DIgitalGov.news is now Sigh. All the old URLs should 301 to the new ones, including the mega RSS feed.

Doug Belshaw is doing something interesting with Substrate – a sort of public everything bucket as blog thing.

Made an update to DIgitalGovNews – adding a filter to the top so users can decide which feeds should appear on the page. Check it out: Mostly added because my blog dominates it somewhat and people might want to…

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…

Following my online identity crisis, I’ve given the Localise website a rethink, and now it’s a much simpler one page affair that tells you what I do and how I do it. Now I can focus on all the content…

Who am I, anyway?

Am having another one of my mini (online-) identity crises. To be clear – this is not a real crisis and almost certainly doesn’t matter at all, so please don’t be concerned for me. I would though value any thoughts…

A little reminder – if you needed one – that I host blogs for free for local government use, whether by councils or individuals, or teams. I like to encourage blogging as a practice – working out in the open…

Manton Reece, the creator of micro.blog, has released a new RSS reader, Inkwell. It has some interesting features: Inkwell is built around three main tabs: Today, Recent, and Fading. Today is for the latest blog posts. Recent is for posts…

📅 Weeknote w/e Friday 16 January 2026

Let’s see how long I can keep this up for! This week’s worky highlights: We are recruting for two big roles at Luton Head of Innovation Delivery and Data Deputy Data Protection Officer & Compliance Improvement Manager Also at Luton,…

Now I’m wondering whether I should just put everything pre-2026 into an ‘Archive’ category and just start afresh from this year… A though just occurred – part of the reason why the categories are in a mess is probably because…

Some major reworking of this blog over the last few days. Dramatically simplified things – sadly the micropost format that Steph helped me build didn’t make the cut. Instead I am making use of the default WordPress ‘asides’ post format…

📅 Daily Note: November 3, 2025

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) # –…

📅 Daily Note: October 29, 2025

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…

📅 Daily Note: October 21, 2025

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…

📅 Daily Note: October 16, 2025

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…

📅 Daily Note: October 10, 2025

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…

📅 Daily Note: September 30, 2025

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…

📅 Daily Note: September 18, 2025

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…

📅 Daily Note: August 7, 2025

AI in Adult Social Care – guidance for adult care providers on the use of AI. # – micropost 22995 Giles shares “examples and links about working in the open and agile communication”. # – micropost 22996 Ben Unsworth is…

📅 Daily Note: July 14, 2025

Experiences of moving websites to LocalGov Drupal from the Essex Digital Service. # – micropost 22965 Ben Holliday: New ways of organising: What’s most interesting to me in 2025 is that we still need new ways of organising. It’s hard…