An online notebook
Get posts by weekly email:
An online notebook
Nina Belk, dxw – Improving the transition from policy to delivery with service patterns: ‘Service patterns’ are reusable building blocks that help teams to design services end-to-end and front-to-back, in a coherent and consistent way, making them easier to deliver…
AI is not a strategy, it’s a tactic. Once all the fuss has settled down, we will be in a position where specific AI tools are useful in specific circumstances – it won’t have “transformed” anything. We had exactly this…
Dennis Vergne – The Hidden History of Relational Public Services: From the Coal Mine to the Front Door: It is not a single invention, but a recurring discovery made by different people in different decades (miners, social workers, nurses, economists,…
Catherine Howe – We need new feedback loops: If we want to think differently together then we need to create new feedback loops and the chance to gain confidence in new approaches. Many of the professional networks that we have…
The view over the field at the back of our house this morning.
Gavin Beckett – Harnessing the changing landscape of local government to create internet era organisations: Effective responses to complex, long-standing social challenges need to be co-designed and co-produced with people and community organisations that grow from the ground up. Modern…
Richard Pope – Preventative healthcare: designing for the service loop: # – micropost 23148 Katherine Wastell – Every organisation has some madness: If everyone spots the problems but no one takes responsibility, things will only get worse. Accountability is the…
Dafydd Singleton – User needs for data standards. # – micropost 23142 Dafydd Vaughan – The bridge to nowhere: Why your ‘Target Architecture’ won’t ever deliver: I’ve lost count of the number of Technical Design Authority meetings I’ve sat in,…
Ash Mann – The discipline of focus, what makes a digital strategy work: Good digital strategies aren’t long documents or laundry lists. They’re about ruthless focus – choosing a clear direction and sticking to it, even if that means letting…
Set up a new council on localgov.blog today! Looking forward to seeing what they post. # – micropost 23129 Some useful links in Ben’s halloweeknote. # – micropost 23130 OpenQR.me – “Create beautiful QR codes instantly” (via Giles) # –…
Find and reuse digital service elements is a website put together by some folk at the Ministry of Justice that signposts the user to examples of publicly available guidance and patterns for digital work. Am not entirely sure what I…
Sarah and Carl are taking up the reigns of LocalGovDigital – a Slack-based networks of digital practitioners in local government, and I’m stepping down. I think they’ll do a great job and am really excited about what they will be…
I enjoyed Scott Colfer’s reflections on writing and publishing his book. # – micropost 23105 Lloyd reports not getting a pingback from me when I linked to his blog. Am not surprised the micropost didn’t ping, but the daily note…
I newslettered earlier. # – micropost 23087 i’ve been enjoying Lloyd’s recent ponderings about blogging. I’m also really enjoying the way this blog works these days, posting little nuggets that can get pulled into a aggregated post on a daily…
A roadmap for successful AI adoption in Higher Education, from dxw: Higher education institutions are actively experimenting with AI to improve operational efficiency, yet approaches vary significantly across the sector. Institutions face complex issues including output accuracy, data privacy, and…
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