localgovdigital

šŸ“… 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 able to achieve with the group – hopefully a lot more than I managed!

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I linked to the recent Notify case study on LinkedIn, adding the commentary below. Saving here for posterity šŸ™‚

Feels to me like this ought to be something easily adopted in local government. I did some digging into Notify uptake in local gov a year or so ago, and found that many councils use Notify for one or two things, but it was rarely considered a core component of digital service delivery. Why? Because sending SMS notifications isn’t part of many workflows. Often because it was seen as too expensive when looked at 10 or 15 years ago.

Encouraging councils to send more SMS notifications is the start, because leveraging Notify to do it is an absolute no-brainer.

(Am aware that Notify does more than SMS, but you hopefully get my point.)

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James Plunkett writes Iterate, if you can:

Because linear mentalities have crept back in some places, it would be worth a big new push to restate the basic case for iterative and user-centred methods, and to insist on the associated operating model (e.g. mixed discipline teams). Clarity is key: assert the basic principles of iterative working, explain why it reduces risk and makes better use of public money, be insistent on the model, etc. Test & Learn might be the best framing/vehicle for this, but it will need strong support from the highest levels of government if contemporary management practices and operating models are to become non-negotiable.

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I need to get better at remembering to hit the publish button on the daily note aggregation posts on here. I don’t want to automate it and like having some control, so maybe a calendar entry is the right way to go!

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Nova Constable writes about accessibility and LocalGovDrupal on the Digital Luton blog.

This blog is hosted on localgov.blog – a WordPress instance I host to enable councils to operate ad-free blogs without having to suffer adverts or deal with the hosting issues themselves. Just let me know if you would like one for your council!

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šŸ“… Daily note for 2 July 2024

Kiasmosā¬ˆ have been providing some of my favourite beepy-boopy music of recent times. They have a newish album outā¬ˆ, which is excellent. My favourite track of theirs, though, is still Loopedā¬ˆ from their 2015 debut album:

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We had the July edition of LocalGovDigital Live!ā¬ˆ This morning. We were meant to have a session on the Open Referral Standard but sadly Jukesie was poorly and couldn’t make it. So, we had more of an open discussion instead. Think it went ok, although personally I think these things work best with a proper presentation of some sort. #

Stefan pointed outā¬ˆ – quite rightly – that my idea for publishing a daily note and then adding to it throughout the day will be terrible for a lot of RSS subscribing types. This is because RSS feeds don’t tend to appear as new when they have been edited, only on publishing. So, I won’t do that! #

Somehow I missed this postā¬ˆ when it appeared a couple of weeks ago. The digital folk at Birmingham are continuing to do some amazing work despite the financial situation they find themselves in.

Finding ways like this to improve the small tactical stuff is really important. Doesn’t take away the need to focus on big picture, long term structural change – but having both running in parallel means people are seeing results and improvements all the time. Good for morale! #

The linking-to-paragraphs solution I figured out yesterday has made my mind spin a few times around what other bits of blogging heavy lifting could be done on my desktop rather than server-side. Suddenly a switch has been flicked and I kind of understand the appeal of flat file blogging engines, like Jekyllā¬ˆ etc. #

Another little presentational tweak to the blog – post titles now have an emoji prefixing them, as a guide to what they contain. So daily notes have a calendar, links posts a link (duh!), longer pieces an open book, techie bits a person behind a laptop, and a TV screen for video posts. Am doing this manually at the moment, suspect there would be a way to automate it but I can’t be faffed. #

The complexity is the attraction – reflections on trying to use cryptoā¬ˆ – interesting stuff from Terence Eden, especially this:

I don’t need to know how the underlying infrastructure works. I don’t need to understand how the global financial system works. But, with crypto, I need to understand staking, gas fees, bridges, offramps, DeFi, and a dozen other things. This is stupid. It makes insiders feel smart because they have embraced the self-created complexity, and allows them to feel smug that normal people aren’t as smart. That’s it. That’s why some people love crypto.

I suspect this may be true of other technologies, too. #

šŸ”— Some links I’ve spotted recently

I sent out a newsletter today and included these links at the bottom. Popping them here for posterity…

Share your stuff with LocalGov Digital!

I’m well chuffed to have joined the steering group for LocalGov Digital, the informal network of bods doing interesting stuff with computers, the internet and change within local councils.

I’m leading on communication and am kicking off a few pieces of work to drive up levels of awareness of and engagement with the network.

The first of these is to pull together some great examples of digital resources in the sector. Stuff like:

  • Digital, IT or technology strategies
  • Service manuals, playbooks and how to guides on digital and transformation
  • Templates for conducting user research or assessing a digitised service
  • Presentations outlining an organisation’s approach to digital and change

…and anything else folk think might be interesting!

Do you have anything like this that you wouldn’t mind sharing with all the good people of LocalGov Digital (and anybody else who browses their website? Just get in touch by email: d@vebrig.gs.

I’ll publish details here of the pages once they are live on the LocalGov Digital website.

Thanks!

Photo credit:Ā Jonathan Simcoe on Unsplash

Why some centralising of local gov digital is needed

An ongoing debate this. Ben Proctor has had his say recently, and it feels fairly sensible.

There are two issues at stake here – one is whether some kind of ‘GDS’ for local government is needed; second is whether we need a website for every council.

These two things are not necessarily bound to one another.

My view is that some centralising is vital for the sector, for two main reasons.

First, financial. It’s nuts that there are hundreds of broadly similar, publicly funded organisations out there paying again and again for broadly the same thing. There has to be savings to be made here with a bit of rationalisation.

Second, and most important for me, quality. The standard of digital services in local government is variable to say the least. Lots of people are doing brilliant work. Lots more people, it would appear, are being prevented from doing even competent work by some circumstance or other.

I think the first thing local government needs to do is to admit that there is a problem. The majority of services delivered within the sector do not provide an adequate level of quality user experience.

In other words, the current system isn’t working.

The problem, as many have pointed out, is that making this happen would be hard. Who has the mandate to get this done? How to get around political issues, particularly local pride, and so on? Big national IT projects? Arrrgggggh!

… and so on.

However, none of the arguments are strong enough to make this not worth trying. If we can save the sector millions of pounds a year, then putting a few noses out of joint will probably be worth it.

Key to success for me will be:

  • Ownership by local government. Lots of models have been discussed. I would look strongly at putting a mutual together, owned by the sector, where councils pool money by investing in the mutual. This should provide a mandate as well as scale to get things done
  • Focusing on achieving realistic things. Follow the GDS model of building prototypes and getting stuff out quickly. Don’t build the single local government domain as the first job.
  • Quality above all else. Everything that comes out of the mutual should be of the highest quality, firstly because it should be the minimum standard anyway but also to demonstrate to the sector what can be achieved
  • Share everything openly. Even those who choose not to be a part of the mutual should still be able to make use of its products and services.

I’m sure there are lots of holes in these – admittedly very sketchy – ideas. However, so much could be achieved so quickly if even just a handful of forward thinking local authorities got together and made this happen.