September 2025

Tech has no answers for you

These are people who believe in spending massive amounts of public money to enrich themselves while they make shitty tunnels under Las Vegas or drop off scooters on city sidewalks or chase self-driving cars, so firmly believing that these are…

Public sector design — time for a reset

Public services should work much harder for the public. However, the new UK government isn’t going to meet its aspirations for digital and data unless it resets the public sector’s approach to design. An archived PDF of this page can…

Toxic technology

Dave Rogers discusses the concept of ‘toxic technology’ in this series of posts. He defines it as the threat organisations face from the legacy technology they accumulate. An archived PDF of this page can be downloaded if the original is…

Introduction to OKRs

Roger Swannell’s excellent introductory talk about Objectives and Key Results: “OKRs aren’t about recording and tracking all the work your team is doing, only the most important work, the stuff that contributes to the big strategy and priorities.”  An archived…

I Will F**king Piledrive You If You Mention AI Again

Nikhil Suresh: “The recent innovations in the AI space, most notably those such as GPT-4, obviously have far-reaching implications for society, ranging from the utopian eliminating of drudgery, to the dystopian damage to the livelihood of artists in a capitalist…

mySociety AI Framework

“This is a working document of issues to consider when considering deploying Generative AI or Machine Learning (GAML) as part of a mySociety output or service.”

The Government as a Platform Playbook

A guide to help digital government practitioners implement common digital infrastructure successfully, written by Richard Pope, the author of Platformland. The PDF linked to is not quite the same as the online content, but is near enough.  An archived PDF of this…

Local Government Service Design Maturity Model

“The Local Government Service Design Maturity Model has been developed for service designers in local authorities to use with council staff. It helps councils to explore how well they support and grow service design practice. Councils can use the model…

Run a community of practice

What is this recipe? A Community of Practice (CoP) is a group of people who share a common specialism or profession and come together regularly to learn from each other and improve their skills. Think of it as a club…