Friday, 13 February, 2026

Catherine Howe – Head towards the North Star:

Some of the shifts we need to make are very much rooted in public service; better coproduction with communities, prevention at scale and deep modernisation of technology and practice. Some of this I wrote about in my last post. Other shifts are more in response to bigger change and what a modern workforce needs to thrive; how we become more inclusive internally and externally, how we provide an environment where learning is embedded in how we work as a way to underpin a more adaptive organisation, how we make hybrid working genuinely work for people.

If only every chief exec was so thoughtful, and open!

Government IT project disasters are by no means a thing of the past:

The PAC’s latest report reveals that NS&I has spent an estimated £111 million on the programme by March 2024, yet it remains unclear how much has been spent in total or what the final cost will be. Despite five years of development, NS&I still has no agreed integrated plan, and a draft produced in late 2025 suggested the programme would not be completed before March 2028, later than originally planned. The PAC has expressed concern that NS&I’s attempts to compress the timeline further may not be realistic.

Tuesday, 10 February, 2026

A small piece of blog housekeeping: I just went to search for something I wrote years ago on here and realised in my last redesign I didn’t add an easy to find search function.

So, I bunged the default theme search modal thingy into the header for desktop users, which served my purposes. But sadly mobile users wouldn’t see this, as they can a hamburger style menu with only page links in it.

To fix this, I created a page with a search box on it, and linked to it from the mobile-only burger menu.

📅 Weeknote w/e Friday 6 February 2026

A Tuesday posting but I don’t suppose anybody minds – most of this was written last week though, promise.

This week’s worky highlights:

  • The LGR DDaT playbook is on the cusp of release, which is very exciting. It’ll be nice to be involved in getting a project out of the door for the Local Digital folk, and hopefully one we can keep iterating and improving on for some time.
  • Good day in the office for Luton, interviewing candidates for a Head of Service role. Lots of great conversations and met some lovely people with so many ideas. We could have hired almost everyone, which was a really nice feeling but gave us a difficult choice to make!
  • Also in Luton news, I handed over the reigns of managing the blog to Nova in the web team, who seems reasonably pleased about it. Am also hoping to use the blog as a means of “trying out” some product approaches within the team in a relatively low risk environment.
  • Skillstats keeps progressing, with two more organisations starting the process to come on board and one new demo done.

Not really work stuff:

  • Some lovely catchups during the week, including Lisa Trickey, Anita Flavell, Clare Evans, Joe Cole, Ben Cheetham – and probably others (sorry I have forgotten you).
  • I started the process of organising the design and print of one of those pop up banners you see at conferences, for Skillstats. This is some way out of my comfort zone.
  • I find myself getting a bit annoyed with all the noise there is at the moment about digital in local government. I think a lot of it is unhelpful! Once more I feel the urge to write down somewhere What I Think About This Sort of Thing.

Media consumption:

  • Really enjoying Until I Find You but boy, is it long.
  • Started the latest series of The Apprentice and the first episode reached such levels of cringe that my stomach was in knots for hours afterwards.
  • Board games: played 7 Wonders – a christmas present from Mrs Briggs – for the first time and enjoyed it hugely. Also Splendour: Duel which is way more mentally taxing that the 3+ player version!

We also took a family day out for a tramp round the grounds of Oxburgh Hall, which was very nice for blowing away some cobwebs, and quality family time.

Oxburgh Hall

New post from Atika on the Luton blog – Full steam ahead!

New posts filled, skills assessments, meeting room envy, change agents and champions and AI Club. What a start to 2026!

Monday, 9 February, 2026

Wednesday, 4 February, 2026

Tom Loosemore (LinkedIn warning) on how he vibe coded a useful app in no time at all:

It really was – and is – that easy. That said, under the bonnet Replit has written a horridly inaccessible, unsupportable, unextendable hairball of JavaScript. It’s more of a toy than a product.

Monday, 2 February, 2026

Dave Richardson at Newark and Sherwood District Council – Nine Councils. One Message. A playbook for Multi‑Council Digital Collaboration:

When all nine councils across Nottingham and Nottinghamshire were tasked with communicating the complexities of local government reorganisation (LGR), it was clear that traditional, council‑by‑council messaging wouldn’t be enough. Residents needed clarity. Communications teams needed speed. And every authority needed a neutral, trusted space to share information.

Mike Gallagher – In public : Notes on working in the open:

The phrase “make things open: it makes things better” gets tossed around a lot and sounds simple, but I think it encapsulates a profound set of ideas that define what is specific to working in the public sector. We need to continue to sing this song so that future generations know what we mean and why we mean it.

Friday, 30 January, 2026

📅 Weeknote w/e Friday 30 January 2026

Wallis the cat

January has felt like a looooong month, and I haven’t really enjoyed it. Doesn’t feel like I am remotely up to speed after the festive break, still! So tired. So very tired.

This week’s worky highlights:

  • Getting some of the info-gov stuff sorted for clients using Skillstats – DPIAs and that sort of thing. Slightly dull but really important.
  • We are ever closer to the launch of the LGR DDaT Playbook, so that is fun. Looking forward to finding out what people make of it, and what they think we ought to work on next.
  • Plenty of signups happening for LGRCamp, which is nice to see.
  • Had a lovely meetup of the LocaliseLive! crowd. Heard some great stories of how different councils are making use of technology in a quiet, efficient but innovative way.
  • Nice chat with Neilly and his colleagues at the BFI to see if they could use Skillstats to help them baseline their various digital capability building efforts.

Not really work stuff:

  • Managed to go a week with just posting on this blog and not tweaking anything on it, which is, I think, a result.
  • Chatted with some learning and development folk reminded me of the really good bit of Learning Pool when I worked there some 15 years ago: the catalogue of shared e-learning that councils had access to. LP is a very different beast now and not much interested in local gov, which is a shame. More of a shame is that there are now few councils sharing this kind of content and instead having to but it individually or create it themselves. Someone (huh) should bring the shared library back!
  • Nick reminded me of the existence of GovGroups, and I gave it a quick spring clean. Worth checking out if you need a simple online group for something.

Media consumption:

  • We had never watched CItizen Kane so have started that. Also halfway through Netflix Damon/Affleck number The Rip which I am liking more than anyone else.
  • Now that the new series of Traitors has finished, we have started watching it, because binging.
  • Have started Until I find You by John Irving. I think I have read it before, as bits feel familiar, but that could just be the usual Irving wrestling, unreliable memory, weird sex, odd family dynamics stuff. It’s good, but then I really like his stuff.