An online notebook
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An online notebook
Ouch: Europe’s largest city council delays fix to disastrous Oracle system once more: Elected representatives of Birmingham City Council’s audit committee vented their frustration this week after hearing that the rollout of the IMS – designed to replace the council’s…
Building understanding of software markets in local government from the Local Digital team: We’ve also identified through roundtable discussions and feedback from partners that managing effective procurements and successfully exiting technology contracts is a challenge, particularly where internal capacity or…
This is the content of the ‘article’ element of the email newsletter I sent last week. Publishing here for posterity. 2025 has been a pretty tumultuous year in local government digital, largely due to the impact of the Localism bill…
Giles Turnbull: The strategy is enquiry What I’m suggesting is a new approach for the times when there’s a perceived need for a document called a “strategy”. It shouldn’t be a document full of “we will”; it should be a…
Have sent out my first newsletter on Email Octopus. It’s a nice system to use. # – micropost 23038 From daunting to demystified: The evolution of Service Assessments in DBT. # – micropost 23039
MacOS icon history. # – micropost 23027 The hidden fundamentals of digital transformation in healthcare: how to roll out nationally in a local system – by Jane Maber on the dxw blog: There’s no question that the technical challenge is…
Join me for a light-hearted hour of sharing challenges, ideas, and experience about innovating in local public services. Localise Live! takes place on the last Thursday of every month at 12pm until 1pm and is open to public sector people only.…
Brent’s Innovation Journey: Building a ‘Base’ for Local Government Innovation by Ryan Hamilton on the LOTI blog: At Brent, we’ve been trying to rethink how we tackle problems in a way that makes ‘innovation’ not just a buzzword, but a…
Am back from a wonderful week with the family in Suffolk. Some lovely days by the sea in Southwold and Aldeburgh, and a trip to the castle in Framlingham too.
AI in Adult Social Care – guidance for adult care providers on the use of AI. # – micropost 22995 Giles shares “examples and links about working in the open and agile communication”. # – micropost 22996 Ben Unsworth is…
I *thought* I had settled on Devonthink as my everything bucket, but now I am falling down an Obsidian shaped rabbit hole thanks to Steve Messer linking to this monster: Every few months I set aside time for a “random…
Have had a few conversations lately with local gov folk which bemoaned the lack of active user groups for most software systems. This is a problem! What could we do about it? It seems like vendors are keen to say…
Ben Welby: Pocket, Pavement, Platform: Government in the App Store and on the High Street # – micropost 22969 Harry Metcalfe: Governance happens in foggy weather We need to reclaim human judgement, subjectivity and the primacy of direct experience as…
Experiences of moving websites to LocalGov Drupal from the Essex Digital Service. # – micropost 22965 Ben Holliday: New ways of organising: What’s most interesting to me in 2025 is that we still need new ways of organising. It’s hard…
“We need a single view of the customer!” Well, no you don’t, and you can’t have one anyway. ‘Single view of the customer’ is one of those easy to trot out phrases that sounds brilliantly simple and impossible to argue…
Digital and mission-driven government: digital, burdens and networks – Richard Pope’s first essay of three looking at how his Platformland thinking “can provide a unifying role in the successful delivery of the government’s missions”. In the digital age the answer…
For a project, I needed a way to easily restrict access to content on a WordPress website on a per user basis. There’s loads of existing plugins that over complicate this significantly, so I thought I would test Gemini‘s capability…
Chatting with Clare this morning about all things digital and local government reorganisation, I came to the conclusion that it really is all a balancing act. The risks of things going wrong are huge, and the importance of being ‘safe…
Really helpful stuff from Jason Kitcat at the Department for Business and Trade on matrix working. # – micropost 22920 Some interesting notes on the issues around the software market for local government. # – micropost 22934 My general take…
I’ve recently moved into an office in the garden – a fancy shed, in other words. Doing so exposed a weakness in my tech setup, based as it was on a Mac Mini. When I returned to the house, I…