šŸ“… Daily Note: September 23, 2025

Building understanding of software markets in local government from the Local Digital team:

We’ve also identified through roundtable discussions and feedback from partners that managing effective procurements and successfully exiting technology contracts is a challenge, particularly where internal capacity or capability is limited.

With local government reorganisation, new unitary authorities will need to consolidate systems, migrate data, and harmonise business processes at an unprecedented scale. This will also impact technology contracts and procurement activities.

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Foundational Specification to support the procurement of social care Case Management Systems:

The Department of Health and Social Care has released a Foundational Specification to support the procurement of social care Case Management Systems (CMSs). Developed in partnership with BetterGov, the Specification is the outcome of a multi-stage consultation process involving a wide range of stakeholders. Its primary aim is to simplify the procurement journey for Local Authorities by providing a clear and consistent guide—helping to reduce the time, cost, and resources required when selecting new CMSs.

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Endelvia Matt Mullenweg – is an interesting idea, offering “[p]ersonalized soundscapes to help you focus, relax, and sleep. Backed by neuroscience.”

I definitely work better when I have the right music playing – but Ā£60 is too steep when i already have Apple Music and a bunch of suitable playlists identified.

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Why WordPress Lost the Cool Kids (And How to Win Them Back):

Here’s what nobody talks about: WordPress is actually modern. REST API, GraphQL, headless implementations, React-based editing. It powers complex applications and handles millions of visitors. But everyone still thinks it’s ā€œjust for blogs.ā€

The platform regularly outperforms competitors on speed, but gets labeled as ā€œslow and bloated.ā€ Enterprise teams at Sony and Microsoft chose WordPress deliberately—these aren’t legacy installations.

WordPress has Full Site Editing and visual builders that compete with Webflow. They just feel hidden behind confusing historical interfaces.

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Another newsletter sent. Am pleased to be getting back into a fortnightly rhythm.

Some delivery issues though, need to have a look at my DNS records to ensure I have them set correctly.

If you’d like to sign up, you can do so!

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It isn’t altogether obvious how to send an email to the attendees of an upcoming Zoom meeting, without exporting their details and sending a normal email, which seems sub-optimal.

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šŸ“… Daily Note: September 9, 2025

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The hidden fundamentals of digital transformation in healthcare: how to roll out nationally in a local system – by Jane Maber on the dxw blog:

There’s no question that the technical challenge is real. Designing digital services that work for a national screening programme in a local environment isn’t easy.Ā  You have to integrate with diverse existing systems, handle local variation and consider patient safety.Ā  Not to mention managing, and often decommissioning, legacy systems alongside.

But what’s become increasingly clear is that technology alone doesn’t drive transformation. As more decision-making power is devolved to Integrated Care Boards (ICBs), national teams can’t assume one-size-fits-all delivery. Success is really all about the people impacted by the new product – the admin and clinical staff who use it, and the screening participants who experience it.

Change doesn’t land just because it’s technically sound. Or even operationally sound for that matter.Ā  It lands because people trust it, understand it, and feel part of it.Ā  So development needs to be done in partnership, and the quality of the relationship with those partners is critical.

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I stopped sending out my email newsletter this year – it lost its place on my todo list in the madness of moving house and so on.

However, am minded to kick it off again, but wanted to move away from Substack for a variety of reasons including nazi-friendliness and increasingly user hostile behaviour.

So, taking some advice Steph gave me a while ago, I’ve moved to Email Octopus, who seem very friendly and the system is easy enough to use. I’ve also changed it to be Localise branded – I’m terrible about marketing my company so thought this might be an easy way of reminding people how I earn a living.

If you’re curious, you can sign up on the landing page.

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Have updated my about page which was very long in the tooth!

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WordPress and email

I’ve been moving a few of the sites that I manage away from a simple shared hosting arrangement onto something a bit more proper, with Steph’s advice (this blog, being incredibly simple albeit with a fairly hefty archive going back to 2004 or something, remains on the shared hosting for now). The new ‘platform’ is made up of using SpinupWP to manage the setup of the servers and WordPress itself, which is all hosted on DigitalOcean, with all the benefits that come from having this kind of control over the environment.

One area that has been causing me some worry is around sending emails out of these sites. The emails that WordPress sends, like password resets etc, can be a bit flakey in getting delivered at the best of times, but to make it more complicated, SpinupWP doesn’t install a means of sending emails itself, you have to configure your own, using an email sending provider like Amazon SES or Mailgun. It sounds complicated – and it is, in a way – but there are plugins and things to make it easier.

I’ve played with a few ways of doing it, but think I have settled on one, that I will now move all the sites onto over time. I’m going to be using the WP Mail SMTP plugin to get everything set up and working, and linking it up with SendLayer to do the actual emailing. When setting these things up, you need a domain to use, and each one needs configuring in SendLayer. To make life easier for myself, I have registered a specific domain to use for this, and so emails will come from sitename@davesemaildomain.notreal, which hopefully will keep things simple.

Daily note for 16 November 2023

Ouch, nearly a week since my last note on here.

I’ve been having a quiet week this week and it has done me a lot of good. Slowed down the pace a bit, spent a (little) bit more time outside, made some space to work on some things that are starting to come to fruition.

The main example of that is the Local Government Digital Quality Framework, which is my attempt at coming up with a scalable framework for councils to be able to figure out where they are at with digital design, data and technology. Most importantly, it also helps them decide where they want to get to, and how.

I’ll write a dedicated post about it though, as there’s a fair bit to say.

Was feeling sad about the dying art of social bookmarking reading this by Howard Harold Jarche. In the comments someone recommended Raindrop.io which looks neat and I am going to have a play.

Am finding my Google-powered emails are struggling to get through some organisations’ spam filters all of a sudden. Shane and Steph recommended taking a look at DKIM records and things like that, so I did.

The different ā€˜flavours’ of service design – by Emma Parnell (subscribed!).

The Future of the Blogosphere – ā€œYet, despite its very different political-economic DNA, the blogosphere has become enshittified as clearly as Facebook, Google, or Amazon. Not just at the level of aging software, but at the level of the aging people who inhabit it, maintain it, and continue to churn out content on it, though at a rapidly decelerating rate.ā€ Ouch.

Trustworthy AI in Government + Public Services — A self assessment tool from Oxford Insights.