"Digital Plumbing"

GovCamp Cymru 2025: building the future of public services in Wales together

What a brilliant day at GovCamp Cymru! The energy, generosity, and curiosity in every room was infectious, and proof that when you bring together people who care about public services in Wales, good ideas flow fast. We pitched and ran a packed session on ‘A vision for public services in Wales’. Around 40 people joined us to explore what great public service delivery could look like, and what’s holding us back. What we heard: a shared vision.
Note

A note on Artificial Intelligence (AI)

There is no explicit mention of using Artificial Intelligence (AI) in this report - we’ve done this on purpose. Throughout the next Senedd, it’ll be important for Welsh Government to explore the opportunities that AI provides - experiment, test, learn. Identify what opportunities work, and which don’t add value.
Note

Further reading

This report sets out a path to better public services, grounded in decades of experience and proven practice. For those ready to take the next step, we’ve curated essential resources to support practical implementation.
Note

A better way

If Wales wants to rise to the challenge of improving public services, we have to change how we design and deliver them. That means putting people first, adopting modern and open ways of working, drawing on the best digital practices to build services that are simple, efficient, and designed around real life-needs.
Report

Clear, bold and accountable leadership - How we get there

Transforming public service requires clear, bold leadership. Leadership that understands the scale of the change we need that’s prepared to challenge and be challenged. Leadership with the vision, authority and staying power to drive lasting change.
Report

Delivering a new National Care and Support Service

The government has committed to creating a National Care and Support Service over the next decade, with full implementation from 2029. But a rigid, long-term plan risks being overtaken by events. A better way is to accelerate delivery by combining clear political intent with practical, test and learn reform.
Report

High-level planning reform

Wales faces significant challenges in housing, infrastructure, climate change and public health. Yet the planning system – anchored in local development plans – is struggling to respond. Many local plans are outdated, the process for updating them is long and complex, and both communities and businesses find it hard to engage. Wrexham’s recent high-profile planning dispute illustrates the risks.
Report

Making this real

Grounding our ‘better way’ in practice. Fully adopting the approach set out in this report means changing how the Welsh Government designs policy and delivers services. To illustrate, we’ve sketched what the first 100 and 1,000 days might look like in two areas.
Report

Reinvent funding and delivery mechanisms - How we get there

Transforming how government works also means transforming how it funds and delivers work. Across the Welsh public sector, the default model is still large, time-limited programmes that rely on cumbersome, multi-stage business cases. This process is slow, expensive and based on guesswork. It forces teams to commit upfront to fixed plans rather than testing risky assumptions or responding to real-world feedback.
Report