An online notebook
Get posts by weekly email:
An online notebook
James Plunkett publishes a long read on approaches to education (Medium warning). It’s well worth your time. Really like this in the concluding paragraphs: The challenges facing public services can feel demoralising; there is such a mismatch between the complexity…
Richard Pope: On waiting, digital and where the state chooses to operate (LinkedIn warning): The post-war digitisation of the UK’s tax and benefits system, the creation of automated institutions like Girobank, and teaching children programming with the BBC Micro (ironically,…
Matt Wood-Hill continues to blog his thoughts on his time in government working on digital planning. This is a useful reflection on how central government best works with local: ODP starts from the premise that those working at the coalface…
More new content on the LGR digital playbook! This time, it’s quite a long read on commercial, contract and supplier considerations during reorganisation. This quote from a local gov person interviewed for the piece is perceptive and as a sector…
The Government has announced the shape of the latest batch of new unitary councils across the county: Gloucestershire: 7 councils being reorganised into 1 unitary. This will unite the Gloucester-Cheltenham growth corridor and Golden Valley cyber cluster under one council,…
Macrows is a desktop Airtable clone for the Mac. It’s nice!
An open working masterclass from Cumberland Council: Running a show and tell? ✅ Recording it so others can watch it? ✅ Publishing it on your intranet? ✅ The area of the intranet that anyone on the web can access? ✅…
WhatCable is a simple, free Mac app to tell you wha the USB-C cable is that you have plugged in. Can it carry data? How much wattage is it capable of? WhatCable explains cable speed, charging limits, e-marker data, and…
LOTI is 7 years old and Eddie rightly celebrates, and also teases about the future: That’s why LOTI is now planning its most ambitious initiative to date: to establish a Centre for New Public Services. The aim is to give…
Cathy Dutton – The portal trap: When portals are treated as containers they fail. You can’t cover up the complexity, and attempting to do so just adds another layer of abstraction and frustration. If portals are instead built as a…
A few people have asked if the work on the existing Service Standard affects the Local Government Digital Standard. Yes and no! First up, read the post. It’s good and it looks like the Service Standard is going into some…
Have been using Dropover this week, and it’s great. A Mac app that pops up a little shelf for you to drop whatever you are currently dragging onto, so you can then find the place you want to permanently drop…
Laura points to this post on how to build a community calendar, and there’s some interesting stuff in there. I wonder if some of it would be useful for the ORUK crowd? But the choice of technology quickly becomes secondary…
As if by magic, the mighty Will has also posted on improving local government software today, and I heartily recommend you taking a few minutes out to read what he has to say. Rather than cover every possible market shaping…
There’s ongoing talk about one of the things holding back digital in local government being the lack of quality in the software market, and there is work ongoing at MHCLG, Local GDS, and – I think – the LGA to…
Steve Messer – Is testing and learning a methodology or a core skill?: Experimentation and adaption is only mentioned in the Agile and Lean section, and only in the context of ways of working. But testing & learning is a…
New resource on the digital LGR playbook – Priorities at each phase of reorganisation: This resource sets out common phases councils that have been through LGR have experienced. It is not a mandated timeline and does not replace the wider…
I’m just finishing up my work with Luton Council. It’s been a great experience, and I feel I’ve learned a load along the way, whilst really helping catalyse the shift there to a modern digital service. I worked for between…
Tom Loosemore – Prompt injection and the perils of leaving it to AI to handle AI: A petition filed to a Brazilian labour court contained hidden instructions for any AI used by the court to contest the petition only superficially,…
Tinydot looks like a fun little service. A Mac app sits on your computer watching a folder. Anything you put into that folder appears on your Tinydot site, as if by magic! Markdown files, photos, etc all work. No idea…