LocalGovDigital Blog

I've been blogging about my ideas on what a local government digital service might look like and sharing my works in progress since 2012, which over time have turned into something of a Manifesto.

Read my blog
A woman sat in contemplation, in the middle of a fantasy mushroom forest

Latest articles

BigTown Council - LocalGovDigital Strategy and Manifesto
Ebenezer Scrooge looks out of the window and shouts ‘you, boy, what day is it? Is it bin day yet?’

Is it bin day yet?

We really do know that at this time of year an awful lot of people are looking for the bin day changes. We could still make it easier for them to be able to find them

29 December 2025
A neon flowchart, floating in a forest

The OBR Budget leak and why it shouldn't have happened

Somebody accidently clicked Publish too early. Somebody might get the sack for doing that; they might even get a court appearance. They shouldn't have been put in the position where a simple mistake could cost them their job.

27 November 2025

Featured articles

Service designers

10 Principles for Good LocalGovDigital Design

If you have a liking for Apple products, then indirectly you have a liking for the design principles of Dieter Rams, whose work as Chief Designer at Braun has been credited as a major influence on Jony Ive, the former Chief Design Officer at Apple. Dieter Rams himself coined his 10 Principles for Good Design as a handy distillation of his whole ethos. I wondered if those 10 Principles could be translated into the LocalGovDigital dimension?

Read the 10 Principles

Content and UX Strategy

A neon flowchart, floating in a forest

In 2013 I wrote a council website Content Strategy, which I then shared with the wider community. This is where I'm updating it for the modern era.

The strategy

Why are you building a new website?

A webteam at work - robots and humans together

If you're going down the road of building a new website, make sure you've documented all the problems with your existing one.

Carry out an Irritations Audit

Technical information

A spherical floating piece of advanced technology

Information about how I installed LocalGovDrupal into some commercial webhosting under my own control

Technical information

Local Government Digital Services 3.0 - A manifesto

My turning point blog post, when I flipped from mainly reporting on events I'd attended and things I'd recently done at work to when I started doing more serious thinking about how we might fundamentally transform our online services rather than merely tinker around the edge.

Essentially this whole site now is my Manifesto, but this post is the Origin Story of it.

The Manifesto
Content Design

More information about Simon Gray

The work history of Simon Gray, the person behind this site. Or, putting it another way, my online CV.

Simon Gray's CV