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A hard week so even more important to capture the good stuff and progress which is happening at LocalGovDigital, at Popoptica, and around the sector

Set up a new council on localgov.blog today! Looking forward to seeing what they post. # – micropost 23129 Some useful links in Ben’s halloweeknote. # – micropost 23130 OpenQR.me – “Create beautiful QR codes instantly” (via Giles) # – micropost 23131 Created a little online community around Localise Live! last week, using Basecamp. It […]

Advancements in technology open up new avenues of opportunity, allowing many to achieve what was once the preserve of a specialised few.
This should however come with a caveat: just because technology enables you to do something, doesn't mean you should.
Before the modern Content Management System (CMS), publishing to the web was a technical endeavour. 
Many early websites were built with hand-crafted HTML, and while applications such as MS Frontpage and Dreamweaver, and database-driven platforms that with PHP and Classic ASP front ends later reduced the need to code every single page, you still required a significant degree of technical knowledge to publish.
The advent of CMS, and later Enterprise CMS, opened up content creation, allowing anyone with basic IT skills to edit and add content, and over the following years we saw the consequence: a proliferation of truly awful websites.
In some cases, these were vast digital estates containing tens of thousands of pages, authored by hundreds of people with little to no understanding of the disciplines of content design.
In a previous role I was given the remit of managing that organisation's website with a view to improving its content and functionality.
After a review, my team concluded that the content, published by professionals in their field through a well intentioned but devolved model using an enterprise CMS, was simply beyond salvaging, and the most effective way to improve the website was not to review and rewrite the multitude of pages, but to start again.
I saw this pattern emerge again with the advent of another new technology.
The introduction of low-code form builders transformed the creation of digital services. As with web pages, no longer did you need a developer to hand-code your online offering, and by simply dragging and dropping elements a functioning form could be built in minutes.
But, much like the CMS revolution, this empowerment enabled some organisations to quickly and easily create some truly unusable forms, often built by people with little grasp of user experience (UX) or digital accessibility. 
And now, I see the potential for history to repeat itself again with application development.
The emergence of “vibe coding” allows the creation of software simply by describing how it should work to a generative AI platform. The application is then generated by the platform and the parallels to my previous examples are striking. 
If used wisely it can be a powerful creative tool particularly for prototyping, but without the guardrails of sound engineering practice it also risks producing code that lacks the discipline, security, and scalability required for sustainable systems.
Just as effective content requires an understanding of style and grammar, and the creation of good forms requires knowledge of usability and accessibility, creating quality software demands a foundational knowledge of secure and robust engineering practices.
This is not to say that AI isn’t a profoundly useful tool when used as part of the whole software development process, it is.
Initiatives such as the Government Digital Service drive to promote the use of AI coding assistants will undoubtedly save developers immense amounts of time. The crucial distinction is this promotes using AI as an assistant to help the professional, not as a replacement for the expertise they bring.
Across these three examples the lesson remains the same: empowerment without governance and expertise often leads to poor outcomes, just ask your content and service designers, and the principle endures: just because advancements in technology mean you can, doesn't mean you should.

Find and reuse digital service elements is a website put together by some folk at the Ministry of Justice that signposts the user to examples of publicly available guidance and patterns for digital work. Am not entirely sure what I think about it. Obviously it’s a lovely thing to have done, and the world is […]

This article follows up on one written back in January 2024 called ‘Why custom 404 error pages are important for council websites‘. In the previous article I used the combined wisdom from GOV.UK and Google on custom 404s. From their advice I identified ten points which help to make up an effective 404 for people […]

The post Reviewing the performance of custom 404 error pages on council websites appeared first on Digital Health Check.

This is the 443rd edition of Internet of Public Service Jobs - a weekly list of vacancies related to product management, agile and design in…you guessed it…‘public service’ curated by @jukesie

[01] Head of Human Centred Design
Citizens Advice
Hybrid / Multiple

Sliding into half term week with getting practical reboot activity started at LocalGov Digital, checking out LocalGov IMS and thinking about the place of music journalism in the modern age

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! # […]

This is the 442nd edition of Internet of Public Service Jobs - a weekly list of vacancies related to product management, agile and design in…you guessed it…‘public service’ curated by @jukesie

[01] Deputy Director, Head of Service Design and Integration
Office

LocalGov Digital's next chapter begins - and I'm taking on the role of Chair

I enjoyed Scott Colfer’s reflections on writing and publishing his book. # – micropost 23105 Lloyd reports not getting a pingback from me when I linked to his blog. Am not surprised the micropost didn’t ping, but the daily note aggregated version is just a standard post and should have done. Will take a look ... Keep reading

This is the 441st edition of Internet of Public Service Jobs - a weekly list of vacancies related to product management, agile and design in…you guessed it…‘public service’ curated by @jukesie

[01] Chief Digital Officer
Science Museum Group
Hybrid / London, Manchester,

I newslettered earlier. # – micropost 23087 i’ve been enjoying Lloyd’s recent ponderings about blogging. I’m also really enjoying the way this blog works these days, posting little nuggets that can get pulled into a aggregated post on a daily basis (or when I remember to hit the switch). Each of these ‘microposts’ exists as ... Keep reading

A week of good fortune with Content Design London training, the release of a new record from Reckless Yes and looking on the bright side of having to have a new roof on my house

A roadmap for successful AI adoption in Higher Education, from dxw: Higher education institutions are actively experimenting with AI to improve operational efficiency, yet approaches vary significantly across the sector. Institutions face complex issues including output accuracy, data privacy, and academic integrity – with some organisations establishing centralized AI task forces while others maintain department-led ... Keep reading

This is the 440th edition of Internet of Public Service Jobs - a weekly list of vacancies related to product management, agile and design in…you guessed it…‘public service’ curated by @jukesie

[01] Lead Content Designer
Ministry of Justice
Multiple UK locations

Ouch: Europe’s largest city council delays fix to disastrous Oracle system once more: Elected representatives of Birmingham City Council’s audit committee vented their frustration this week after hearing that the rollout of the IMS – designed to replace the council’s banking reconciliation system (BRS), which went so badly wrong after the April 2022 go-live of ... Keep reading

The latest update to the LocalGov CMS Directory sees continued growth in the use of Drupal in local government. Drupal is now used by 100 councils, which repesents almost a quarter of all councils in the UK and Ireland. Of this number 59 councils are using LocalGov Drupal, an open-source Drupal distribution. The 6 most […]

The post Latest update to the LocalGov CMS Directory appeared first on Digital Health Check.

This is the 439th edition of Internet of Public Service Jobs - a weekly list of vacancies related to product management, agile and design in…you guessed it…‘public service’ curated by @jukesie

[01] Head of Design
Essex County Council
Chelmsford / Hybrid
£

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 capability is limited. With local government reorganisation, new unitary authorities will need to consolidate systems, ... Keep reading