Back in February 2025, I set aside some time in my diary to do something simple: talk to strangers, once a week. The idea was borrowed from the NHS' Randomised Coffee Trial and similar initiatives, though in my version the selection of participants was anything but random. I wanted to discuss technology, data, and the internet as they relate to the design and delivery of public services, though we could talk about anything, provided:it isn’t: A product or service you’d like to sell me A political party or politician Working for me, or me working for you I expected a handful of takers in the first few weeks. A year and a new role later, it's still going. The topics have been as varied as I’d hoped. Artificial intelligence came up often, from the ethics of agentic AI to specific tools and the case for small language models. Other conversations went deep on Universal Property Reference Numbers, development capacity in local government, and the broader challenges of digit...
Local Government, Digital.