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…

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…

James Plunkett – Could the NHS leapfrog the rest on public sector digital work?: I want to argue, however, for a more ambitious framing: that over the next five years, the NHS could leapfrog others in the public sector, and…

Uber president and chief operating officer Andrew Macdonald, quoted in The Verge: We’re going to have to start talking about token consumption and the associated cost versus headcount,” said Macdonald. “So if you’re not actually able to draw a direct…

I like the look of the Daylight DC–1 – it’s like a Remarkable e-ink tablet that also has a web browser on it. Using it with a keyboard for a distraction free writing tool looks neat too. Bloody expensive though…

Giles Turnbull – Working in the open ≠ comms: Comms seeks to bring about positive opinions of the work. Those opinions might be confined to a small group of relevant stakeholders, or they might be splashed across the pages of…

MHCLG have launched a £6m fund to support councils with delivering improvements following a cyber assessment framework. We have launched a £6 million CAF Support Fund for 52 councils that have completed a CAF assessment, helping them accelerate improvements in…

Oh god, a new major version of WordPress is out.

Some terrifying numbers in Ed Zitron’s post AI Is Too Expensive: But LLMs are too expensive! They cost too much to run, and said costs appear to increase linearly with revenues. The more a user uses a product, the more…

I am LOVING Kev Rowe’s continued blogging about the low-code digital platform development at Luton, some of the thinking behind it, and how it ties in with the corporate strategy for the town: … we’re building towards a more complete…

On the New Stack blog: Who will maintain the web when PHP’s veterans retire? A new Perforce report finds PHP’s developer base is aging out faster than it’s being replenished — and AI-generated code may be making the problem worse,…

Apparently, the Bristol Mayor leads GovTech manifesto: The manifesto, developed at the Govtech 4 Impact World Congress 2026 in Madrid, calls for a coordinated, market-shaping approach that positions cities and regions as active market shapers in the global GovTech industry.…

Phil blogs about a prototype tool he has been to allow users to explore the connections between the various bits of the Local Government Architecture Model he and others at GDS Local have been working on. You can access the…

Carl Haggerty shares his ‘year note’ about his first 12 months in post as Somerset Council’s Head of Transformation and Digital: We haven’t fully broken the reflex that speed is the answer when pressure rises. We haven’t made learning feel…

One of the most interesting and exciting things about the LGR digital Playbook project is the vision for it to be as community-led and informed as possible. The aim is to get as many people involved as we can, to…

New guidance published on GOV.UK – AI, open code and vulnerability risk in the public sector: User research suggests that the primary driver of exploitation risk is the presence of weaknesses in systems – including unpatched vulnerabilities, insecure implementation, and…

Richard Pope – Public sector super apps are system-facing products, not just citizen facing ones: Public sector super apps – like Estonia’s Diia, the UK’s GOV.UK and NHS apps, Singapore’s LifeSG, and Dubai Now – provide a single place to…