Will Callaghan writes Elections and the Community Fund: … last week the fund had another major success. Three council Democratic Services teams switched from using their old software to the latest version of LocalGov Drupal Elections, paid for by contributions…

Very exciting looking job going in Dorset, working with Catherine Howe: You’ll be joining the Senior Leadership Team, reporting directly to the Chief Executive. Your directorate is around 550 colleagues across Customer Experience, Technology, Digital and Data, Libraries, Revenues and…

Yet another note-taking, knowledge organising type of app to play with: Logsec.

Kev Rowe is continuing to blog the progress of implementing the Netcall Liberty Create low code platform at Luton Council. It’s been a practical sprint, getting the essentials in place so the team can build quickly to a good standard…

The Register reports on issues with planning and land searches, related to recent implementations of Arcus Global’s software. No doubt rivals of Arcus will be rubbing their hands with glee, but it’s really hard to know where the problem lies.…

I have really been enjoying the Past, Present Future podcast lately. The recent series on George Orwell and WW2 was great. Made me dig out my copy of Orwell’s Essays for a read.

LOTI’s Eddie Copeland – Putting in place the enabling conditions for AI: Many organisations seem to be falling for the same mistake we’ve been trying to undo with digital government for the past 15 years: thinking that this is just…

Kristin at Newark and Sherwood District Council shares Discussing Practical AI for Projects: The effectiveness of AI ultimately depends on the quality of data and the proficiency of its users. It was a valuable opportunity to exchange perspectives, and many…

Terence Eden writes [the] NHS Goes To War Against Open Source: …this is not the correct response to the purported threat by Mythos. Neither the AI Safety Institute nor the NCSC recommend this action. While there may be some increase…

A New Theme for Short-Form Blogging on WordPress.com: At WordPress.com, we believe short thoughts deserve a real home. Today we’re introducing a new theme built for quick posts, replies, and reblogs: the kind of writing that lives somewhere between a…

Another one for my almost-bulging AI scepticism evidence folder – Claude-powered AI agent’s confession after deleting a firm’s entire database: ‘I violated every principle I was given’: Crane said that he was monitoring the agent as it deleted this data.…

There’s another LGRCamp coming up, this time an East Midlands flavoured version, being held in Newark. It’s on 20th May. Book your place now!

Tom Wynne-Morgan, Deputy Director for CustomerFirst posts on the GDS blog – Testing a different way to improve complex public services: CustomerFirst is exploring how teams can solve whole problems in practice when authority, incentives and accountability are fragmented, and…

Sourcefeed creates standalone RSS feeds: No website, no newsletter. Just your words, delivered to your readers’ rss reader. It’s an appealing, if eccentric idea, explained more in a blog post.

I was very sad to learn of the recent death of Conrad Taylor. We met a few times – mostly through Steve Dale – and collaborated one or twice in the early days of my career, when ‘knowledge management’ was…

Marcin Wichary – Tactical dark modes: Programmers’ fondness for dark mode was a result of decades of bad display technologies. The early CRTs were so awful, the burn-in risks so real, and the pixels so fuzzy and headache-inducing, that you…

Interesting case study published by the LGA about Nottingham City Council – Embedding a culture of change through targeted team support: This case study explores how Nottingham City Council is embedding a culture of change through the in-house delivered Ways…

John Gruber on AI: Something is profoundly off in the computer industry when it comes to software broadly and AI specifically. It’s up for debate what exactly is off and what should be done about it, but the undeniable proof…

Guidance from the ICO on AI and freedom of information requests: Information requests often involve secondary correspondence, such as clarification or internal reviews. If requesters use AI to read and respond, it can result in long, complex emails. These take…

A fun long-ish read from the makers of the iA writer app on Europe’s desire to move away from Microsoft Office and what it might take: Severance illustrates something so familiar that it’s hard both to recognize and hard to…