Welsh Government Board meeting: 12 June 2026

• Andrew Goodall (Chair) 
• Carys Williams 
• Aled Edwards 
• Mike Usher 
• Judith Paget 
• Emma Williams 
• Jacqueline Totterdell 
• Tracey Burke 
• Andrew Slade 
• Claire Bennett 
• Nicola Edwards 
• David Richards 
• Dom Houlihan 
• Dean Medcraft 
• Nicola Williams 
• TUS representative 

In attendance 

• Aled ap Dafydd 
• Glyn Jones 
• Peter McDonald 
• Jo Salway
• Elin Burns 
• Sinead Gallagher 
• Tracey Breheny 

Apologies 

• Sioned Evans 
• Wellbeing of Future Generations Champion 

Secretariat 

• Permanent Secretary’s Office 

1.1 The Chair welcomed all to the meeting and noted the apologies received. No conflicts of interest were declared. The Chair noted that the meeting was designed in a more workshop-style format than usual, in order to allow a candid and wide-ranging discussion among board members and supporting officials.

1.2 The Chair noted that the new Welsh Government was already four weeks into office, had held four Cabinet meetings, was on day 25 of the 100-day plan, and had completed two Prif Weinidog Questions sessions. The pace of the early weeks was described as rapid, with strong expectations for momentum, visible delivery and responsiveness.

1.3 The Chair noted that today’s Board meeting was Tracey Burke’s last before leaving Welsh Government. The Chair thanked Tracey for her leadership, professionalism, humour and significant contribution to Welsh Government and the wider public sector across a range of roles.

1.4 The Chair welcomed Claire Bennett to the Board and congratulated her on her appointment as Interim Director General for Local Government, Rural Resilience and Sustainability.

2.1 The Chair welcomed Aled ap Dafydd, Senior Special Adviser to the Prif Weinidog to the meeting and invited him to reflect on the role of the civil service in supporting the new government. Aled highlighted the importance of building relationships that would be resilient enough to deal with the inevitable challenges ahead and identified three guiding priorities: ruthless focus on ministerial priorities, securing value for every pound spent, and ensuring outcomes are tangible and communicable to the public.

2.2 Aled described the six priority areas set out before the election as providing focus and consistency for the new administration. He also underlined the role of special advisers as a critical link between ministers and the Civil Service; their role would include translating ministerial expectations, supporting communications and helping to connect with the organisation. The Chair noted that key to the relationship is the need to maintain open communication, mutual respect and trust, with both sides able to challenge constructively.

2.3 The Board discussed the new position of Cabinet Minister for Government Effectiveness and the Constitution. Aled explained that new administration wanted a ministerial role that could bring together work across government, maintain focus on delivery, look ahead to emerging problems and support a data-driven approach to insight and progress monitoring.

2.4 The Board emphasised the need for early identification of delivery risks rather than reacting only when problems had become acute. There was support for greater use of robust data and evidence, including dashboards and insight tools. Nicola Williams highlighted the importance of involving legal services earlier in policy development. She explained that recent engagement across legal services had shown a strong appetite to support ministers and officials more effectively, including by helping identify solutions at an earlier stage and advising whether legislation was the right route. There was interest in providing training and support for new staff and special advisers on recurring legal issues.

3.1 The Chair invited Judith Paget to reflect on the election preparation work. Judith noted that the election preparation subcommittee had met 17 times and cleared around 107 actions. A lessons learnt exercise has been undertaken with feedback gathered from across the organisation. Initial feedback is broadly positive. The election preparation subcommittee was seen as valuable in providing coherence, oversight and a clear route for resolving issues. Communications products, team packs and supporting materials were praised, as was the volume and quality of engagement across the organisation. Some areas for improvement were identified, including improving signposting to guidance, and considering whether policy groups should be involved earlier in future.

3.2 The induction programme for ministers and special advisers was reported to have gone well and feedback on the content, format and usefulness has been positive. The Board noted that this level of structured induction was not always provided in other administrations and had been well received,

3.3 The Chair noted that the Civil Service should take confidence from the positive feedback. The organisation had demonstrated its ability to pivot quickly following the announcement of ministerial portfolios, private office arrangements and machinery of government changes.

4.1 Jo Salway provided an update on responding to the new government’s 100-day plan. Jo and her team have met with each director and relevant deputy director responsible for commitments and these discussions have helped test assumptions and understand complexities around ownership and deliverability of commitments in the plan.

4.2 A communications overlay had been added to the plan so that delivery, timing and public messaging could be considered together. The supplementary budget was identified as an important communications opportunity for commitments requiring funding before visible outcomes could be achieved.

4.3 The Board discussed the need to use the 100-day plan as a foundation for the remainder of the Government term and highlighted the need to ensure that monitoring focuses on meaningful outcomes, milestones and measures rather than process activity alone.

5.1 Dom Houlihan provided an update on reset work from a people and organisational culture perspective. From a people perspective, three recurring themes were identified: developing a clearer, affordable and sustainable workforce plan; increasing flexibility and agility across resources; and capitalising on ways of working.

