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Have added a ‘Hire me’ page to the blog, to remind people (and occasionally myself) what I do for a living! It’s at
Dave Briggs
An online notebook
Dave Briggs
An online notebook
Dave
Phil Rumens writes a thoughtful piece on the use of open source software in local government: When open-source is discussed in the public sector, it is usually framed around transparency and reuse. The code behind products and tools built with…
James Plunkett – Could the NHS leapfrog the rest on public sector digital work?: I want to argue, however, for a more ambitious framing: that over the next five years, the NHS could leapfrog others in the public sector, and…
Made an update to DIgitalGovNews – adding a filter to the top so users can decide which feeds should appear on the page. Check it out: Mostly added because my blog dominates it somewhat and people might want to…
Today, I made DigitalGovNews – an aggregated stream of updates from sites mostly publishing about digital in government. You can find it at It’s very simple – just a single page of PHP and a stylesheet. It sucks in…
Uber president and chief operating officer Andrew Macdonald, quoted in The Verge: We’re going to have to start talking about token consumption and the associated cost versus headcount,” said Macdonald. “So if you’re not actually able to draw a direct…
I like the look of the Daylight DC–1 – it’s like a Remarkable e-ink tablet that also has a web browser on it. Using it with a keyboard for a distraction free writing tool looks neat too. Bloody expensive though…
Giles Turnbull – Working in the open ≠ comms: Comms seeks to bring about positive opinions of the work. Those opinions might be confined to a small group of relevant stakeholders, or they might be splashed across the pages of…
Am having some problems with the registration of my locali.se domain – which means the website isn’t working (no big deal really) but more annoyingly, emails to my @locali.se email address aren’t coming through. If you want to email me,…
MHCLG have launched a £6m fund to support councils with delivering improvements following a cyber assessment framework. We have launched a £6 million CAF Support Fund for 52 councils that have completed a CAF assessment, helping them accelerate improvements in…
Oh god, a new major version of WordPress is out.
Following my online identity crisis, I’ve given the Localise website a rethink, and now it’s a much simpler one page affair that tells you what I do and how I do it. Now I can focus on all the content…
Some terrifying numbers in Ed Zitron’s post AI Is Too Expensive: But LLMs are too expensive! They cost too much to run, and said costs appear to increase linearly with revenues. The more a user uses a product, the more…
I am LOVING Kev Rowe’s continued blogging about the low-code digital platform development at Luton, some of the thinking behind it, and how it ties in with the corporate strategy for the town: … we’re building towards a more complete…
On the New Stack blog: Who will maintain the web when PHP’s veterans retire? A new Perforce report finds PHP’s developer base is aging out faster than it’s being replenished — and AI-generated code may be making the problem worse,…
We visited another National Trust place on Sunday – making decent use of our membership. Very middle class and age of course, but it gets me out of the house. This time we visited Peckover House in Wisbech, 15 minutes…
Apparently, the Bristol Mayor leads GovTech manifesto: The manifesto, developed at the Govtech 4 Impact World Congress 2026 in Madrid, calls for a coordinated, market-shaping approach that positions cities and regions as active market shapers in the global GovTech industry.…
Phil blogs about a prototype tool he has been to allow users to explore the connections between the various bits of the Local Government Architecture Model he and others at GDS Local have been working on. You can access the…
Carl Haggerty shares his ‘year note’ about his first 12 months in post as Somerset Council’s Head of Transformation and Digital: We haven’t fully broken the reflex that speed is the answer when pressure rises. We haven’t made learning feel…
One of the most interesting and exciting things about the LGR digital Playbook project is the vision for it to be as community-led and informed as possible. The aim is to get as many people involved as we can, to…