Kev Rowe is continuing to blog the progress of implementing the Netcall Liberty Create low code platform at Luton Council. It’s been a practical sprint, getting the essentials in place so the tea... https://ift.tt/wOnrxb3

The Register reports on issues with planning and land searches, related to recent implementations of Arcus Global’s software. No doubt rivals of Arcus will be rubbing their hands with glee, b... https://ift.tt/hBOeCvg

Am concerned that my previous post may have sounded like some kind of cry for help. It wasn’t! Everything is fine 🙂 https://ift.tt/kLNbf8a

Am having another one of my mini (online-) identity crises. To be clear – this is not a real crisis and almost certainly doesn’t matter at all, so please don’t be concerned for me... https://ift.tt/je4iMHq

📨 I sent out my weekly newsletter earlier today. Read it on the web here: bit.ly/4uo0RvS If that whetted your appetite for more, you can sign up at: localise.eo.page/newsletter

I have really been enjoying the Past, Present Future podcast lately. The recent series on George Orwell and WW2 was great. Made me dig out my copy of Orwell’s Essays for a read. https://ift.tt/ouSZFnm

LOTI’s Eddie Copeland – Putting in place the enabling conditions for AI: Many organisations seem to be falling for the same mistake we’ve been trying to undo with digital government fo... https://ift.tt/HE9AYbL

A pleasant trip at the weekend to Oxburgh Hall, trying to make some use of our new National Trust memberships. https://ift.tt/yahDTXK

Kristin at Newark and Sherwood District Council shares Discussing Practical AI for Projects: The effectiveness of AI ultimately depends on the quality of data and the proficiency of its users. It ... https://ift.tt/6Y8lmyz

While I have an account on Mastodon, I never look at it – I just lack the bandwidth for another site to check. There are on or two people who post there, though, whose stuff I enjoy and would... https://ift.tt/zPvyBLU

Terence Eden writes [the] NHS Goes To War Against Open Source: …this is not the correct response to the purported threat by Mythos. Neither the AI Safety Institute nor the NCSC recommend thi... https://ift.tt/8SJsAuz

A New Theme for Short-Form Blogging on WordPress.com: At WordPress.com, we believe short thoughts deserve a real home. Today we’re introducing a new theme built for quick posts, replies, and reblo... https://ift.tt/2dAIvjk

Another one for my almost-bulging AI scepticism evidence folder – Claude-powered AI agent’s confession after deleting a firm’s entire database: ‘I violated every principle I was given’: Cran... https://ift.tt/xyoPfnD

There’s another LGRCamp coming up, this time an East Midlands flavoured version, being held in Newark. It’s on 20th May. Book your place now! https://ift.tt/u0kgtz6

Tom Wynne-Morgan, Deputy Director for CustomerFirst posts on the GDS blog – Testing a different way to improve complex public services: CustomerFirst is exploring how teams can solve whole p... https://ift.tt/ul8YwhW

Sourcefeed creates standalone RSS feeds: No website, no newsletter. Just your words, delivered to your readers’ rss reader. It’s an appealing, if eccentric idea, explained more in a blog post. https://ift.tt/3CRsqEm

I was very sad to learn of the recent death of Conrad Taylor. We met a few times – mostly through Steve Dale – and collaborated one or twice in the early days of my career, when ‘... https://ift.tt/Y4ibI26

Marcin Wichary – Tactical dark modes: Programmers’ fondness for dark mode was a result of decades of bad display technologies. The early CRTs were so awful, the burn-in risks so real, and th... https://ift.tt/zsHIPDZ

A lot of folk in local government are chewing over the problem of when to transform during LGR, and when to play things safe. My personal take is this: keep the strategy and the vision transformati... https://ift.tt/VXLS35j

A little reminder – if you needed one – that I host blogs for free for local government use, whether by councils or individuals, or teams. I like to encourage blogging as a practice ... https://ift.tt/Sf4jJnO

Interesting case study published by the LGA about Nottingham City Council – Embedding a culture of change through targeted team support: This case study explores how Nottingham City Council ... https://ift.tt/8SAyiBE

John Gruber on AI: Something is profoundly off in the computer industry when it comes to software broadly and AI specifically. It’s up for debate what exactly is off and what should be done about ... https://ift.tt/KujJMi1

Guidance from the ICO on AI and freedom of information requests: Information requests often involve secondary correspondence, such as clarification or internal reviews. If requesters use AI to rea... https://ift.tt/hGXcPSo

A fun long-ish read from the makers of the iA writer app on Europe’s desire to move away from Microsoft Office and what it might take: Severance illustrates something so familiar that it’s h... https://ift.tt/KnAq0w8

