Digital potential tool summary: Leadership and digital strategy
In July 2025, we published a report about the digital maturity and literacy of social care in Wales.
The report contained the early findings of our digital potential tool and was based on the responses of 1,200 people from across 295 organisations between January and March 2025.
This is a summary of the report's findings and recommendations on the subject of leadership and digital strategy.
Strengths
- Championing digital: 81 per cent of staff say leaders champion digital.
- Digital strategy: 69 per cent say digital is part of their organisation’s strategy.
- Digital leadership: 71 per cent of senior leaders feel they have digital leadership skills.
- Data protection and cybersecurity: 74 per cent of organisations discuss data protection and cybersecurity regularly.
Areas for development
- Investing in technology maintenance: Only 14 per cent of organisations ‘always’ invest in technology maintenance, dropping to just three per cent among local authorities.
- Emerging technologies: 33 per cent of local authority leaders rarely engage with emerging technologies.
- Staff awareness of digital stance: 11 per cent of staff are unsure about their leadership’s digital stance.
- Confidence to deliver digital projects: Only 53 per cent of staff feel confident delivering digital projects.
Private and third-sector leaders report higher confidence in leading digital change and clearer strategic planning.
Local authority leaders often face more constraints , such as funding, procurement and governance, which can limit their ability to lead digital transformation.
Key comparisons
Our research has revealed some notable differences between the responses of local authority staff and those who work in the private or third sector.
- Confidence in leading digital change: 25 per cent of local authority respondents said they rarely or never feel confident leading digital change, compared to just 10 per cent in the private and third sector.
- Clear digital plans: In local authorities, 16 per cent said they always have a clear plan in place, compared to 34 per cent in the private and third sector.
- Engagement with emerging technology: 33 per cent of local authority respondents said they rarely engage with emerging technology, compared to 12 per cent in the private and third sector.
- Sharing learning across organisations: Among local authority respondents, 30 per cent said they rarely share learning across organisations, falling to 19 per cent among private and third sector providers.
Local authorities often manage larger-scale digital projects across multiple services, which can be harder to coordinate and resource.
Private and third-sector providers may have more agile decision-making, allowing them to plan and innovate more easily.
What the report recommends
The report recommends a number of steps that could be taken to help social care reach its digital potential.
Some of the recommendations that relate to leadership and digital strategy are to:
Provide digital leadership training -
The report recommends providing targeted digital leadership training for social care leaders, particularly in local authorities where confidence is lower.
The training should be accessible and relevant to leaders at different levels, recognising varying responsibilities for digital strategy and implementation.
Targeted training could help build the confidence of leaders and, over time, improve how they actively champion initiatives using digital approaches to reducing the cost of improved care
Improve communication -
The report recommends emphasising the importance of clear communication about digital strategy to help increase staff understanding and engagement and bridge the gap between leadership and frontline staff.
This could form an element of any leadership development training that is developed.
Clarify guidance for emerging technologies -
The report recommends developing clear guidance on organisational approaches to AI that emphasise its relevance and potential applications in social care, helping to demystify this emerging technology area.
Guidance should include practical examples and case studies that demonstrate relevant uses in social care settings.
It also recommends supporting leaders to engage with staff to understand and prioritise digital innovation in their context to strengthen digital strategic planning processes.
This should especially be the case for local authorities, which report the lowest confidence when it comes to digital innovation.
Strengthen procurement -
The report recommends creating straightforward guidance to build confidence in buying digital technologies that truly work for people, while allowing room for safe innovation.
The recommendations are for the whole social care sector, so we’ll need to work together as national, regional and local partners to co-develop an action plan based on the findings.
When developing the action plan, we’ll need to think about who’s best placed to take the recommendations forward, what the recommendations mean in practice, what resources are needed and how they’ll be funded.
Find out more
You can find out more by visiting our summaries on skills and capabilities and IT and infrastructure, or by reading the full report.
Use the digital potential tool
You can still use the tool to support your digital development.
If you’ve already completed it once, why not use it to track your digital development over time?
We emailed a link to everyone on our Register on 9 and 10 January 2025. If you haven’t received your link or can’t find it, please contact digital@socialcare.wales.