Am testing a new way of doing my daily blogging. I’ve created a custom post type in WordPress, called ‘microposts’. This way, each of my ‘paragraphs‘ exist as separate items. For example, here is the permalink for this particular micropost.

I have used ChatGPT to help me produce some code that will assemble them everyday to create the ‘Daily note‘ style roundup. Will have to see how that works – expect some jankiness!

I have not been feeling great for a few weeks now – generally run down I think although occasional bouts of toothache aren’t helping. This week has been particularly bad – like wading through treacle whilst being quite grumpy. I apologise to everyone who has come into contact with me 😬 Due to this, I’ve not managed to get a post out this week yet, so consider this a week note rather than a daily one. #

Having just had a moan, I do feel like I had a couple of breakthroughs in some of the more strategic, sector-wide work I am doing at the moment. Broadly speaking:

• Councils have too much to do
• Digital and tech is very much in the space where workloads could be shared without undermining the local magic that councils provide
• However, sharing all but the most commoditised of technology will require harmonisation and standardisation of process, and service design
• New models need to be found to incentivise the right behaviour – i.e. adopting standardised processes and technology.
• These could be led by councils themselves, sector bodies, central government, maybe even private sector suppliers. Indeed a mix of models is probably a good thing.

Not ground breaking particularly perhaps, but it’s nice to have a rather complicated thing summed up in a handful of bullet points. Need to write this up into a proper blog post. #

Speaking of that kind of thing, this report focusing on universities⬈ is basically exactly what I am taking about for the local government sector. We’ve never really had a nice, professional articulation of these ideas in this format, I don’t think. Anyway, lots to learn/steal here. #

An extremely useful looking AI risk assessment⬈ shared by the Wildlife Trust. #

Online collaboration remains a sticky problem in a lot of ways. MS Teams has become the default option in almost all use cases, but it’s a massive pain to configure a lot of the time. People end up resorting to email, still! I’m playing with a little bit of tech to fill that gap between email and Teams, when a quick – almost disposable – online group is needed. If you have a use case, drop me a line and I’ll show you around. (This isn’t a money making thing, more a localgov.blog style scratching an itch thing) #

This is great⬈, I like the idea of slightly asynchronous online events. #

Speaking of online events, Nick has one coming up later this month on the role of process management in cultural change⬈, featuring some fab council speakers. #