📅 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: July 15, 2025

Ben Welby: Pocket, Pavement, Platform: Government in the App Store and on the High Street # – micropost 22969 Harry Metcalfe: Governance happens in foggy weather We need to reclaim human judgement, subjectivity and the primacy of direct experience as…

📅 Daily Note: May 21, 2025

Eddie Copeland writes helpfully and convincingly on the future of local government digital leadership following the mention of it in the government digital blueprint. Tried to pull out a bit for a quote but couldn’t it was all good. In…

📅 Daily Note: December 11, 2024

Digitisation, politicisation and the civil service by Martha Lane Fox: Today’s reality is clear: digital skills are no longer optional extras. Data analysis, digital service design, agile project management, let alone the nuance needed in understanding new AI tools, have…

Daily note for 30 August 2023

I wrote a post about simple things for leadership types to bear in mind when thinking about technology. WordPress for Enterprise looks a very useful guide. Strange it’s a PDF though and not also available as web pages (although as…

Interesting links 8 April 2022

Things I’ve seen that are worth sharing. Reflections on my time as the Head of Local Digital – May-N Leow This week brings to a close my two and a half years as Head of the Local Digital Collaboration Unit…

Interesting links – 9 Feb 2021

More nuggets spotted online, shared for your edutainment. 5 tips on running virtual events – DWP Digital One of the biggest learning points for the events team was that you can’t take a plan for a physical event and simply…

Lacking leadership

Recently on my visits to councils and to conferences, and in the conversations I have with people across the public sector, leadership in digital has been identified as an issue. I think the problem is that within many organisations, there’s…

Link roundup

I find this stuff so you don’t have to: Redefining the Digital Divide | @helenmilner The system is failing, hack the system – via @annemcx The Four Freedoms – wonderful piece on #opensource by @photomatt The dangerous appeal of the…

Link roundup

I find this stuff so you don’t have to: Joho the Blog » [2b2k] Knowledge in its natural state PSFK Future of Work Report 2013 Donald Clark Plan B: More holes in Sugata Mitra’s ‘Hole-in-Wall’ project Digital Leadership or just…

Why senior managers need to lead online

I wrote a thing for the Guardian’s Public Leaders’ Network: The explosion in online innovation throughout public services is seeing more and more activity taking place on the net, whether via interactive websites, or mobile applications. Networks such as Twitter…

What I’ve been reading

I find this stuff so that you don’t have to. Towards Effective Corporate Communications: Let Your Engineers do the Talking – For engineers, replace with any front line public sector worker! John Naughton on The Waste Land app – Great…

The networked public servant

** Update – if you want to know how to network well, Mary has a great guide ** One of the most popular books about the social media powered digital revolution is Groundswell, by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff. Published…

Open Leadership

Am reading an excellent book at the moment – Open Leadership by Charlene Li. Fans of dead-tree web 2.0 reading will be familiar with Groundswell, which Li co-authored and was chock-full of interesting case studies – mostly from the US…