Month: September 2024

šŸ“… Daily note for 18 September 2024

Am looking into intranets at the moment for a customer. If you have any good stuff to share, please do let me know! Have already heard from Essex County Council and of course Eleanor’s wonderful postā¬ˆ on the topic too. #

Also I’m really interested in stories from local government folk about their experiences trying to implement GOV.UK components like Notify, Pay and so on. Am keen to learn more about what sorts of things are more likely to work than others… #

Kate Tarling has a free email based course called “From silos to servicesā¬ˆ“. Sounds like something you’d be mad not to take advantage of. #

“3 non-tech principles for decommissioning legacy systemsā¬ˆ”:

Decommissioning and replacing a legacy system is notoriously challenging. You need some serious technical credentials to navigate a complex legacy landscape and create a new solution that is both flexible and future-proof. All while maintaining business as usual for the people that use them.

But technical prowess is not the whole story. Replacing an existing platform is only as successful as the people who will be operating the new solution. And thatā€™s often forgotten.

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“Blame culture isnā€™t what I used to think it isā¬ˆ”:

Blame culture exists when people feel like they have to explain their actions, and always their failings, as caused by something outside of themselves. This thing happened because that person didnā€™t do something, they say. Or some other thing didnā€™t happen because thatā€™s just how it is around here. None of this was caused by my actions, they suggest. That is a culture of blame.

The opposite of a culture of blame isnā€™t a culture of accepting mistakes, itā€™s a culture of accepting responsibility. You can see the absence of a culture of blame in the sense of agency people have. When people show initiative and take risks, when they approach problems with ways they can contribute to solving them, when they take control of things within their influence, thatā€™s when there is no culture of blame.

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šŸ“… Daily note for 17 September 2024

How Rushmoor Borough Council set out to understand and resolve the issues preventing an effective and efficient freedom of information request serviceā¬ˆ. #

Have ordered a copy of Platformlandā¬ˆ, Richard Pope’s book on government digital services. Am looking forward to reading it and nodding. Lots of people have their copies already and seem to be enjoying it. #

Work on the rebrandā¬ˆ is progressing – there’s not a lot holding me back now really, except nerves. Which is daft! Who cares, after all? Only me really. #

I use a Blue Yetiā¬ˆ microphone at my desk, and it really does have a positive impact on audio quality, which is great. But it also takes up a lot of space, so I have ordered a microphone armā¬ˆ to see if that helps declutter things a bit. #

Needed another browser (I like having different accounts in completely different browsers, rather than multiple windows of the same browser. I get easily confused!) So I went for the DuckDuckGoā¬ˆ browser. It’s really good – nice and fast, and all the privacy stuff is good although I’m not overly worried about that stuff. Definitely recommended. #

šŸ” Moving house

Well, we have moved. It wasn’t an entirely joyful process, but we got everything shifted on the Friday 6th and by teatime Saturday most things were in their rightful places. It’s a bit galling because this is very much a temporary, interim, move, until the house we really want to live in becomes available. So, we can’t get too comfy. #

We were without broadband until last Friday (13th), and there’s no 4g signal on my phone in the house. The only network with any coverage at all round here is 3, so I bought a SIM on moving day, whacked it into a venerable mifi type unit and we tried to all to work from that for a week. It was slow going, and the application that didn’t cope at all was MS Teams, interestingly. #

I went to find somewhere with wifi to work one afternoon. Managed to find myself in the one Costa in the world with worse wifi than the house did at that time. #

We’ve moved to West Winch, a small village in Norfolk, just to the south of King’s Lynn. Funnily enough, King’s Lynn is where I started my local government careerā¬ˆ, as a housing benefits assessor back in 2003. The online process to sign up for council tax worked a treat, so well done, Borough Council of King’s Lynn & West Norfolk! #

The other weird thing is that, like Lloyd’sā¬ˆ, this blog is 20 years old this year. And when I started it, I was living in… King’s Lynn. The circle closes. #

šŸ“… Daily note for 5 September 2024

We are moving house again this week. Lucky enough to have removals folk helping us, they are here packing boxes today, then the big shift happens next week. No broadband til the 13th, so that will be interesting! I hate moving, it’s the kind of disruption and change that I find incredibly unsettling. #

I love the idea of Emily’s planning gameā¬ˆ. Reminds me of the good old days of the digital engagement game (dead links ahoy in that post, btw). After last week’s workshopping, I fancy doing something new along those lines for the work I am focusing on at the moment. #

Working in the open is good for youā¬ˆ:

Working in the open in the public sector could really do with a renewed, optimistic case for it. By working in the open, I mean teams thinking out loud, announcing product changes theyā€™re trialling, sharing good practice, stuff like that.

via Roger Swannellā¬ˆ. #

šŸ“… Daily note for 4 September 2024

Charlie Fountaine kicked offā¬ˆ one of those conversations on LinkedIn:

Why isn’t there a cookie-cutter website for local councils in the UK?…Imagine if we had a common system, similar to central governmentā€™s approach, with shared components and a unified content management system. Councils could save time and money, focusing on improving services rather than reinventing the wheel.

I couldn’t help but dive in, naturally…

I think the days of individual council websites are probably numbered – it isn’t justifiable for 300 organisations to be recreating – mostly quite poorly – the same website over and over again when they are cutting funding on social care and housing, etc. It’d be lovely if there was the money for each and every council to have their own, high quality website, but sadly that isn’t the reality and the sooner decision makers get their heads around that the better.

Do I think all local authority websites ought to be folded into GOV.UK? Probably not. There is a place for some sense of local identity I think for council run services.

But I do think that having 300-odd organisations spending public money building, designing and writing content for websites over and over again is not the best way to be doing things. LocalGovDrupal is a start when it comes to sharing software, but there are still too many costs involved in running it if you don’t have a well stocked tech team. We need a turnkey solution that any council of any size can just start using.

Content needs a focus – so much of the words on council websites are basically the same. Write it once, write it well, and let – or make councils reuse it.

Then move onto online services – establish patterns, build them out in a handful of common platforms, and then make councils use them. If it means standardising some process, so be it, was long as local policy can be reflected in configuration.

There’s a bunch of middle ways between the current fragmented, duplicative, and poor quality mess we are currently in, and a fully centralised single website for all local councils, and in that middle ground the answer will be. Maybe it’s regional working, maybe it’s allowing councils choice between several competing platforms, based on clear and open standards for service patterns, content, and layout etc. #

Another great video from Mark Thompson on how public services can benefit from radical reform in the way they use technology:

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