Back to the past with government identity

The Government Digital Service (GDS) has a generous £400m budget to develop “One Login”, a single sign-on and digital identity system for government services. But it comes

UK Government Platforms | Revisited

The UK Government was a platform pioneer. It was amongst the first to understand the potential of platforms in the design and delivery of public

What can politicians learn from Universal Credit?

The unfortunate saga of Universal Credit is a powerful reminder of the repeated failure to successfully integrate policy making with technology. A failure that comes

UK Government single sign-in since 2001

Here’s my attempt at a very simplified slide summary of UK cross-government single sign-in since 2001: If you have any difficulties seeing the embedded Google

The political cost of legacy systems

Passengers arriving at airports across the UK recently encountered irritating delays because of problems with the automatic eGates. One likely cause is the Home Office’s

Digital Government — stuck in a groove?

For the past ~27 years, UK digital government efforts have largely focused on the left column of this table, occasionally drifting into ‘Rationalisation’ — and

social media, free speech and abuse

Social media is back in the news for all the usual negative reasons: hateful, racist, sexist, fraudulent and otherwise abusive users. None of which is

community networks: Reloaded

Amazon is in the news, yet again (when isn’t it?). This time it’s for ‘Amazon Sidewalk‘: it aims to connect together every Echo speaker and

‘Tales of the Riverbank’—a novel

My new novel, ‘Tales of the Riverbank’, has been published. It’s a first, tentative step back into creative writing for me—a return to the days

UK cross-government Platforms, 2003 edition

While reviewing and updating my Digital Government Archives, I came across some old slide decks from the days of the eDelivery Team (the Government Digital

Integrating technology and policymaking

I’ve written before about the need to better integrate technology and policymaking — in 360-degree policy making, policy making in the digital age, and many

360-degree policy making

How can we improve policy making to make it more effective — not just for politicians and policy makers, but citizens, organisations and communities too?