Creating a Connected Council for a Digital Future

When we began our digital transformation journey at Neath Port Talbot, the website seemed like the obvious place to start. But very quickly it became clear that this wasn’t just about redesigning pages or refreshing content – it was about reshaping how people interact with the council and how the council operates behind the scenes.

Our goal was to make sure residents could deal with us online as easily as they manage other parts of their lives. In an age where people can renew a passport or order groceries in minutes, they expect public services to be just as straightforward. That meant not just improving the look of our website but transforming the whole experience of how citizens access services.

I had first worked with transformation and change delivery agency Perago some five years ago, and this experience helped me see the importance of starting with discovery – really understanding the problem before designing the solution. Too often, IT projects in the past began with a specification and ended with a product 18 months later. What we’ve built instead is a process that’s iterative, informed by feedback, and centred on the user from start to finish.

To make this happen, we had to change more than our technology. We had to change how the organisation saw digital. The appointment of our Chief Digital Officer and the introduction of new digital, data and technology roles have been central to that shift. They’ve transformed how we work and how the organisation now values digital expertise.

Over the last 18 months, this approach has shaped the redevelopment of our website and the creation of myNPT, our new digital front door for residents. The aim was simple: to give people a single, seamless view of the council, without needing to understand its internal structure. Whether reporting an issue, paying a bill or asking a question, residents now experience one clear route in and, crucially, a 360-degree feedback loop that lets them know what’s happening next.

Behind that simplicity sits a complex change in culture. We’ve built multidisciplinary teams where IT, service areas and content specialists work together, and we’ve moved away from council-specific language towards plain English that residents and businesses understand. That might sound minor, but it makes a big difference. It improves satisfaction and reduces “failure demand” – the avoidable contact that happens when users can’t find what they need the first time.

The website is just one part of a wider shift towards user-centred, data-driven service design. We’ve drawn heavily on best practice from central government, adopting familiar design patterns from services like passport renewal or vehicle tax, so that our residents experience the same clarity and ease they’re used to elsewhere.

We know transformation doesn’t have an endpoint. myNPT is not a finished product; it’s a service that will continue to evolve based on feedback and need. The important thing is that we now have the capacity and the culture to keep improving.

This journey has been about more than technology. It’s about building an organisation that listens, learns and designs around its users. And while that work continues, the results so far show that when digital transformation is done well, it makes life easier for residents and for the people delivering public services every day.

Ian Vaughan talks about this and more in the Business News Wales Government & Not for Profit podcast. Listen here.