical advice on how to communicate transparently and iteratively, supporting our call for radical transparency and helping to build a more open public service culture.

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ISBN: 978-1-7399422-3-6 The agile comms handbook

By Joanna Goodwin, Adrián Ortega, Ceri Brunelli-Williams, Heledd Quaeck and Nia Campbell. This practical guide to collaborative writing supports our principles of working in the open and multidisciplinary teamwork. It shows how structured collaboration can produce clear, user-centred bilingual content, leading to better communication and outcomes in public services across Wales.

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ISBN: 978-1-4467822-4-8

By Richard Pope. This influential thinking explores the concept of ‘platforms’ as foundational digital infrastructure, moving beyond individual services to create reusable components and shared capabilities across government. It underpins our recommendations for fixing the ‘plumbing’ of government and simplifying procurement, enabling a more integrated and efficient digital state.

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ISBN: 978-1-9167491-1-5 Platformland: An anatomy of next-generation public services

By Kate Tarling. This book offers crucial guidance on how public sector organisations can be structured and led to effectively deliver modern, user-centred services. It provides practical frameworks for building an organisational culture that supports continuous service design and delivery, and directly informs our recommendations on leadership, multidisciplinary teams, and improved ways of working.

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ISBN: 978-1-913019-76-1 The Service Organization

By UK Department for Science, Innovation and Technology. This blueprint sets out a vision for the future of an agile, user-centred government that resonates deeply with our recommendations. It reinforces the importance of integrated digital public infrastructure, open standards, and a focus on outcomes, and provides a broader strategic context for the actions proposed in our report.

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A blueprint for a modern digital government

By Gordon Guthrie. This report offers a comprehensive vision for building a modern digital state, particularly relevant in a devolved context. Its focus on foundational components, capabilities, and strategic investments provides valuable parallels and reinforces the systemic changes we advocate for: leadership, skills, and funding to enable sustainable digital transformation in Wales.

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ISBN: 978-1-0685451-0-8 Foundations Of The Digital State independent report for Scottish Government

By Martina Vojtkova, Laurie Smith and Suraj Vadgama. This playbook provides actionable strategies for adopting a ’test and learn’ approach, which is crucial for agile delivery and responding to real-world feedback. It offers practical methods for experimentation, rapid iteration, and learning from failure, directly supporting our report’s emphasis on flexibility and continuous improvement in public services.

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Test and Learn Playbook