Month: May 2025

šŸ“… Daily Note: May 21, 2025

Eddie Copeland writes helpfully and convincingly on the future of local government digital leadership following the mention of it in the government digital blueprint. Tried to pull out a bit for a quote but couldnā€™t it was all good.

In all the research work I have done in the last year or so, leadership comes up time and time again as being one of the biggest things holding local government back from making the most of the digital opportunity.

 

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The Somerset Council target operating model is quite nice, I think.

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Phil ā€˜The Rumenatorā€™ Rumens on service patterns:

A lack of common service patterns can prove costly within a single organisation too. Weā€™ve all read reports of spiralling costs and lengthy delays in pubic sector IT projects, and in part this can be attributed to the desire for bespoke functionality resulting in tweaks or even wholesale redesign of how a platform functions to meet the unique service designs of that organisation.

He isnā€™t wrong to flag this. Iā€™ve been noodling around with this idea a bit in the last few months, which I need to blog about at some point.

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šŸ˜®ā€šŸ’Ø Coming up for air

It’s been nearly 6 months since I last posted here, and I have been really quiet on the likes of LinkedIn and Bluesky too. If I am honest doesn’t feel like months, this year has just raced past.

What’s been keeping me busy is a whole range of things, the big one being we moved house (again! but hopefully for the last time) on Christmas Eve – not recommended – and have been having a whole load of work done to make the place work for us. This is the first time I have really owned a house, and it’s been a real learning curve.

While all that was going on I’ve also had ups and downs with my health – as I get older my type 1 diabetes demands more and more of my time and changes to my lifestyle. I’ve been going to lots of appointments, at GPs and hospitals, having injections in my eyes and all sorts of things. It’s all positive, and I am feeling the benefits – but again, it’s just taken up a lot of my thinking time. More recently I have had some awful trouble with my teeth, which took me out of action for a few weeks.

Finally work has been intense this year so far. It’s been brilliant, but knackering. I’ve done loads of strategy work for various councils, as well as looking into areas such as skills, leadership, and more. It’s been incredibly fulfilling, if occasionally stressful at times. I also got to contribute to reports like Future Governance Forum’s ‘Local government for the digital era‘ and the LGA’s research into the implications of local government reorganisation on digital teams.

I’ve also been lucky to be working with the Local Digital team at MHCLG, helping form strategy and approaches to improving the consistency of digital in councils across the country. This is continuing through the year, which is great, and offers opportunities to help research the potential of things like One Login for the sector, amongst other things.

Anyway, the work on the house is coming to a conclusion, I’m feeling better in myself, and work is a bit less intense. So I’m emerging from my cave, reopening my feed reader, and re-engaging with the online world again.