Dave Briggs' other blog

Is it really 13 days since I last posted one of these? Terrifying. Still, it means plenty of links to share. # Rich Pope: Government is not an app⬈ # Tom Loosemore: What we mean when we say “Be Bold”⬈ # 10 principles for the design and delivery of greener services⬈ # Mark O’Neill: Five ... Keep reading

Jukesie shares his ideas⬈ for the new Digital Centre Design Panel⬈. They are very sensible. # Steve⬈ has shared a really good looking intro to product management course⬈ – it’s online and free. # How government defines a service⬈ (via Neilly⬈) When we talk about a service, we mean all the things that government collectively ... Keep reading

Daily noting is rare at the moment, largely down to being busy, about which I should not complain! Lots of very interesting work, working with new people – which in itself is quite tiring. # LocalGovCamp last week felt different – more positive, ambitious, optimistic than it has been for a while. In one session ... Keep reading

Am looking into intranets at the moment for a customer. If you have any good stuff to share, please do let me know! Have already heard from Essex County Council and of course Eleanor’s wonderful post⬈ on the topic too. # Also I’m really interested in stories from local government folk about their experiences trying ... Keep reading

How Rushmoor Borough Council set out to understand and resolve the issues preventing an effective and efficient freedom of information request service⬈. # Have ordered a copy of Platformland⬈, Richard Pope’s book on government digital services. Am looking forward to reading it and nodding. Lots of people have their copies already and seem to be ... Keep reading

Well, we have moved. It wasn’t an entirely joyful process, but we got everything shifted on the Friday 6th and by teatime Saturday most things were in their rightful places. It’s a bit galling because this is very much a temporary, interim, move, until the house we really want to live in becomes available. So, ... Keep reading

We are moving house again this week. Lucky enough to have removals folk helping us, they are here packing boxes today, then the big shift happens next week. No broadband til the 13th, so that will be interesting! I hate moving, it’s the kind of disruption and change that I find incredibly unsettling. # I ... Keep reading

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 management system. Councils could save time and money, focusing on improving services rather than reinventing ... Keep reading

August was not the chilled out month I was hoping for! Took a week off for staycationing but otherwise was nose to the grindstone on really exciting work, but work nonetheless. Hoping to be able to poke my head up above the parapet more over the next few weeks! # One of the things I ... Keep reading

This note has been kicking around in my drafts for what feels like ages. Life’s been busy! # “Agile or not, it’s all about your worldview⬈” What do you believe about how the world works? Do you believe it works like a machine, that a cause always leads to an effect and that makes the ... Keep reading

“The new Government must draw on the power of institutional memory⬈” Time and again, National Audit Office reports contain universally similar themes. Over-optimistic delivery plans mean budgets get burnt, deadlines are missed, governance is ineffective. # “Building visual literacy: Making good diagrams⬈” Don’t confuse the good making of a diagram with the making of a ... Keep reading

A really busy week, hence lacking of noting. # Ever since the decline of Evernote as an ‘everything bucket’ I’ve lacked a decent option for a place to just save stuff – links, PDFs, anything I might want to come back to later. Have tried all the options and not liked any of them! Even ... Keep reading

I am back at a desk with all my usual stuff! Yay for productivity! # Ben Welby on “Five things I think about GDS, CDDO and i.AI moving into DSIT⬈“: In the UK, GDS benefitted from Francis Maude as the Minister for Cabinet Office (MCO) with his leadership backing the wave of transformation through to ... Keep reading

Some machinery of government changes starting to come through. DLUHC is now MHCLG⬈ (the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government) again, which is good. Also all the digital stuff (GDS, CDDO etc) is going into DSIT⬈ (the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology) which is potentially exciting. It will be interesting to see where ... Keep reading

In the middle of a house move, so am working on my laptop rather than my main computer, and am on the sofa – my new desk doesn’t arrive until Wednesday! The computing revolution: How the next government can transform society with ethics, education and equity in technology – the British Computer Society’s vision for ... Keep reading

A Sunday daily note! A rarity indeed. I’m not using my usual computer today, which means that I don’t have MarsEdit and thus this post does not sport any paragraph links. Let me know how little you care in the comments! 🙂 Following my wittering about online communities on Friday, I came across this post ... Keep reading

I’ve been mulling a bit on what could be funded at the front line of local public service delivery, were we to save a bunch of cash at the back end by harmonising some bits of IT and digital spend. The driving force, remember, for this drive for consolidation is not some techno-utopian centralised vision, ... Keep reading

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 wears off. # Audree Fletcher posted a little while back about Demanding predictable solutions for ... Keep reading

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 which seems to help keep strategies strategic, and thus make them more useful. I’m typing ... Keep reading

Kiasmos⬈ have been providing some of my favourite beepy-boopy music of recent times. They have a newish album out⬈, which is excellent. My favourite track of theirs, though, is still Looped⬈ from their 2015 debut album: # We had the July edition of LocalGovDigital Live!⬈ This morning. We were meant to have a session on ... Keep reading