Really nice post from a private sector startup CEO helped out by funding from the Geovation Accelerator Programme. Via the HMLR blog. hmlandregistry.blog.gov.uk/2026/04/28/h...

Very pleased to both know this is happening and for GDS to be blogging about it. Excellent news. Also I have cake jealousy. That is all. 🎂 gds.blog.gov.uk/2026/04/28/g...

@derekalton.bsky.social 's substack is really good - you should subscribe to it. substack.com/@civicpunks

Heading back to London after a long day training NHS design folks on how to prototype in code using prototype-kit.service-manual.nhs.uk Totally worth it though to see the joy as people experience their Hello World moment.

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...

Quite a lot of good stuff in the latest Government Digital and Data Bulletin. mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ui...

Not sure why this isn't on Civil Service Learning but it still beats paying a fortune to an external provider. Does make me wonder what ever happened to the cross-gov DDaT BA community I spent such a long time working on setting up back in the day... cddo.blog.gov.uk/2026/04/24/a...

Worth saying twice as a reminder to myself!

It's good that PSD is publishing this in the open but its so high level to be basically meaningless. Would we be useful would be to highlight any significant differences from the last version of their strategy. pds.blog.parliament.uk/2026/04/22/a...

I'm sure sustainability as a service assessment point is a good idea but how is any department *allowed* to have its own version of the Service Standard? If that's the case they can start removing (or changing) points as easily as adding new ones. defradigital.blog.gov.uk/2026/04/21/m...

My GOV.UK feed popped an update for this today. First I'd ever heard of it. Even a casual glance shows it's something that's almost certainly a nice set of documents someone spent a lot of time creating - which are largely ignored. Any evidence that usage is checked? www.gov.uk/government/p...

Gosh, lots of stuff out today! Great to see MHCLG working on further data standards to improve the planning process. mhclgdigital.blog.gov.uk/2026/04/22/d...

‘Implementing change’ was the title of a 15-minute input I gave this morning at the @ec.europa.eu’s Directorate-General for Digital Services in Brussels. At the invitation of DIGIT’s iLab, I spoke about the support system for #ServiceStandard and #Digitalcheck. 🎤 Slides: github.com/digitalservi...

I agree with this. Then again, I also think that different government departments should be allowed to have their own design systems and should be forced to work together on a common one.

Our next event! 🚨 6PM, WED 29th April 🚨 At the MoJ or online. Lisa Trickey and Rebekah Wilson, LGA : LG2040: The State of Things to Come ​Jonathan Slater (ex DfE Perm Sec), Visiting Professor at King’s College London and QMUL luma.com/7nu2j853 Please share! Thanks 🙏

This is great - especially if it leads to central gov producing more more web apps for local gov that can challenge the current cartels OR local gov groups developing apps for each other. Can someone please explain where "NDX" comes from though? technology.blog.gov.uk/2026/04/17/w...

As a public servant, I write weekly notes to let people see what I do. In week 207, I discussed #AI to speed up service delivery. I also helped plan activities for Global #Accessibility Awareness Day in May. Today, on Sunday, I travel to Brussels for the PolyFutures event next week.

The answer is always show the thing. Build a screen, let it be wrong, show it and discuss it, build it again

At least it's in the Tech section of The Guardian but it's not headline news despite the huge numbers of people that say they're in favour of an under-16 social media ban. Even when doing what people want the Labour comms team really struggle to get traction. www.gov.uk/government/n...

Compare Mandani's video below to what the UK government is putting out. In 2026 it's pathetically embarrassing that we don't have ministers and comms people who understand short-form video. They're still communicating like it's the 1970s. www.youtube.com/watch?v=wP0f...

More good stuff from MHCLG Making Planning Digital. mhclgdigital.blog.gov.uk/2026/04/15/e...

Preach! One might think that Digital ID / One Login might help with this but I've heard nothing about it being a stepping stone to data normalisation across government.

