An online notebook
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An online notebook
Catherine Howe – Head towards the North Star: Some of the shifts we need to make are very much rooted in public service; better coproduction with communities, prevention at scale and deep modernisation of technology and practice. Some of this…
Government IT project disasters are by no means a thing of the past: The PAC’s latest report reveals that NS&I has spent an estimated £111 million on the programme by March 2024, yet it remains unclear how much has been…
A small piece of blog housekeeping: I just went to search for something I wrote years ago on here and realised in my last redesign I didn’t add an easy to find search function. So, I bunged the default theme…
A Tuesday posting but I don’t suppose anybody minds – most of this was written last week though, promise. This week’s worky highlights: The LGR DDaT playbook is on the cusp of release, which is very exciting. It’ll be nice…
New post from Atika on the Luton blog – Full steam ahead! New posts filled, skills assessments, meeting room envy, change agents and champions and AI Club. What a start to 2026!
Can’t stop listening to Sigur Rós’ Starálfur – such an ethereally beautiful song.
Tom Loosemore (LinkedIn warning) on how he vibe coded a useful app in no time at all: It really was – and is – that easy. That said, under the bonnet Replit has written a horridly inaccessible, unsupportable, unextendable hairball…
Dave Richardson at Newark and Sherwood District Council – Nine Councils. One Message. A playbook for Multi‑Council Digital Collaboration: When all nine councils across Nottingham and Nottinghamshire were tasked with communicating the complexities of local government reorganisation (LGR), it was…
Mike Gallagher – In public : Notes on working in the open: The phrase “make things open: it makes things better” gets tossed around a lot and sounds simple, but I think it encapsulates a profound set of ideas that…
January has felt like a looooong month, and I haven’t really enjoyed it. Doesn’t feel like I am remotely up to speed after the festive break, still! So tired. So very tired. This week’s worky highlights: Getting some of the…
Mahad Kalam – The UK paid £4.1 million for a bookmarks site: The UK Government recently unveiled its ‘AI Skills Hub’, which wants to provide 10 million workers with AI skills by 2030. The main site was delivered by PwC…
Am finding the WP Reset plugin useful, particularly at the start of a project where I might be trying lots of different stuff out. Quickly takes a site back to the bare bones, clearing out the database and so on,…
Carl Haggerty – Introducing the Chrysalis Work: Working in a council right now can feel a lot like being inside a chrysalis. The old shape of things is still visible – job titles, structures, budgets, habits – but much of…
John Gruber reports on the new version of OmniOutliner (6) which includes a featured called Omni Links: OmniOutliner has always been document-based, and version 6 continues to be. There are advantages and disadvantages to both models, but one of the…
Blogging has been a little light this week. Just not that much stuff to link to, and I’ve been in a headspace where I’ve not had too many share-worthy thoughts or ideas. I’ve been tired – maybe that’s the reason.…
Laura Czapiewski – Why human trust shapes AI success: The psychology of digital has never been more important than now, in the age of AI. There are countless examples of where AI has proved to be far more reliable than…
Lovely post from Luton’s Ben McCartney on the improvements he and his team have been making to the service desk at the council.
Government customer services to be modernised with help of industry experts: The government is launching CustomerFirst, a new unit within the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, to modernise public services and improve the experience for millions of people who…
A roadmap for modern digital government: Our plan to build a modern digital government that works for you – making life easier, driving growth and delivering smarter, more efficient public services
Let’s see how long I can keep this up for! This week’s worky highlights: We are recruting for two big roles at Luton Head of Innovation Delivery and Data Deputy Data Protection Officer & Compliance Improvement Manager Also at Luton,…