Fun day over in Dublin 🇮🇪 and a privilege to be a keynote speaker for the Better by Design conference - some great work happening here at the moment in public service design betterbydesign.ie

Farewell David 😔

This is the kind of thing we don't hear about when we're told what the public (supposedly) thinks and wants. Fascism depends on keeping people - all people - in a state of fear, and making them feel isolated and helpless. In reality, there are always good people helping each other.

Really enjoyed this long read. Modern life in forms put into clear focus 👏

Meta legal action forces Facebook whistleblower to sit in silence at Hay festival www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

What an awful season it’s been as a Tottenham supporter - just relief at the very end and today was the most stressful watch ever. But, we are staying up! #COYS

Saturday walking. Causey Pike. I needed that ☀️ #breathe #UKLakeDistrict

“ChatGPT, the most heavily used AI service, gave wrong information in 46% of its answers, including making up an expenses scandal, giving inaccurate replies on voter eligibility rules and getting the date of the election wrong by two months.” #AI www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Really enjoying the recent posts Leisa Reichelt has been writing. There's lots of great provocations in this piece, especially if you're a designer or researcher working in the public sector... leisareichelt.substack.com/p/re-shaping...

Very much the Web at the end of the world. Just shuddering at the inference costs.

terrible. 20 years ago, the internet was full of hobbyist blogs and forums. over time, these have been replaced by paywalled substacks and private discord channels, each a walled garden. google's decision to prioritize AI just makes it less likely people will create free, public info

More delays are bound to follow. My only thought on the HS2 mess is that Euston station is never realistically going to get any better for the majority of my working lifetime (I’m only 47 now)

Despite a cancelled train home, it’s been great to spend a day in our Manchester office today. A good mix of in person conversations alongside the usual virtual work. Back on Thursday

This week's theme is 'People of London' - a celebration of ALL the people who make and have made London the beautiful city it is. ------ 'The London Underground' (from 'This Is London', 1959) by Miroslav Šašek

New blog post: GDS weighs in on the NHS's decision to retreat from Open Source https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2026/05/gds-weighs-in-on-the-nhss-decision-to-retreat-from-open-source/ Within the UK's Civil Service you occasionally hear the expression "being invited to a meeting without biscuits". It …

Something brewing in my mind for a while, stitching it together from scraps and pieces into hopefully mainly coherence: Service design is not user experience design at greater scale I am sure there are plenty of other pieces like this out there (I hope so). www.officeofwilson.com/service-desi...

Happy Monday - here’s a favourite view from Sunday afternoon’s long walk round the Coledale horseshoe #uklakedistrict #wainwrights #breathe

Happy 75th anniversary to us! Today marks the day we were designated as a National Park in 1951, before we were later founded on 13 August that same year. Over the coming months, we will be sharing stories and celebrations from the Lake District National Park and the people who live and work here.

Great day in Manchester attending Nexer’s Camp Digital conference - really enjoyed the talks and good to catch up with so many friends #CampDigital

Early start today. London calling #trains

Day off work yesterday. Making the most of the good(ish) weather before the bank holiday weekend #breathe #uklakedistrict #wainwrights

This is very good on how Civil Service transformation is vital and also impossible. Well worth reading. And yes, GDS is mentioned though not by name ;) (On the three examples mentioned I'm dubious about the first, the second *was* delivered by the department and the third is deliberate HO policy)

This was also a problem for GOV.‌UK’s site search. Departments don’t always manage their content well, preferring to create new pages instead of changing and updating existing pages.

I’m going to Camp Digital this year - it’s been a few years since I last attended so really looking forward to it!

Brilliant bit of reporting on potholes in Oxfordshire (the analysis is spot on for most shire counties)

An absolutely essential thread from Mark, who very much knows what he is talking about

Happy Saturday ☀️ #uklakedistrict #breathe

Brilliant analysis of what went wrong with the expensive redesign of Australia's version of the met office app. leisareichelt.substack.com/p/what-went-...

The Saturday I needed. Nice out there again today #breathe #UKLakeDistrict

More pondering on AI as I wrangle with what it means for public servants... Here's where I've got to so far: There is a useful path to take between hype and doom. It's time to keep experimenting and learning as nobody knows what the future will bring. jasonkitcat.com/2026/03/02/s...

Hello March 🌼

My first proper walk of 2026. Spring is on its way #breathe #UKLakeDistrict

One of those big work weeks - it's been really good and some fantastic work to be involved in, but it's been really hard on many levels while balancing all the things. My mantra these days is simply to do the next day well #keepgoing

Back to family priorities tonight… I’ve learned that any overseas school trip involving teenagers means a departure time/drop off of somewhere between 1am - 3am / it’s the rules - and it’s always on a school (work) night. I’ll be powered by strong coffee tomorrow ☕️

I’ve been leading Design Sprint work in Manchester with DBT and GDS over the past few days. It’s been great seeing this type of x-gov collaboration happening again. In person ideation moving into prototyping and user research over the next few weeks …hope to share more of this work soon #govdesign

I’d love to see the research/context of when train conductors first became Revenue Enforcement Protectors (or similar titles). Such an good analogy of when a service isn’t primarily about customer experience anymore #trains

Due to hearing loss, I’ve started wearing headphones less while on trains. Just letting my ears rest for a while, especially at the start of the day. What I’ve noticed is just how LOUD everyone else’s headphones are!

The AI singularity is agents endlessly filing speculative claims against each other with little human interaction. Bureaucracy will be removed as a barrier to entry. The future is burning vast amounts of power to create loads of spam no one will ever read.

‘Very dangerous’: a Mind mental health expert on Google’s AI Overviews

We've had the ability to automate things for years. The ability to understand how jobs actually work, not automate things that shouldn't be, and not automate things badly still seems beyond us, and AI isn't fixing that I'm afraid.

Everyone in the UK right now

Euston Station is a brilliant example that you can’t improve something substantially by constantly tinkering at the edges …today the ‘new’ displays were being taken down. They weren’t any improvement, along with the constant small changes to remove/move retail spaces that keep happening

There’s an unusual blue colour in the sky this morning. Walked the dog without needing a hat, gloves, or waterproofs for the first time this year. Roll on Spring ⛅️ #UKLakeDistrict

I'm going to share a very good story about the internet. I won't tell it well because I apparently have the flu, but I think we all need a good story about the internet. It starts in 2021, when I took a sabbatical and got a little workspace to write a design book.

It’s like the way email was supposed to make white collar jobs more efficient, but now every white collar job is just writing emails and no-one now remembers what the original job was that the emails were supposed to make more efficient

I’ve finally had enough and blogged about the new Civil Service Pensions website @rachelcoldicutt.bsky.social @janethughes.bsky.social @zsk.bsky.social @hetanshah.bsky.social bearoneill.com/2026/01/29/bad…

Interesting. And very good. Given the evolving digital landscape, it's more important than ever to move beyond the concept of "pages" and start structurally modelling *things* in your operating domain.

Good reminder that AI companies have been playing whack-a-mole against AI generated misinformation and prejudicial bias for a decade

At this point, I'd be happy with someone just spraying a white circle around them so I can avoid hitting them

And we're back.. Day 1 of work in 2026 complete. All the things at once to remind myself why I don't normally do 2 day compressed weeks!