Digitising Public Services

Part of 2. Questions to the Leader of the House and Chief Whip – in the Senedd at 3:04 pm on 18 July 2018.

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Photo of Julie James Julie James Labour 3:04, 18 July 2018

There are mixed skill levels amongst public sector workers, which does impact on their ability to spot digital service transformation opportunities, and also to use new services that have been delivered. So, we have a training programme across the public sector to upskill staff and we're working very hard with councils who have recently expressed a view around creating a cohesive digital leadership role for local authorities, with a view to upskilling the staff, not just because of the threat of artificial intelligence, although clearly that threat exists for lower level admin tasks in particular—it's something that's been happening for a good long while now, since the early 1980s—but also with a view to actively including transformation programmes to enable those staff to be freed up for front-line service jobs that are not impacted by AI, and there are a large number of those as well. It's something the workforce partnership council has a huge interest in, and I know, for example, that they're considering making improvements to the People Exchange Cymru online service for recruitment with a view to making it a portal for that kind of activity.