An online notebook
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An online notebook
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…
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…
AI is not a strategy, it’s a tactic. Once all the fuss has settled down, we will be in a position where specific AI tools are useful in specific circumstances – it won’t have “transformed” anything. We had exactly this…
Richard Pope – Preventative healthcare: designing for the service loop: # – micropost 23148 Katherine Wastell – Every organisation has some madness: If everyone spots the problems but no one takes responsibility, things will only get worse. Accountability is the…
Ash Mann – The discipline of focus, what makes a digital strategy work: Good digital strategies aren’t long documents or laundry lists. They’re about ruthless focus – choosing a clear direction and sticking to it, even if that means letting…
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…
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…
Brent’s Innovation Journey: Building a ‘Base’ for Local Government Innovation by Ryan Hamilton on the LOTI blog: At Brent, we’ve been trying to rethink how we tackle problems in a way that makes ‘innovation’ not just a buzzword, but a…
It’s been nearly 6 months since I last posted here, and I have been really quiet on the likes of LinkedIn and Bluesky too. If I am honest doesn’t feel like months, this year has just raced past. What’s been…
Dave Rogers answers the question Just what is ‘Test and Learn’? # – micropost 22849 Lloyd writes up his experience of new, location based social network thing Mozi. Just like it’s 2008 all over again! # – micropost 22865 Anything that…
Have added Google Analytics to this blog, via the Sitekit WordPress plugin. I guess it will be interesting to see the numbers, but it isn’t really why I do this, so maybe I’ll switch it off again once the novelty…
This post and all its contents is published under a creative commons attribution-sharealike license. Find out more⬈. I’m doing a fair bit of strategy work with councils at the moment, and have hit upon a framework for putting them together…
I sent out a newsletter today and included these links at the bottom. Popping them here for posterity…
This is a re-publish of a thing that went on LinkedIn, my newsletter, and the Digital Leaders newsletter. I’ve backdated the published date on this post to reflect this. Summary: all this tech called ‘AI’ is genuinely exciting. But the…
I visited Newark and Sherwood Council, just over the Nottinghamshire border, on Monday, to give a talk to their digital champions network. I borrowed the ‘5 digital things everyone needs to know about’ frame for the talk from my Digital…
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…
Things I’ve seen that are worth sharing. The Policymaking / DDAT Divide – Jerry Fishenden Despite politicians’ grand ambitions for DDaT since at least 1996, it’s had relatively little impact on radical government renewal and reform. Yet the political ambition…
One of the elements of the Loosemore definition of digital that doesn’t get as much coverage as the rest is the bit about business, or operating, models. That’s probably because it’s really hard. So I loved having this chat with…
Even if we adopt Tom Loosemore’s definition of digital – and we should – it’s still necessary to interpret it in the context of the service you are looking to digitise. I’ve worked out a really simple framework for thinking…
I had a fun chat last week with Richard Godfrey of Syncity. Richard, like me, has a big interest in how local councils use technology, particularly acknowledging the need for more traditional IT to be modernised alongside the sexier digital…