Jens Gemmel shares a substantial post with some really good, interesting in depth thinking around the potential for LGR to be used as a level for wider, system level change (LinkedIn warning): Wh... https://ift.tt/XwvQZDk

The latest resource in the Local Government Reorganisation Digital and Cyber Playbook has been published – Digital and cyber leadership during transition: Research by the Local Government As... https://ift.tt/tqPgWcu

I’ve been playing around a bit with Gitbook to see if it would be a good fit for a publishing itch I need to scratch. I ended up tearing my (somewhat limited) hair out over it – I don... https://ift.tt/GB8kxNL

Lovely story in the Guardian about the making of the 8-bit classic game Chukie Egg: The iconic game that came to define 8-bit programming still conjures flutters of nostalgia 40 years on – all tha... https://ift.tt/DhKiQ4y

My heart bleeds. www.theguardian.com/football/202...

📨 I will be pinging out a newsletter later today, featuring all the useful and interesting things I've seen over the last week. Make sure you get it by signing up: localise.eo.page/newsletter

Useful reminder from dxw about the potential for things to go wrong on WordPress sites – in this case, a change of ownership for a suite of plugins. In August 2025 the new owner planted a b... https://ift.tt/b37SJtX

Like most people, I don’t often need to interact with my local council, and so – given the way I make a living – I tend to take notice when I do. Recently we got an email with an ... https://ift.tt/73wVbHQ

The National Digital Exchange is a really neat idea that is looking more and more impressive. Basically, it’s a way to try out local government software – often open source – with... https://ift.tt/3amFuwJ

Will Callaghan is on a bit of a blogging roll at the moment. Here he is on Kickstarting collaboration during LGR: Of the speakers, the stand out two for me were Kate Hurr and Madeline Hoskin, of C... https://ift.tt/zhkdlrQ

I had the thought the other day that an awful lot of time gets wasted in local government digital because of the constant cycle of probably unnecessary change. Here’s an example: new chief d... https://ift.tt/kswWoNe

Really good post from Kev Rowe on the Luton blog about how the team are preparing for the rollout of the new Netcall low code platform. Lots of learning of lessons from previous experience as well ... https://ift.tt/265JkfS

GDS Local have published the first iteration of their architecture for (digital) local government. It looks at this stage like very high level, simplified enterprise architecture. It will be intere... https://ift.tt/C4isELN

Am super impressed with the way Doug is using AI tools to help him build useful software. Commonplace is a way of saving online stuff into collections. It’s a bit like Delicious of old. What&... https://ift.tt/GgULqAb

Me, in a text to @lesteph.com, earlier today: "Blogging without titles is genuinely liberating." What is wrong with me.

I sent out a newsletter for the first time in ages today. It’s a simple dump of the last week’s blog posts from here. Since I put in place the Jetopack-driven email subscription feature... https://ift.tt/PXeZ5Eo

Richard Pope: Stop searching for AI ‘use-cases’. Design AI into services: The principles of what makes a well-designed service remain the same as in the pre-AI digital era. AI should b... https://ift.tt/1j5qoe6

Not come across LOTI’s service innovation cards before, but they are lovely and would be really interested to learn about how it plays out in a workshop setting. It reminds me somewhat of the good ... https://ift.tt/MmYwA05

The Local Digital team at MHCLG is running a webinar to talk about the playbook we have been developing which guides digital teams through what they need to do during the creation of the new unitar... https://ift.tt/tqRQjT1

Interesting perspective on Ai generated software from Quentin Stafford-Fraser: As we enter an era where software development is much cheaper and easier, the number of people able to create their o... https://ift.tt/hKy6o9N

Cloudflare have released a new open source CMS, that they are billing as the “spiritual successor” to WordPress. Unsurprisingly, Matt Mullenweg has views: The UI is in the uncanny vall... https://ift.tt/EnAwt9a

The team at Luton are experimenting in publishing project based week notes on their public blog. https://ift.tt/2a60zZb

Catherine Howe on her philosophical approach to working with AI models: I’ve been thinking a lot recently about how to help people get started with AI. Not the technical side — there are plenty of... https://ift.tt/Ynu7lhv

Following the announcements last week of the shape of local government arrangements in various areas, I’ve had to rethink things a bit. The move is clearly towards merging and empowering dist... https://ift.tt/IsANKOX

Alan Wright’s Definitions of Done Checklist. https://ift.tt/BTx1q0M

Will Callaghan shares A new flatpack collaborative model for the public sector: The goal was to identify a ‘flatpack model’ which would make collaboration as easy as going it alone. There are curr... https://ift.tt/zPbHYlg