What have drawings of peas got to do with prototyping digital services? www.platformland.xyz/ways-of-d…

This is probably the strongest piece of advice I've seen for a while, and feels very pointed... "Departments should treat privacy as an exception control for specific, credible routes to harm, and not as a compensating control for inadequate capability."

Why it’s important to thinking of public sector super apps from the viewpoint of ‘the system’, not just ‘the citizen’ https://www.platformland.xyz/ways-of-doing/public-sector-super-apps-are-system-facing-products-not-just-citizen-facing-ones/

Lobster pots, complexity and starting small in the right way Or the case against use-cases https://www.platformland.xyz/ways-of-doing/lobster-pots-complexity-and-starting-small-in-the-right-way/

I can't tell isn't was just a late 80s early 90s blip (or age) but it seemed when I was younger questions of 'confidence' played out in the House of Commons, at least initially. Now they play out passively within internal party systems and are worse for it? All a bit 'use your words'

As Owen says DSIT senior leaders/politicians should be furious at the wasted money and wasted opportunity for economic growth / better services underlying this mess

In 2018 (ish) at Harvard Kennedy School I saw a talk about cyber (my poor filing system means I can’t find the notes) that included the proposition: how you think about cyber depends if you believe vulnerabilities in software are commo... https://richardpope.org/2026/05/06/in-ish-at-harvard-kennedy/

If ally thought I had found a decent combined read it later and rss combo today in form of www.libspace.io, only to see a message appear the same day saying it's being shut down.

Given generative AI is all about predicting next words, when do I get a better spell check!? (I regularly have to Google words because my dyslexia induced misspellings are so bad my computer just shrugs).

Weeknotes for last week celebrate a blog post being dropped and share a discussion we had about ‘reuse’ at an away day. frankieroberto.github.io/nhsnotes/pos...

Keep coming back to this video in the context of AI-based public services: [www.youtube.com/watch If mentalizing / epistemic trust is the key to learning some things, is it ever OK for machines to fake it, or should machines only be in a supporting role to human relationships.

Struggling with work-life balance at the moment. April nearly done and only managed 3 days paid work despite not having stopped for breath.

New, from me: Take the Palantir manifesto seriously, if not literally. It reveals that our tech philosopher kings want public money, but without public accountability. This creates a dilemma for governments unaligned with its techno-fascist vision. 🧵 donmoynihan.substack.com/p/palantir-w...

Mini manifesto. Mini budget. Big things pretending to be small.

The Palintir mini manifesto at least makes it clear that if you buy their software you are buying it to a transnational political, military and economic project. The problem is public procurement officers are not exactly best placed to make that sort of decision. Software is politics!

This is beginning to feel like an inevitability: Davey says war bonds would help to speed up UK defence spending

Stop searching for AI ‘use-cases’. Design AI into services… https://www.rpp.works/ways-of-doing/stop-searching-for-ai-use-cases-design-ai-into-services/

"How can we get rid of you?" The immense significance of the defeat of Orbán's illiberal political machine and methodology By me at the Empty City substack emptycity.substack.com/p/how-can-we...

Donald Trump has critcised Keir Starmer as another Neville Chamberlain. But…who does Trump think he is in that scenario? inews.co.uk/opinion/trum...

At the British Academy for a day long policy lab Noted on the way in: the dedicated Champaign cork recycling box

Some noodling on positioning AI in services https://www.rpp.works/ways-of-doing/positioning-ai/

"Ministers have likely already left it too late to shake Palantir loose from government entirely. They have invited the viper into their nest, and they’re even paying it to be there. "The choice now is whether to ignore the problem entirely, and just play nice, or whether to face reality."

Not even the Nazis expressly announced they were committing war crimes. Indeed, at Nuremberg war crimes were denied. But here, openly, the US Secretary for Defense is explicitly admitting to committing war crimes.

More of this ministers showing prototypes please https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c62d1ql5w0vo

In the search for calm things to play while kids are having breakfast, I stumbled across David Bowie doing Peter and the Wolf: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Bowie_Narrates_Prokofiev%27s_Peter_and_the_Wolf It’s mostly very Jackanory,... https://richardpope.org/2026/03/10/in-the-search-for-calm/

6.27% of appointments (PSCs and LLP members) verified between 2025-11-18 and 2025-12-31. Assuming linear growth, they’ll hit ~53% by 2026-11-18, which is when they want 100% of appointments verified.

I have literally no idea if I have verified my identity with Companies House or how to check. I thought I had done it early on, but it matched on GOV.UK One Login email address, which was different. Then I thought I did last month. Still getting emails saying it's not been done.

