Like most people, I don’t often need to interact with my local council, and so – given the way I make a living – I tend to take notice when I do. Recently we got an email with an invoice…

I had the thought the other day that an awful lot of time gets wasted in local government digital because of the constant cycle of probably unnecessary change. Here’s an example: new chief digital person comes in, and the first…

Really good post from Kev Rowe on the Luton blog about how the team are preparing for the rollout of the new Netcall low code platform. Lots of learning of lessons from previous experience as well as tapping into the…

GDS Local have published the first iteration of their architecture for (digital) local government. It looks at this stage like very high level, simplified enterprise architecture. It will be interesting to see where it goes next. I worry about architecture…

Will Callaghan shares A new flatpack collaborative model for the public sector: The goal was to identify a ‘flatpack model’ which would make collaboration as easy as going it alone. There are currently 317 councils in England still building or…

Good news – New pilot to help councils identify and support residents at risk to vulnerability earlier: Local Digital is pleased to share that the Scalable Approach to Vulnerability via Interoperability (SAVVI) and Open Referral UK (ORUK) data standards are…

On the benefits of a bit of external scrutiny

I have had the pleasure over the last couple of years of being a member of Woking Council’s Digital Design Authority. This is a group made up of a few senior members of the digital team at the Council, the…

Will Callaghan – who knows more about this stuff than most – shares his thoughts on how to be a better collaborator, based on his experience with the LocalGovDrupal project.

Missed this first time around, but there’s some interesting stuff to think about in here – Courage is required for GDS Local to succeed. There is currently both a real opportunity and a grave danger facing local government in England…

Catherine Howe – Head towards the North Star: Some of the shifts we need to make are very much rooted in public service; better coproduction with communities, prevention at scale and deep modernisation of technology and practice. Some of this…

Carl Haggerty – Introducing the Chrysalis Work: Working in a council right now can feel a lot like being inside a chrysalis. The old shape of things is still visible – job titles, structures, budgets, habits – but much of…

📅 Daily Note: December 2, 2025

Gavin Beckett – Harnessing the changing landscape of local government to create internet era organisations: Effective responses to complex, long-standing social challenges need to be co-designed and co-produced with people and community organisations that grow from the ground up. Modern…

📅 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…

📅 Daily Note: June 5, 2025

Really helpful stuff from Jason Kitcat at the Department for Business and Trade on matrix working. # – micropost 22920 Some interesting notes on the issues around the software market for local government. # – micropost 22934 My general take…

📅 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 18, 2024

Ed Zitron: The people running the majority of internet services have used a combination of monopolies and a cartel-like commitment to growth-at-all-costs thinking to make war with the user, turning the customer into something between a lab rat and an…

📅 Daily note for 4 September 2024

Charlie Fountaine kicked off⬈ one of those conversations on LinkedIn: Why isn’t there a cookie-cutter website for local councils in the UK?…Imagine if we had a common system, similar to central government’s approach, with shared components and a unified content…