Leadership and Talent

DHCW's leadership crisis is not merely about individual failings — it is structural. The organisation has no recognised capability framework for digital roles. Senior leaders hold titles that imply technical authority without demonstrated technical competence. Recruitment rewards loyalty over ability. Pay bands are set too low to attract experienced digital leaders from the wider UK market, then the gap is filled by off-payroll contractors at day rates far exceeding equivalent permanent salaries. The result is an organisation where the most capable people either cannot be recruited, leave quickly, or are removed for challenging the status quo.

Reform must address how DHCW defines digital roles, how it recruits leaders, how it pays them, and how it creates career paths that retain technical talent.

1. New CEO Through Open International Search

The problem: CEO Helen Thomas has presided over the escalation of all nine major programmes to the highest tier of government intervention. She admitted publicly that she cannot demonstrate return on investment for DHCW's spending. She compared accountability for hundreds of millions of public money to measuring the value of electricity. Under her leadership, at least two senior technologists have allegedly been dismissed for raising concerns that the Welsh Government later confirmed. The organisation she leads has been described by the Royal Colleges as causing patient harm.

Any reform programme requires leadership that believes in it. Asking the same leaders who created the current crisis to fix it is not reform — it is theatre.

The proposal: The Welsh Government should initiate an open, competitive, international search for a new DHCW Chief Executive with a specific mandate for transformation.

Requirements for the role:

• Demonstrated delivery experience: The candidate must have served as CEO, CTO, or equivalent at an organisation that successfully delivered digital services at national scale — not strategy, not advisory, not consultancy, but delivery accountability.
• DDaT credentials: Verifiable qualifications and experience mapped to the DDaT Capability Framework at the most senior level.
• Independence: No prior relationship with current DHCW leadership, board members, or Welsh Government digital policy officials.
• Fixed-term mandate: 5-year appointment with clear, published, measurable deliverables agreed at appointment and reviewed annually by the Independent Technical Advisory Panel.

Search process:

• Managed by an executive search firm with a demonstrable track record in public sector digital leadership appointments — not a generalist NHS recruitment process.
• Long list and short list reviewed by a panel including at least one serving CTO from a comparable national digital health organisation outside Wales.
• Salary set at the level required to attract candidates from comparable organisations — not constrained by Agenda for Change band maximums.

Comparator: When NHS England needed to build GDS, it recruited Mike Bracken — an experienced digital leader from outside government. When it needed to transform its digital health capability, it created the NHS Transformation Directorate with leadership drawn from the UK's best digital talent. The model for recruiting transformational digital leadership exists. Wales needs to use it.

2. Independent Qualification and Credential Verification

The problem: Multiple DHCW senior leaders hold positions where their claimed qualifications — academic degrees, professional memberships, and industry credentials — cannot be independently verified from public sources. In at least one case, a director holds three degrees whose subjects have never been disclosed. The CEO accumulated a BCS fellowship, an honorary professorship, and a "Digital CEO of the Year" award within an 18-month window timed to her appointment. Whether these credentials reflect genuine expertise or institutional capture is a question the current system cannot answer because it does not ask.

The proposal: Institute mandatory, independent verification of qualifications and credentials for all DHCW appointments at Band 8b and above.

How it would work:

• All candidates for senior roles must provide documentary evidence of claimed qualifications at the point of application.
• Verification is conducted by an independent third party (not DHCW's own HR), using standard services such as HEDD (Higher Education Degree Datacheck) for UK degrees and the relevant professional body for professional memberships.
• A summary of verified qualifications for all directors (Band 9 and above) is published on DHCW's website alongside their biography. This is standard practice at NHS England and most NHS trusts.
• Honorary titles, fellowships, and industry awards are listed separately from substantive qualifications, with the awarding body and date identified.

Comparator: NHS England publishes biographical information including qualifications for all board members and senior leaders. GDS publishes role profiles with required skills. The contrast with DHCW — where multiple senior leaders have no public biography at all — is stark.

3. Competitive Pay Benchmarked Against the UK Digital Market

The problem: DHCW's pay bands for senior digital roles are set by NHS Wales Agenda for Change, which was not designed for a digital workforce competing in a UK-wide market. The result is predictable: DHCW cannot attract experienced digital leaders at permanent salaries, then fills the gap with off-payroll contractors at £500-800/day — costing far more and providing no organisational continuity.

At least 23 off-payroll workers at DHCW earn £245/day or more, collectively costing an estimated £1.5-4.5 million per year. Meanwhile, permanent staff in equivalent roles earn Agenda for Change Band 8a-8d salaries that are 30-50% below UK Government digital market rates.