The House of Commons Library on the concept on impeachment* "Impeachment is considered obsolete, as it has been superseded by other forms of accountability, and the rules underpinning the procedure have not been adapted to modern s... https://richardpope.org/2026/03/04/the-house-of-commons-library/

Noting that NHS England currently has job ads out for a CDIO and CDAO (this is in addition to the Department of Health and Social Care CDO): findajob.dwp.gov.uk/details/1794... findajob.dwp.gov.uk/details/1794... There's a month to apply.

Help National Conversations fill the bookshelves of newly elected members of the Senedd and Scottish Parliament with books on digital government (including Platformland!): www.linkedin.com/posts/tra…

Getting a grip - designing social objects for AI and humans, and the end of the end-to-end journey https://www.rpp.works/ways-of-doing/getting-a-grip/

Really welcome from Manish Srivastava on how to do decisions/appeals in an unbundled state in the age of AI https://digitalstatecraft.substack.com/p/the-minimum-digital-kernel-of-an "smallest set of shared digital capabilities needed for an unbundled state to behave like a rule-of-law machine"

This is really welcome from Manish Srivastava on how to do verifiable decisions/appeals in an unbundled state in the age of AI: https://digitalstatecraft.substack.com/p/the-minimum-digital-kernel-of-an "It is the smallest set of sh... https://richardpope.org/2026/03/02/this-is-really-welcome-from/

Stereolab on The Word: youtu.be/Ttq4RLTsz… This track still does odd things to my brain, too many contradictions.

Suggest Congress closes the door in the President's face so as to remind him not to seek to arrest politically opposed members of Congress. It's what we do, over here, at our equivalent annual address to the legislature.

Good day for you if you want to read brilliant things about how transformation and the NHS as I think you'll agree @jamestplunkett.bsky.social has done a superb job in pulling together this reflection to complement Richard earlier today.

In September, I was asked to give some thoughts about the NHS 10-year plan based on some of the principles in Platformland. Here are the slides and speaker notes: www.rpp.works/ways-of-d…

While encouraging that the UK is thinking about sovereign payment systems, this all sounds a bit waterfall-ey "The Bank, meanwhile, will develop infrastructure blueprints that will be handed over to the group next year" www.theguardian.com/business/…

BBC's Arabic radio service in Lebanon closed after 85 years as part of a £28.5m savings drive. 'Just months later, in October 2023, the Russian state-owned Sputnik news agency took over the frequency. Its news bulletin opened with “This is Moscow”, replacing the previous “This is London” intro.' 🙄

Managed to make it around River Thames Running’s Hampton Court Half Marathon, despite dodgy ankle and 3 degree starting temperature. It’s a lovely course even in the rain: riverthamesrunning.co.uk/hampton-c…

This, by Ré Dubhthaigh of Dublin City Council, is a wonderfully clear description of why data about place is probably not what you have in your head (it’s just addresses, right?), and why sense making from messy data over time is not an ... https://richardpope.org/2026/02/10/this-by-r-dubhthaigh-of/

The work on making National Conversations about digital happen in the May elections is starting to heat up. Working on prelection hustings on Digital Society and the Private Sector and Economy as well as a post-election event on the State and Public Sector nationalconversations.org

It’s the last chance to book our FREE webinar looking at how we can use AI to improve public services. With @emercoleman.bsky.social @richardpope.org @elenasimperl.bsky.social & Andy Dudfield from Full Fact buff.ly/eIYzuif

📌 ICYMI — Jeffrey Epstein ‘Co-Owned’ Venture Fund with Palantir Founder as it Entered UK Government The Russian connected convicted sex trafficker co-owned a fund… https://bylinetimes.com/2026/02/04/jeffrey-epstein-and-peter-thiel-co-owned-venture-fund-as-thiels-palantir-entered-uk-government/

Useful phrase from this Chatham House blog post about sovereignty (defence, digital and political) "Not all dependencies are strategically significant. The challenge lies in distinguishing tolerable interdependence from vulnerabilities"

So much work is doomed from the start because of the assumption you can successfully chop up it up into discrete parts in advance, then try and create coherence through governance retrospectively. ‘Workstreams’. ‘Pillars’, all that nonsense, is, more often than not, based on a flawed assumption.

Scaling innovations in public health systems: guidance and toolkit - WHO "Scaling health innovations is a nonlinear, iterative set of interconnected processes. Governments can enable scaling through three different processe... https://richardpope.org/2026/02/04/scaling-innovations-in-public-health/

One of the reasons why there are the horrific transporter accidents in Star Trek is because you know deep down part of the transporter software has regexes in it.

"The gov shouldn't be on X". Sure, but "the government should regulate monetisation/blue tick programmes" would be more meaningful.