An online notebook
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An online notebook
Thoughtful long read from Rachel Coldicutt: Perhaps this collective hangover will be the thing that makes the AI bubble burst – or at least, start it rolling slowly off the peak of inflated expectations. Lord knows, there is no form…
James O’Malley takes a look at the National Data Library: That’s why everyone from the Minister downwards is talking about what the platform ‘could’ do in the future – and, I assume, why the NDL programme was given £100m last…
The newly launched National Data Library features a really useful ‘Data manual’ – think service manual, but data – which I think lots of local councils will find helpful in developing their own data practice.
I have made a few updates to DigitalGovNews: Added Cumberland Council’s digital team blog, and Matt Wood-Hill’s blog to the list. Made the filter choices persistent between sessions Generated a new “master” RSS feed including all the posts aggregated on…
Adam Wainwright, Senior Content Designer in the GOV.UK Content Operations team writes Launching GOV.UK’s new content and publishing guidance: Around 3,000 people across government publish content on GOV.UK. That’s a significant number of individuals using our tools and writing to…
Dave Richardson of Newark and Sherwood District Council shares his reflections on the recent LGR Camp hosted at the council’s offices: Kate from Cumberland Council had attendees listening intently as she shared some warts and all experiences, though it is…
My friends at Optima Digital Solutions are highlighting a security issue with the Granicus govService platform: On Friday 5th June, the MHCLG sent out a notice to authorities regarding a security advisory identified on the Granicus govService platform. This notice…
My battle with GoDaddy customer support continues over my borked locali.se domain. In the meantime, dave@sensibletech.co.uk will still reach me 😩
Matt Hill-Wood – Co-designing digital planning products at scale: Certain principles were clear: Councils, particularly the people closest to the ‘frontline’ of planning services, need to be as close to product decisions as possible Decisions must be informed by voices…
This looks like an important read – the first from from the House of Commons Science, Innovation and Technology Committee on Rewiring the state: Delivering digital government: Our inquiry identified four building blocks for successful digital transformation, and four barriers…
Jason Snell on the proliferation of vibe-coded Mac apps, and his experience of making one himself: The process of building the app reinforced something I’ve been thinking about for quite a while: coding is a specific skill, but it’s only…
Good, thoughtful stuff from Steve Messer in his latest week note: My main hypothesis is that the existing set of products, platforms and enabling services was not built for a joined-up, personalised paradigm. Service teams are attempting to better meet…
The service standard has had a difficult time getting traction in local government, as a report from the LGA made clear – and this despite councils theoretically committing to it when they signed the digital declaration. But when Atika asked…
Steph Gray on how he leant into using AI tools on a recent web build: It’s been the first project on which I’ve used significant amounts of AI support with the build. For me, for this kind of work, using…
Shelley Heckman shares an update on the Open Referral standard, and particularly the validator tool, on LinkedIn: The Validator plays an important role across the wider ecosystem. It enables feed owners to check their own data, gives suppliers a way…
Am trialling Aeronaut – a nice, native desktop app for Bluesky on MacOS. So far, so good.
Doug Belshaw is doing something interesting with Substrate – a sort of public everything bucket as blog thing.
Huh, this “using GenAI checklist” is pretty brutal, but thought-provoking: By using GenAI: ☐ I accept the models were trained on stolen data. ☐ I accept that the data was labeled by exploited workers. ☐ I accept the environmental costs…
Have added a ‘Hire me’ page to the blog, to remind people (and occasionally myself) what I do for a living! It’s at
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…