The proposal: Introduce a Digital Pay Supplement for DHCW roles mapped to DDaT role families at Band 8a and above, benchmarked against three comparators:

• GDS/CDDO pay bands for equivalent DDaT roles
• NHS England Transformation Directorate pay for equivalent digital roles
• Median market rate for equivalent private sector roles (using published salary surveys from sources like Glassdoor, Hays, and Robert Walters)

The supplement should aim to bring total compensation to within 15-20% of the GDS equivalent — close enough to attract talent motivated by public service, without attempting to match private sector rates fully.

Funding: The cost of competitive permanent salaries will be substantially offset by reducing reliance on off-payroll contractors. A permanent Head of Engineering at £95,000 plus supplement costs significantly less than a contractor at £700/day (approximately £168,000/year before employer overheads). The current model is more expensive and less effective.

Comparator: NHS England's Transformation Directorate operates a digital pay framework that allows it to recruit senior digital professionals at rates competitive with GDS. Scotland's NES Digital Service similarly benchmarks digital pay against market rates. Wales is the only UK nation without a competitive digital pay mechanism for its national health digital body.

4. Technical Career Track (Individual Contributor Path)

The problem: In DHCW's current structure, the only way for talented technologists to advance is to become managers. This is a well-documented anti-pattern in technology organisations. Not every excellent engineer, architect, or data specialist wants to manage people — and forcing them into management to progress their careers means losing their technical contribution while gaining a reluctant manager.

The result: the most technically capable people leave for organisations that value their skills. Those who remain either accept management roles they don't want or plateau at a grade that doesn't reflect their contribution.

The proposal: Establish a dual career track — Management and Individual Contributor (IC) — for all DDaT role families, following the model established by leading technology organisations and adopted by GDS.

How it would work:

• IC track: Senior technical roles (Principal Engineer, Lead Architect, Distinguished Technologist) carry the same grade and pay as their management equivalents. A Principal Engineer and a Head of Engineering are peers, not subordinates.
• IC roles have defined responsibilities including technical leadership, mentoring, standards-setting, architecture review, and cross-cutting technical decision-making — but they do not carry line management responsibility.
• Progression criteria are defined in DDaT terms: demonstrated expertise at "Expert" level across relevant competencies, evidence of cross-organisational impact, and peer recognition.
• IC roles are visible: published on the website, included in technical governance structures, and given authority over technical standards and architectural decisions.

Comparator: GDS, NHS England, and essentially every effective technology organisation operates a dual career track. It is the standard approach to retaining technical talent in the public sector. DHCW does not have one.

5. Adopt the DDaT Capability Framework

The problem: DHCW has no standardised framework for defining what skills and experience digital roles require. Job titles are assigned without reference to any external standard. A "Chief Digital Officer" or "Director of Programmes" at DHCW may have a completely different skill profile from someone holding the same title at NHS England, GDS, or any comparable organisation. This makes it impossible to assess whether leaders are qualified for their roles, and impossible for external bodies to hold them to account for competences they were never required to demonstrate.

The proposal: Adopt the UK Government's Digital, Data and Technology (DDaT) Capability Framework in full, adapted for NHS Wales context.

The DDaT framework defines 37 role families across digital, data, technology, and IT operations. For each role, it specifies:

• Skill levels (awareness, working, practitioner, expert) across defined competencies
• Typical experience markers at each level
• Career progression paths from junior to senior roles

Implementation:

• Map all DHCW roles at Band 8a and above to DDaT role families within 6 months.
• All new job descriptions for digital, data, and technology roles must reference DDaT competencies and specify required skill levels.
• All existing senior leaders (Band 8c and above) undergo a DDaT skills assessment within 12 months — not to fire people, but to identify capability gaps honestly and create development plans where appropriate.
• Publish the DDaT mapping on DHCW's website so that the public, the Senedd, and Health Boards can see what competences DHCW claims to hold.

Comparator: The DDaT framework is used across all UK Government departments, NHS England's Transformation Directorate, and an increasing number of NHS trusts. It is the de facto standard for digital roles in UK public services. DHCW is the notable exception.

These five reforms — new leadership, credential verification, competitive pay, technical career tracks, and capability frameworks — would transform DHCW from an organisation that cannot recruit, retain, or recognise digital talent into one that can. Without them, every other reform will be implemented by the same people who created the failures, using the same approaches that produced them.