government

šŸ“… Daily note for 24 October 2024

Patient records and the NHS Appā¬ˆ – or why this stuff is really, really hard. #

Southwark Councilā¬ˆ have made some interesting design decisions on their new LocalGovDrupal website.

A week note from Catherine Howeā¬ˆ should always be celebrated. #

A gobbet from a piece I’m drafting for a project:

Consolidation, harmonisation, standardisationā€¦ call it what you will. The opportunities however are boundless, but to take them we have to all agree on the central premise: councils have too much to do, and everyone will be better off if they can focus on what really matters to local people.

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4 ideas for the digital centre of governmentā¬ˆ from dxw. #

The role of Transactive Memory Systems in great teamsā¬ˆ by Emily Webber.

Daniel Wegner introduced the term ā€ transactive memory Systemā€ in 1985 as a counter to more negative perceptions of group behaviours.

Transactive memory is like an index of where to find things rather than knowing them yourself.

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šŸ“… Daily note for 17 October 2024

Is it really 13 days since I last posted one of these? Terrifying. Still, it means plenty of links to share. #

Rich Pope: Government is not an appā¬ˆ #

Tom Loosemore: What we mean when we say ā€œBe Boldā€ā¬ˆ #

10 principles for the design and delivery of greener servicesā¬ˆ #

Mark O’Neill: Five quick things for the digital futureā¬ˆ #

More Pope:

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šŸ“… Daily note for 23 July 2024

“The new Government must draw on the power of institutional memoryā¬ˆ”

Time and again, National Audit Office reports contain universally similar themes. Over-optimistic delivery plans mean budgets get burnt, deadlines are missed, governance is ineffective.

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“Building visual literacy: Making good diagramsā¬ˆ”

Don’t confuse the good making of a diagram with the making of a good diagram.

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Terrific series of 4 postsā¬ˆ by Ben Welby on building a data driven public sector.

David McCandless, of Information is Beautiful, suggested that instead of thinking about data like oil, we should rather think of it like soil. Data is a fertile environment from which good things might happen.

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“Tech has no answers for youā¬ˆ” (via Neilā¬ˆ).

I work in tech. I think a lot of cool stuff is being built and a lot of good work is being done. But tech is a mature industry, and most of what is interesting these days has to do with bringing the things we learned from 2000-2015 about how to use software into places that have not yet modernized. Weā€™re at the tail end of whatā€™s interesting and good and novel. Software technology has very little left to change in a major way. And the entire ethos of a16z and the like has utterly failed to produce breakthroughs in computer hardware, biological sciences, energy, environment or any other major sector. The last decade of innovation has been entirely about reducing friction in commerce. Thatā€™s it. And itā€™s not that profitable and will end up with a very small number of winners.

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šŸ“… Daily note for 28 June 2024

I’m back! First daily note in a while. Hope you are as pleased with me as I am šŸ˜

The blog has been rehosted, meaning I can save a bit of money shutting down an old hosting account. Have also changed the theme, going from the venerable Twenty-Fifteenā¬ˆ which has served me well for a long old while.

I’ve gone for GeneratePressā¬ˆ, which is a very bare-bones (the idea being that you can customise it to do whatever you like). I’m just tweaking it here and there to keep things light and simple. I’ve avoided blog-tinkering for a while, but it’s quite nice to change things up.

I’ve tried to trim down the number of RSS feeds I am checking on the regular in NetNewsWireā¬ˆ. Am subscribed to over 400 but huge numbers of those are inactive these days, and others I rarely check. So, have split them into two folders, Must reads and Nice to reads. The latter stays shut unless I’m desperate for something to look at!

Eddie Copeland posted an interesting asideā¬ˆ on language and how he isn’t using the word digital much, and it seems to be working for him. Fair enough! I’m a bit horses-for-courses on this one really, sometimes it can be a helpful word, sometimes not. Depends on the organisation’s context I guess.

When I do say ‘digital’ these days though, I invariably follow it up by saying that it is a simple shorthand for technology, data, and online experience.

I love this quote from Matt King in his post the future of digital is already hereā¬ˆ:

Working in public sector digital environments can often involve an almost disorientating sense of deja-vu, where a chance phrase drops you deep into a flashback to the previous times you had a similar conversation. When this first happens, itā€™s tempting to think that youā€™re getting old, and that either that the organisation youā€™re working with has ignored the last 15 years, or that the case for digital change is doomed. The reality is usually that none of these things apart from the getting old bit is true, and that the organisation youā€™re dealing with is both ahead of the curve in a few places and has missed some stuff in other places. The future of digital is not very evenly distributed at the moment ā€“ itā€™s pretty bumpy ā€“ but what weā€™ll see in the next 15 years is that distribution improving.

Going down to London and speaking at the Town Hall 2030 launch on Tuesday was pretty exhausting but also inspiring. I love the fact that the lens for quite a few big beast policy types is now on local public service delivery.

With the likely new government on its way, it feels like a very optimistic time, which is a very nice feeling to have. I came away with many thoughts that I will try and wrangle into posts in the near future.

Does this actually work? #

Interesting links 25 March 2022

Things I’ve seen that are worth sharing.

Exciting next steps for Local Digital and Cyber – Local Digital Collaboration Unit

The Local Digital and Cyber teams are going to be making some exciting changes over the next few months, backed by multi-year funding to the tune of Ā£85 million.

Weā€™re developing an enhanced approach that will allow us to support the local government sector to achieve even more brilliant things, as well as fix the core problems.

Stockport Council announces ambitious Radical Digital Strategy – Holly Rae, Craig Hughes & Adrian Davies

Today we have announced our ambitious new Digital Strategy. It aims to provide residents, businesses and partners with an overview of our digital ambitions for the borough, based on three broad pillars: Digital Communities, Digital Place and Digital Council.

Community of Practice Kick-off Canvas (with Miro template) – Emily Webber

The Tacit community of practice kick-off canvas helps get your community started or reset using a canvas framework that guides you through six questions… It has been available for a couple of years on my company website as a printable pdf, and I have recently turned it into a Miro board template, which anyone can use.

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