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Dave Briggs
An online notebook
Dave Briggs
An online notebook
Dave
I was very sad to learn of the recent death of Conrad Taylor. We met a few times – mostly through Steve Dale – and collaborated one or twice in the early days of my career, when ‘knowledge management’ was…
Marcin Wichary – Tactical dark modes: Programmers’ fondness for dark mode was a result of decades of bad display technologies. The early CRTs were so awful, the burn-in risks so real, and the pixels so fuzzy and headache-inducing, that you…
A lot of folk in local government are chewing over the problem of when to transform during LGR, and when to play things safe. My personal take is this: keep the strategy and the vision transformational, but be more cautious…
A little reminder – if you needed one – that I host blogs for free for local government use, whether by councils or individuals, or teams. I like to encourage blogging as a practice – working out in the open…
Interesting case study published by the LGA about Nottingham City Council – Embedding a culture of change through targeted team support: This case study explores how Nottingham City Council is embedding a culture of change through the in-house delivered Ways…
John Gruber on AI: Something is profoundly off in the computer industry when it comes to software broadly and AI specifically. It’s up for debate what exactly is off and what should be done about it, but the undeniable proof…
Guidance from the ICO on AI and freedom of information requests: Information requests often involve secondary correspondence, such as clarification or internal reviews. If requesters use AI to read and respond, it can result in long, complex emails. These take…
A fun long-ish read from the makers of the iA writer app on Europe’s desire to move away from Microsoft Office and what it might take: Severance illustrates something so familiar that it’s hard both to recognize and hard to…
Jens Gemmel shares a substantial post with some really good, interesting in depth thinking around the potential for LGR to be used as a level for wider, system level change (LinkedIn warning): When we are talking about Sussex LGR, what…
The latest resource in the Local Government Reorganisation Digital and Cyber Playbook has been published – Digital and cyber leadership during transition: Research by the Local Government Association (LGA) is clear that strong, early and visible leadership is one of…
I’ve been playing around a bit with Gitbook to see if it would be a good fit for a publishing itch I need to scratch. I ended up tearing my (somewhat limited) hair out over it – I don’t think…
Lovely story in the Guardian about the making of the 8-bit classic game Chuckie Egg: The iconic game that came to define 8-bit programming still conjures flutters of nostalgia 40 years on – all thanks to a 15-year-old tea boy…
Useful reminder from dxw about the potential for things to go wrong on WordPress sites – in this case, a change of ownership for a suite of plugins. In August 2025 the new owner planted a backdoor in the purchased…
Like most people, I don’t often need to interact with my local council, and so – given the way I make a living – I tend to take notice when I do. Recently we got an email with an invoice…
The National Digital Exchange is a really neat idea that is looking more and more impressive. Basically, it’s a way to try out local government software – often open source – without needing to buy it first or run costly…
Will Callaghan is on a bit of a blogging roll at the moment. Here he is on Kickstarting collaboration during LGR: Of the speakers, the stand out two for me were Kate Hurr and Madeline Hoskin, of Cumberland and North…
I had the thought the other day that an awful lot of time gets wasted in local government digital because of the constant cycle of probably unnecessary change. Here’s an example: new chief digital person comes in, and the first…
Really good post from Kev Rowe on the Luton blog about how the team are preparing for the rollout of the new Netcall low code platform. Lots of learning of lessons from previous experience as well as tapping into the…
GDS Local have published the first iteration of their architecture for (digital) local government. It looks at this stage like very high level, simplified enterprise architecture. It will be interesting to see where it goes next. I worry about architecture…