5.2 Work on organisational capacity included developing a single view of organisational costs, understanding the true costs of programme-funded staff and clarifying how corporate service areas would respond to Government priorities. The Operational Effectiveness Group had been developing business plans and priorities for the next 12 to 18 months so that the corporate services function could identify what would need to slow down or speed up in response to Government priorities.

5.3 Dom noted that financial pressures on remain significant. Closing current financial gaps would only enable the organisation to stand still rather than invest. This made prioritisation and choices about organisational capacity more important.

5.4 On capability, Dom updated the Board on a refreshed talent strategy, including investment in apprenticeships, fast streamers and other schemes. Welsh language capability was highlighted as a major capability issue, with work underway to improve translation, interpretation and business areas’ ability to operate through Welsh as well as increase translation and interpretation capacity.

5.5 On culture, the Board discussed performance management, expectations and ways of working. Smart working remains an issue: the organisation is not consistently meeting its current 40% expectation for office attendance.

6.1 Elin Burns offered her reflections as Senior Responsible Owner for bilingual working in the context of Senedd reform and the new administration. Elin highlighted rapid work between October 2025 and May 2026 to understand Welsh language capability, test different ways of working, pilot technology and consider longer-term organisational implications. A key theme emerging from the work is the need to move away from seeing Welsh language capability as a binary matter of being either a Welsh speaker or not. Instead, colleagues should be seen as existing on a spectrum, including confident speakers, learners, passive speakers and those who understand Welsh but prefer to respond in English.

6.2 The Board discussed the balance between expanding translation services and growing organisational confidence. Translation services remain necessary, but the longer-term shift has to be towards greater confidence, capability and leadership in operating bilingually. Senior leaders had an important role in modelling use of Welsh
and creating an environment where switching between Welsh and English was normal and accepted.

6.3 The Board recognised the emotional dimension of language, with some colleagues may feel anxious that their Welsh is not good enough, while fluent Welsh speakers may worry about being expected to translate or carry the burden for others. The Board recognised the need for leadership that encourages confidence, inclusion and shared responsibility.

6.4 The Board noted the need to agree a realistic service offer with ministers while supporting the longer-term journey towards more bilingual working.

7.1 Peter McDonald provided an overview of work under way to look at prioritisation ahead of the new Programme for Government. The Board noted that prioritisation is a central organisational challenge and recognised that the organisation had historically been better at identifying priorities than at deprioritising work. The Board noted that de-prioritisation is not simply a binary question of stopping work; it could also mean doing less, doing work differently or winding down activity in a managed way to avoid unnecessary risk. The Board highlighted the importance of all staff getting behind the prioritisation agenda and developing an organisational culture to support the activity.

7.2 Peter advised that the immediate proposal is to use the 100-day plan as an opportunity to prepare a package of necessary reprioritisation choices, so that the Permanent Secretary could discuss the choices with ministers as a coherent offer. The Programme for Government would require a more systematic approach, including inter-group prioritisation.

8.1 Glyn Jones provided an update on digital and AI. The two areas are being taken forward under the reset agenda: establishing AI champions across the organisation and making AI tools available safely and ethically. The AI champions work would build on the existing digital champions’ network. The Operational Effectiveness Subcommittee had agreed that there should be one AI champion per directorate and one per profession, with the role recognised as a corporate responsibility and reflected in staff objectives.

8.2 Glyn advised that Copilot Chat is available to all staff, while licensed Microsoft 365 Copilot is available to staff who have been provided with licences. Around 2,200
licences are in use, although there are some concerns that not all are being used fully.

8.3 The Board discussed both the opportunities and risks posed by Copilot agents and highlighted the importance of developing a culture across the organisation where digital and AI solutions are considered early in all policy and solution development. Glyn advised that agents are emerging across the organisation and could support areas such as government business but recognised that they raise risks around information management and ownership, unclear audit trails, pay-as-you-go costs and the challenge of scaling local innovations into organisation-wide services. A stronger service model is being developed so that agents can be created and managed in a safer, more consistent way.

8.4 The longer-term aim is to establish a secure technical AI deployment environment. This would allow locally developed tools and potentially tools from UK Government or elsewhere, to be deployed securely and at better value than relying solely on licensed commercial products. The Board noted that the work was technically complex and moving quickly. The Board also noted the likely need for further AI training and the importance of ensuring that AI supports bilingual working appropriately.

9.1 Tracey Breheny updated the Board on the government business improvement programme. Government business (including correspondence, written and oral questions and Senedd business) is a core part of the organisation’s work and Tracey noted that the volume and complexity of government business has increased significantly.

9.2 Tracey advised that the government business programme aims to improve consistency, quality and efficiency across groups. Work had been informed by discussions with Directors General and heads of government business teams. A number of digital tools have been developed, including a government business dashboard launched on 30 April. The next phase would focus on embedding use of the tools and creating a permanent cross-government quality and learning group.

10.1 No items of any other business were raised.