Better Public Services April 2026 Newsletter

The April edition of the Better Public Services newsletter, with all the latest public service transformation news and information is out now and features;

Ireland’s new Government Digital Wallet, has begun a public consultation and testing phase.

The initiative forms a central part of the Digital Public Service Plan 2030 and aims to make accessing public services simpler and more convenient.

This consultation phase places a strong emphasis on listening to users. Members of the public will be invited to test the wallet and provide feedback,

helping to shape its design and functionality ahead of a wider rollout.

The Emerging Leaders Graduate Programme continues to go from strength to strength, with its fifth cohort due to commence in April 2026.

Developed by the Institute of Public Administration in partnership with the Department of Public Expenditure, Infrastructure, Public Service Reform and Digitalisation,

the programme was launched in June 2024 to modernise the experience of Administrative Officers and Third Secretaries and build leadership capability across government.

A standout feature is the Policy Challenge, which brings participants together to work on live policy issues. Outputs from these challenges have directly informed strategies

and initiatives across the Civil Service, showcasing the programme’s real‑world impact and its role in developing the next generation of leaders.

Exploring and visualising High Value Data Sets - A recent collaboration between the Central Statistics Office (CSO) and University College Dublin (UCD) demonstrates how openly available public sector data can be transformed into practical insights that support better decision‑making, innovation, and public understanding. By turning complex datasets into clear visual stories, the projects showed how open data can help answer practical questions, reveal trends, and support evidence‑based discussion across government and society.The collaboration demonstrates how, when public sector data is made open, accessible and reusable, it can be used far beyond its original purpose.

To read this month's Newsletter: BPS Newsletter April 2026

To Subscribe: BPS Newsletter