Community name
Content Design in Welsh Local Government
Membership
The Community of Practice is for anyone who carries out content design activities within Welsh local government. This includes people who:
- Work in an explicit content design role
- Have content design activities or responsibilities as part of their role
- Carry out content design activities within another official role
We also welcome people who are interested in learning more about content design and in taking on content design responsibilities within their team, department or authority.
Purpose
Provide a space for local authority staff to discuss and work together on embedding and championing content design in Welsh local government, to improve service delivery and deliver better outcomes for citizens, authority employees and other stakeholders.
Specifically, we seek to achieve this by sharing knowledge and good practice, working on common challenges and opportunities, and building a support network to help all community members succeed in their day-to-day activities.
Goals
Through the Community of Practice we aim to achieve the following:
- Facilitate the creation of a body of good practice guidance and examples community members can draw on when creating and improving services.
- Capture ideas about how content design can be embedded and championed within Welsh local government, and bring these ideas into collective development where feasible and appropriate.
- Share good practice and examples from the wider public sector as well as the private sector, and explore how these can be applied within the local government context.
- Enable members to grow their content design skills, and capture ideas to grow these skills further.
- Raise awareness of the Community of Practice and of content design more generally, to engage a wide and diverse range of local authority colleagues.
These goals will also be used to help measure the effectiveness of the Community of Practice and identify potential improvements.
Community management
The Community of Practice will meet virtually every two months via Teams. Sessions are initially set to run on the last Tuesday of the month however we will be responsive to community member needs and can adjust the date and time of sessions as we learn what works best for the membership.
The WLGA Digital team will be responsible for setting up sessions and confirming the agenda in advance of the session. Community members will be responsible for setting the direction of the agenda and are encouraged to provide examples of content design where relevant (for example when discussing best practice, running a content crit, or presenting a show and tell).
We will use Teams to manage communication between sessions, and community members are encouraged to submit and respond to questions, examples and discussion topics through the Teams space.
People interested in joining the community can request an invite by emailing digitalteam@wlga.gov.uk. The WLGA Digital team will add them to session invites and to the Teams space.
We want community members to be equal owners of the Community of Practice. Members are encouraged to be proactive in the content and management of the community. The WLGA Digital team will however always remain on hand to support and facilitate where required.
Our values
It is important that the Community of Practice provides a safe space for members to discuss topics, challenges and opportunities related to content design.
Community members must be respectful and constructive with their input. Contributions are entirely voluntary, however the community works best when everyone is involved and we have a diversity of viewpoints so contributions are strongly encouraged.
Sessions will not be recorded and any contributions shared outside the group will not identify who said what (sometimes known as ‘Chatham House rules’). Members may request that their contributions are not shared publicly at all, these requests will be honoured at all times.
Review date
These terms of reference will be reviewed collectively by the community by 1st November 2023, to make sure that they remain realistic and focused on delivering value to members.
Contact
WLGA Contact: emma.willis@wlga.gov.uk