The whole purpose of PaaS was to be a common intermediary layer so that swapping from one cloud host to another should have been quick, easy and seamless. Now everything is tied deeply into AWS and moving would be a nightmare.

We did have GOV.UK PaaS until it got decommissioned right before digital sovereignty became Actually Quite Important

This is great - but it would be even better if Notify wasn't one of only *three* (Notify, Pay and One Login) that the UK government has managed to implement in the last decade.

More good stuff from DfE. dfedigital.blog.gov.uk/2026/04/13/g...

OMG - this is *amazing*. Can you imagine if government departments themselves were half this automatically open?

More great planning tech in the open from MHCLG. mhclgdigital.blog.gov.uk/2026/04/13/t...

Sorting out old civic tech bookmarks. Man, do you remember when we used to do things like this? www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...

I was today days old when I discovered that the Met are still using Direct Gov URLs. Just shameful.

Far far fewer Service Standard reports are published than reviews are done (and not nearly enough are done) so even getting these is good. Building yet another service-specific automated chat agent though. My eyes may roll out of my head. www.gov.uk/service-stan...

MHCLG still doing the good work. mhclgdigital.blog.gov.uk/2026/04/09/f...

Not only are these announcements exactly the things that should make people vote Labour but taking up the time of the Chancellor to explain this on video is excellent. 8 days ago - 346 views. What the hell is the Number 10 Comms team even doing? www.youtube.com/watch?v=91Ft...

🔔 #GovDesign job klaxon Berlin’s City Cleaning Services is looking for a digital customer experience specialist to oversee the digital customer journey. Innovative @bsr-de.bsky.social is running remarkable things like the NochMall, a second-hand mall. ⬇️ verwaltungsgestaltung.de#positionen

Somewhat ironic, but perhaps telling, that one of the best teams is government for working in the open do something targetted to only a very small number of people. enablingdigitalidentity.blog.gov.uk/2026/04/08/h...

Strongly agree with @dxw.com . www.mysociety.org/2026/04/08/t...

Once again, good stuff but feels such small ambition as limited to GDS only. insidegovuk.blog.gov.uk/2026/04/07/w...

Absolute mic drop moment.

These should be the best two jobs in government. Unfortunately, given how things are at the moment, I suspect they're deeply thankless roles. I fully expect them to be filled by ex-execs from the big system integrators. www.civilserviceworld.com/news/article...

Sounds like a lot of strategy and responsibility for targets but precious little about. Days of mentioning Government as a Platform long gone. Doing this in the new era of dropped spend controls will be all but impossible.

Good for GDS for having a mailing list of webinars anyone can subscribe to. Non-civil-servants can't actually attend most of them though. Such a waste of opportunity to share the good work that is happening.

Nice post from Harriet at DXW. www.dxw.com/2026/04/advi...

This is great, but... Shame it has to be about "big names" and not the specific work done by the students. technology.blog.gov.uk/2026/03/31/o...

This is both insightful and important. "testing our services through AI systems themselves" is going to become very important. Having "AI prompt unit tests" should be a standard part of every government digital service and content area. designnotes.blog.gov.uk/2026/03/31/w...

"a [GDS] deputy director [...] acknowledged that the GDS senior leadership has failed to work openly." "If top leadership doesn’t practise it, the organisation cannot follow their example."

Good stuff from outside government. digitalblog.coop.co.uk/2026/03/27/s...

This looks really good but it's been tried before many times. I'd like to know what's different. Local gov is mostly tied into long term contracts in vertical silos by area (e.g. housing or social care). Breaking that is extremely hard. technology.blog.gov.uk/2026/03/26/e...

Once again I'm baffled by this. Surely the court transcriptions these days must be in a digital format so the only cost would be office-time to confirm the identity of the requester and send them over.

Not amazing but a lot better than the previous ones. How many views? 614 Yep, totally worth the minister's time. If you're not going to promote it why are you doing it? youtu.be/JbEaPnGodUM?...

Finally - I'm not even sure honours are in any way a good thing, but good to know there's a nice online form for them now I guess? www.gov.uk/government/p...