LG/WWW

As a side-project I've been prototyping something to bring GDS' Local Government Architecture Model to life. I wanted to create a prototype to map and show the connections between items in the layers in the technology stack used by councils to deliver the hundreds of services they offer. The two ultimate aims are to create something that: service designers, technical architects, business architects can use as part of their profession. something that shows the connections between technical, business and data architecture. For now it's just about being able to visualise the layers and the connections between them, but not all the connections are mapped, so whilst it looks pretty, it's probably not that useful as it is, which is where you come in. You can take look here , and if you'd like to get involved and edit the data you can request access here .

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...

Advancements in technology open up new avenues of opportunity, allowing many to achieve what was once the preserve of a specialised few. This should however come with a caveat: just because technology enables you to do something, doesn't mean you should. Before the modern Content Management System (CMS), publishing to the web was a technical endeavour.  Many early websites were built with hand-crafted HTML, and while applications such as MS Frontpage and Dreamweaver, and database-driven platforms that with PHP and Classic ASP front ends later reduced the need to code every single page, you still required a significant degree of technical knowledge to publish. The advent of CMS, and later Enterprise CMS, opened up content creation, allowing anyone with basic IT skills to edit and add content, and over the following years we saw the consequence: a proliferation of truly awful websites. In some cases, these were vast digital estates containing tens of thousands of pages, authored by h...

It’s often been fun, occasionally frustrating, always fulfilling, but this is my final week employed in local government. There are few types of organisation that deliver a similar volume and variety of functions as local government  Beyond emptying bins and fixing potholes we see so often in the media, there’s social care (often portrayed as just a NHS function), housing, roads, public transport, education, planning, leisure (including sports centres), culture (including libraries), and very much more. Working part of a digital team in a council it's likely you’ll engage with every department across the organisation during the course of a year, offering real variety whatever role you’re in. The next few years will see a huge change across local government, not only in the 21 English counties invited to go through reorganisation (LGR), but through devolution, and everywhere as a result the continued stretch on public finances and rising public expectations driven by the acceleratin...

Last month I gave evidence to the Science, Innovation, and Technology Committee in Parliament. I haven’t written much about it because you can watch it yourself here. I thank the committee for inviting me to speak, and its members for their insightful questions on how technology has improved service delivery. Since my appearance I’ve been asked a few times what I think was the most thought provoking question or comment the committee made, and it’s perhaps not the one you think it might be, so I’m writing about it here. That comment was from...

It's likely there are hundreds of solutions that utilise generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) already in use across the public sector. Where I work we're already using AI for a variety of tasks, from drafting reports using i.AI's pilot of Minute , or writing job applications which we developed ourselves . Under the surface of these solutions you'll find many have at least one thing in common; They are essentially user interfaces for large language models (LLMs) owned by OpenAI, Amazon, Google, or Meta. We've seen a lot about scaling up the use of AI in the public sector recently, and this letter from the Department of Science, Innovation, and Technology states that the Government calculated their efficiency targets using the assumption that 100% of routine tasks could be automated. Whether that's achievable is a question for another time, but even if half of that target was reached, that's 50% of UK public sector tasks essentially outsourced to US tec...

Service patterns are reusable designs for common problems that help create consistent functions and services.  I've been talking about service patterns and design with people from around the public sector recently, partly because this could be key to a wholesale reshaping of the public sector. Service design goes beyond the use of digital, but given almost every public service now makes some use of technology now, service design and digital transformation are intrinsically linked. I became aware of the need for common service patterns at an event organised by the Department for Communities and Local Government a few years ago. The workshop was part of the now defunct GOV.Verify programme, and brought together licencing and digital teams from councils across the country. The idea was to see if Verify could be used as part of a common service to apply for a taxi licence, but as the day went on it became apparent that despite similar roles all delivering services to same legislation,...

I'm putting aside half an hour of my own time to talk to you What I'd like to talk about Primarily anything around technology, data, and the internet, which relates to the design and delivery of public services. That could be anything from a specific development to a global trend. Secondly, politics, or rather how politics and policies might affect local and regional government. And finally, Arsenal Football Club, although my interest in this will vary depending on how well we're doing in the WSL and Premier League. What I don't want to talk about A product or service you'd like me to buy. I might be interested, just not through this route. Specific political parties or politicians. I have views, but I won't be expressing them here. Recruitment. I'm possibly interested in employing you or being employed by you, just not through this route. Who would I like to talk to? Anyone worldwide who wants to discuss the topics I'm interested in. We may never met or...

  A new government allows for reflection and change unlike any other time. It provides the opportunity for constructive criticism of the past, and to embrace the opportunities of the future, unburdened by the legacy of years in power. It happened in 2011, and it’s happening in 2025. This week saw the release of the State of Digital Government and the Blueprint for Modern Digital Government , a kind of call and response around the landscape of digital public services and how the Government might improve them. I had worried that given both reports were completed in what was a reasonably short space of time that they might not be as rigorous or as inclusive as they could be. I needn't have.  The State of Digital Government is one of the most honest reports into the UK public sector digital I've read in a while. It is critical whilst not being judgemental, and realistic about the opportunities and challenges for true transformation of public services.. In some respects it feels l...

