Digital maturity and literacy assessment

‘Digital maturity and literacy’ means the ability and confidence of an organisation and its people to use technology effectively and deliver value.

In 2023, we worked with Basis to review our options for supporting digital innovation in social care.

We found out that there are gaps in the skills the workforce need to support digital innovation in the sector.

One of the themes of our health and social care workforce strategy is building a digitally ready workforce that can deliver better outcomes for people and increase public confidence in the social care sector.

We know that to do this we need to help the social care sector develop the digital skills and confidence to make the most of the digital innovations that are available.

One of the opportunities we identified together was to promote inclusion and close the ‘digital divide’ by working with partners to produce a baseline assessment of digital maturity and literacy in social care.

A ‘baseline assessment’ will tell us what things are like now and give us a better idea of where to target support.

Alongside Basis, our focus is to work with the social care sector in Wales to understand how we can develop a meaningful approach to understanding things like:

• how digital and technology resources are currently being used to add value to people’s care and support
• the current digital skills and confidence of the workforce to use these digital resources
• what further support is needed to support the workforce in using these digital resources.

To do this, we need your help to develop an assessment or a tool that’ll benefit the social care sector and support the delivery of better outcomes for people.

We’d love to hear about your experiences of using digital technology to meet the needs of people you support.

If you’re happy to share your experiences and work with us on developing an assessment, please email us at workforcestrategy@socialcare.wales and we'll be in touch to arrange a conversation.

Basis have also created a short survey to help us learn more about how we can develop a tool that works best for you and your organisation.

The anonymous survey takes around six minutes to complete.

With your support from the beginning, together we can design a digital maturity and literacy assessment that can help improve:

• the ability of leaders to make strategic decisions and allocate resources more effectively
• our understanding of the development needs and skills gaps in the workforce
• the recruitment and retention of great people
• the ability of organisations to test innovative digital solutions
• collaboration and holistic support
• equal access to opportunities and support using digital resources
• the ability of the workforce to practice more personalised care under increasing pressures and expectations.

As part of a separate project, we're also working with local authorities to learn more about their data maturity.

‘Data maturity’ refers to the readiness of an organisation to make best use of the data it holds.

Visit our data maturity assessment page to find out more about that project.