Plaid Cymru’s “First 100 days” plan sets out an ambitious vision for Wales.

It talks about creating a more open and transparent government, adopting a “test and learn” approach to delivery, agreeing measurable outcomes, and building “One Welsh Public Service”.

Those commitments matter. However, many people across the Welsh public sector will be wondering whether government can really move at that speed.

Public servants don’t lack capability or ambition. Far from it. But too often, change gets stuck long before anything reaches the public.

Breaking free from long planning cycles

Across government and public services, we have become used to very long planning cycles.

A programme is established. A solution is proposed. Governance structures are created. Consultation begins. Strategies are drafted. Boards are formed. Procurement starts.

Eighteen months later, very little has changed for the public.

Some of this work is necessary. Good policy, engagement and accountability matter.

But somewhere along the way, Welsh public services started mistaking planning for progress.

The result is that even relatively small improvements can take years to happen.

Meanwhile, public frustration grows. Staff become exhausted. And confidence in government continues to erode.

Moving faster is not about moving recklessly

There is a misconception that delivering quickly means cutting corners.

The opposite is usually true.

The most effective public sector teams tend to:

  • start small
  • focus on a specific problem
  • work closely with users and frontline staff
  • test ideas early
  • learn as they go
  • improve things in manageable steps

They do not wait for the perfect strategy document before making things better.

That is what makes some international examples so striking.

Last year in Barbados, GovTech Barbados launched a new entry point into government services and its first transformed services for registering births, marriages and deaths in just three weeks.

They didn’t ignore governance or complexity, but reduced the scope, empowered teams to work quickly, and focused on delivering something useful early so they could learn from real-world use.

They also worked publicly. Ministers spoke openly about the work, teams shared progress, the public were invited into the conversation through town halls and online updates.

In their first town hall, CEO of GovTech Barbados Mark Boyce explained to the public:

“You don’t want a situation where the people of Barbados have to know which government department is responsible for the thing they want to do. It’s not your responsibility to know that… You should just be able to go to gov.bb and everything you want to get done should be able to get done from that one place.”

Openness matters because it changes the relationship between government and the public. It creates permission to improve continuously instead of pretending everything must be perfect before anyone can see it.

GOV.UK and renew your car tax were built in roughly 100 days

Some of the best examples of fast, effective public service delivery are not theoretical.

They have already happened.

GOV.UK — now used by millions of people every week — was built in around four months by a small multidisciplinary team working iteratively, testing constantly and focusing relentlessly on user needs.

At the time, this was radically different from the traditional model of government delivery. Instead of spending years commissioning large platforms and trying to design everything upfront, the team focused on getting a simpler service into people’s hands quickly and improving it continuously. (You can see just how quickly they moved from this blog post, the GDS story.)

The same was true for online vehicle tax renewal.

One of the UK government’s most-used services was transformed by an in-house team in Swansea in just 12 weeks.

Again, the speed did not come from cutting corners.

It came from:

  • narrowing the scope
  • empowering the team to make decisions
  • working closely with users
  • removing layers of unnecessary governance
  • focusing on solving a problem instead of leading with a solution

These examples challenge a deeply ingrained assumption across much of the Welsh public sector: that meaningful change must take years.

It does not.

What often takes years is trying to design the perfect solution before allowing teams to start learning from reality.

The first 100 days should not be about perfection

Welsh Government will not solve waiting lists, child poverty or planning reform in 100 days.

Nobody seriously expects it to.

But the first 100 days can prove something important: that government is capable of working differently.

This is not about throwing everything out and starting again. And it is not about asking exhausted teams to simply work harder.

It’s about removing some of the barriers that stop good people delivering improvements quickly.

That might mean improving one frustrating service, testing a new approach in one area before scaling it, removing blockers for teams, or showing progress more openly and honestly.

Small visible improvements matter.

They build trust, create momentum, and show that meaningful change does not always need to take years.

They show the public that change is possible.

And they create momentum for larger reform later.