Daily notes

Daily note for 18 January 2023

In a conversation today I got to reference the chicken and pig analogy around project managers, which is something I haven’t done in ages.

I was differentiating between those project mangers without domain knowledge who coordinate, document, follow up on actions, make sure stuff happens, but who don’t really have skin in the game in terms of the outcomes of the project.

Then there are those who really care about the thing they are working on, who are really committed to it succeeding in the long term.

Chickens aren’t always bad and they really do have uses in the right context, but it’s important to know whether you need a chicken or a pig PM on a certain project because it can have a real impact.

“Old people hacks: tips for those of us over 40/50/etc” – sad to say I found much of this quite useful (I turn 45 in May).

“Not another ‘is design thinking dead?’ blog post”:

Maybe the most interesting changes are not in the tools that we so readily focus on, or our methodologies and approaches to innovation and improvement. Maybe we should be paying more attention to the most valuable of resources, the humans, and how we think, behave and work together for change.

Can anyone be confident that a local government software scandal isn’t on the horizon*?

One thing I have been mulling on following the recent – and much belated – focus on the Post Office Horizon scandal is just how much assurance any organisation can have in its core line of business systems.

The implementation of supposedly off the shelf software inevitably involves the kinds of customisations and bespoke code that caused problems (not all of them, but a fair few) for Fujitsu and the Post Office, and of course the people who suffered the consequences.

Where there are systems in use in local councils which handle similar workloads – revenues and benefits, social care systems, finance and payroll systems, to name a few – how confident can we really be that errors and bugs aren’t causing major issues, that for whatever reason lie undetected?

* see what I did there?

Daily note for 15 January 2024

This from Dai Vaughan is really excellent on how technology failures keep damaging people’s lives, and how frustrating it is that the answers to this problem are well known, but unevenly implemented.

Mike Bracken’s take on Horizon.

Still noodling on what to do with the newsletter. Feels increasingly icky to keep using Substack but it is just so easy, and so free! Gah, ethics.

“One by one, England’s councils are going bankrupt – and nobody in Westminster wants to talk about it.”

Week note for 12 January 2024

A slow start to the year, blogging wise, been getting other stuff up straight. So here’s a bunch of things I’ve spotted during the last few days or so…

The delightful people at Lincoln Council are hiring a Web / Digital Officer. Lovely place to work on exciting local government things!

The Disturbing Impact of the Cyberattack at the British Library. Ouch! If organisations still aren’t currently taking this stuff seriously, here’s another reason to start.

One dimensional pacman. Curiously addictive. (I see Neil also linked to this!)

I have had to replace my several years old Apple keyboard, and couldn’t justify to myself the nearly £100 cost of the official one, so picked up a Logitech version for a third of the price. It is taking a bit of getting used to and the resultant loss of productivity is alarming.

Let’s make the indie web easier – sensible post (and follow up) from Giles.

“How governments become addicted to suppliers like Fujitsu”

“How we’re making it easier to access government forms online”

“How can we get to a single shareable patient record?”

Daily note for 22 December 2023

Substack’s Nazi problem seems to be getting a lot of attention at the moment. It’s a weird one for me, because I just don’t see it. It was a bit like that for me on Twitter as well, lots of people would say how toxic it was, but that just wasn’t my experience. Doesn’t mean I shouldn’t care though! Of course, after the Musk buyout it ended up being the case that my experience on X was very affected by the unpleasantness, which is why I now pretty much never look at it.

Substack has a great writing experience, and it’s free, and it makes it easy to send e-mails to people that are nicely designed and readable. That obviously comes at a cost and I wonder if the adage that if a service is free, then you are the product needs amending to something like, if a service is free there are probably some shitheads paying on your behalf and that makes you a bit of a shithead too.

I’ve no doubt I will have to move my newsletter away from Substack at some point. It’s a faff though and the alternatives aren’t obvious. Maybe I could use my new WordPress emailing setup to DIY it? Doesn’t fill me with joy, I have to say.

dxw’s review of 2023.

Daily note for 21 December 2023

Am playing around a bit with Feedland, Dave Winer’s newish RSS aggregating thing. I like how it is all public, so anyone can see the feeds I subscribe to and what is in them. Am enjoying the desktop app feel of NetNewsWire for now, so don’t think I will be switching, but it’s fun to play 🙂

“Principles, guidance, and standards to support people delivering joined-up, effective, user-centred outcomes for people who use Department for Education services.”

Laura Bunt is great and this interview gives an insight into how!

“What next for digital government and Government as a Platform?” Very interesting:

The next step for government as a platform is to directly help services transform. We’ll do this in two ways: first by going much further to help people make better design decisions for their services, and second, by helping services continually optimise themselves.

“The Transforming Government Services team in the Central Digital and Data Office (CDDO) is redesigning the products and services offered to other government departments to support the delivery of their services. This includes updating existing standards and guidance, so that more services are implemented to a ‘great’ standard.”

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