I'm writing this piece after reading Hetan Shah 's excellent article in The New Statesman, AI will not magically solve our public services  and contributing to a short  discussion thread on Bluesky , which by the way is one of the many reasons why Bluesky feels like Twitter did 10+ years ago, which is a good thing. I should preface this by saying first I don't have a view on Tony Blair, and we're already doing at lot with AI where I work, from predicting where potholes will appear , to using a translation service developed by Swindon Borough Council  which is saving tens of thousands of pounds a year, to drafting things like job advertisements , which I use as evidence that I'm certainly not against the use of AI in the public sector. Hetan's piece neatly summarises the hype. It also describes from where that hype might be emanating, the lofty expectations and risks of using AI in the public sector, and what the public sector should be using AI for right now. Am...

2024's LocalGovCamp was held on 25 and 26 September at STEAMHouse in Birmingham. Below are some personal notes and refilections on the event.  25 September 2024 - Hack Day The hack was back. Whilst there had been a hack day in previous years, most notably the local democracy hack in Leeds in 2015, it had taken a break for a few years until 2024.  The 2015 event saw the participants leave the venue and roam the streets conducting guerrilla research on real people for an hour in the afternoon, and as an organiser part of me feared no one would return; thankfully they did. This year, somewhat predictably we covered the topic of artificial intelligence (AI), and attendees were a mixture of local government officers and students at Birmingham City University, whom we managed to keep in the building for the duration of both sessions. In the morning I ran a session on creating topic based assistants, something we've been doing at West Berkshire Council which you'll see more about...

Last week I was lucky enough to share a stage with Daljit Rehal, Dinuka Wijesinghe, Dr. Laura Gilbert, and Yatin Mahandru at  Public Service Data Live to talk about deploying artificial intelligence (AI) in government. As one of only three speakers throughout the day working in local government it was great to be able to fly the flag for councils across the country and some of the amazing work that's happening within them. I made the point that when compared to central government departments, councils offer a far wider range of services but at a smaller scale, which means they're perfect to act as incubators for innovation, in this case around the use of AI. Like many I'm a firm believer that when it comes to technology, the best change is often incremental, which got me thinking about the next small step we could take to join up and accelerate the testing and deployment of AI in local government, particularly generative AI. If you're not aware of the distinction betwe...

Back in January 2024 I asked, does the Service Standard work for local government. The answer appears to be no. A combination of co-organising  a workshop , co-creating  a survey  (both with the Local Government Association (LGA)), reviewing the  qualitative research of others , running un-conference session, and having conversations with local government colleagues, civil servants, and suppliers over the last six months has led me to this conclusion. In that time I've not found a single council that fully uses the Service Standard. My key findings as to the reasons behind this are: Lack of resource: Most councils don't have, and some will never have the multi-disciplinary teams needed to implement the Standard on their own. It's just not economically viable to employ a Service Owner or Product Manager, User Researcher, Lead designer, Technical Architect or Lead Developer, and a Performance Analyst in some councils, particularly smaller districts where digital teams...

To say the ”do we need a local GDS debate” is a slow burner would be an understatement, but recently it’s ignited again, just as it did before the 2015 General Election. I’ve been compiling people’s thoughts on it for the past 13 years , and looking back through them, what’s striking is that the debate hasn’t moved on a great deal in a decade. In fact some of the same issues Carl Haggerty talked about in 2012 are still being discussed today. So let’s think about what’s actually being asked. The majority of digital services offered by councils are procured from and provided by the private sector. Whether you’re looking for a planning application, reporting a pothole, searching for a social care provider, or applying for a school place, you’re probably doing so through something built and supported by the private sector. Even the growing number of councils building services themselves using low-code are doing so through a proprietary platform supported by the private sector.   Whils...

Content designers, we need to talk, and you might not like what I have to say. Just over ten years ago, I wrote a piece on  how to reduce visits to your website . Even then the concept wasn't new, but with the emergence of large language models over the past year, it's become even more relevant today. Over the past decade years, you probably found an increasing number of people obtained information about your organisation online via a third party. First through the growth of social media, and then personal assistants, mainly on smartphones and speakers. As a result we've had to think about how content will be delivered through different media and therefore design it differently. For example, here's Richard Copley asking Google Assistant about school term dates in West Berkshire in 2017. It works really well Phil. This is entirely about content rather than code, is that right? pic.twitter.com/AGQF4aR21S — Richard Copley (@Copley_Rich) December 31, 2017 In the next few y...

A few years ago along with many others I had a small part in helping draft the Service Standard , a replacement for both the Digital Service Standard and Local Government Digital Standard . Four years on, whilst the Service Standard has been adopted by some digital teams within local government, my far from extensive research failed to find one council where it has been full adopted across their entire organisation, although some elements have been in some larger councils. So why is that?  Perhaps it's because the Service Standard describes how services can be built by the very few public sector organisations where large fully multidisciplinary teams of user researchers, services designers, content designers, UX spcalists, developers, and so on exist? In reality, for local authorities such as smaller districts which make up the majority of councils in terms of numbers, that kind of team will always be unobtainable. The second factor is that no matter what size the council, there i...

Kenny Loggins Dave Briggs recently wrote this excellent article asking should you develop a single customer account . What he’s actually asking following on from an article written by Carrie Bishop is should you develop a single customer facing website, portal, app, or whatever term you want to use to describe it, and as he says, the answer is no. Should you develop a single customer account though? The answer to that in my view is, yes. Different departments particularly in larger councils can work as independent business units, resulting in a requirement to create a multitude of logins for different services online. This could result in the need to create separate logins to council tax, planning, library, social care, education, and other services, and in areas where there are two tiers of council this is even more likely. It's an information superhighway to a danger zone of many logins. I hardly ever use council services as a citizen perhaps I might hear you say, how would a si...