Helo bawb! Hi everyone!
The Senedd election marks the start of a new chapter for Wales.
Change can feel uncertain, but it also creates space to rethink how government works and what public services could become.
With Plaid Cymru now leading government and setting out its first 100-day plan, there is an opportunity to move faster, work differently, and start rebuilding trust through visible improvements people can actually feel in their daily lives.
It’s refreshing to see a party with a 100-day plan, which we reflected on in our post: Why 100 days is enough to prove a different way of governing. The piece looks at what Welsh Government can learn from organisations that have delivered meaningful change quickly by starting small, testing ideas early, and focusing relentlessly on people’s needs.
Related, Transform Wales member Dafydd Vaughan shared his experiences of rebuilding the UK’s online car tax service in just ten weeks at the DVLA. It’s a powerful example of what can happen when teams are trusted to work openly, iteratively and at pace — and why momentum matters more than perfection.
How to deliver change that lasts
Our new 5-part blog series about better government for Wales, and how to deliver change that lasts.
Too often, conversations about public services focus only on what government should deliver: health, housing, transport, social care. But far less attention is paid to how change happens in practice.
Our first post asks whether Wales can still afford legacy ways of working — from siloed teams and duplicated effort to slow delivery and expensive workarounds.
This month’s digital news in Cymru
Wales rolls out nationwide digital maternity record system across NHS
Nation.Cymru reports on Wales becoming the first UK nation to introduce a single digital maternity record system across every NHS health board. The new platform replaces fragmented local systems and paper notes with a shared digital service for parents and clinicians. It matters because it shows how joined-up digital services can reduce duplication, improve access to information, and create a better experience for both staff and the public.
The Magenta Book just got a Test and Learn annex
Transform Wales’ Jo Carter explains why a quiet update to HM Treasury’s Magenta Book could signal a major shift in how government designs and evaluates policy and services. The new “Test and Learn” guidance encourages multidisciplinary teams, rapid experimentation, and learning through delivery rather than long upfront planning. It matters because it gives formal backing to the kinds of open, user-centred ways of working many teams across Wales have been advocating for years.
New digital and data communities of practice for social care
Social Care Wales has launched new digital and data communities of practice for people working across social care in Wales. The communities aim to help people share knowledge, build confidence, and connect across organisations and disciplines. It matters because creating spaces for practitioners to learn openly together is essential for building the skills, relationships and culture needed to improve public services.
Lobster pots, complexity and starting small in the right way
Richard Pope reflects on why public services often fail when teams oversimplify complex problems through narrow “use-cases”. Drawing on examples including Universal Credit and the NHS Single Patient Record, he argues that services should embrace complexity early and scale gradually through geography or controlled rollout instead. It matters because it challenges a common assumption in digital transformation — that reducing complexity upfront always reduces risk.
Consistent design for better digital services
Samantha from the NRW Digital team shares how NRW is using proven GOV.UK-inspired page patterns, alongside learning from UK Government and the Digital Public Services Wales community, to help users move between services more easily and complete tasks with less effort.
Upcoming events
Senedd Election 2026: What happened, and why? - 12pm on Tuesday 2 June, online
Dr Jac Larner and Prof. Richard Wyn Jones of the Wales Governance Centre invites you to join this virtual post-election briefing where they will explore the factors that created these seismic election results.
June’s user behaviour and AI meetup - 12pm on Monday 15 June, online
Giorgio Di Tunno and colleagues will share how they have been identifying and reducing AI misinformation for businesses at the Department for Business and Trade (DBT).
UX Wales June meetup - 6pm on Thursday 25 June in Cardiff
Speakers to be announced.