A state machine for the state machine

Digital, data, and technology (DDaT) are being used to build shared platforms and infrastructure, and to improve the user experience of government services. But improving

‘Fracture’—an overview

I thought I’d add a bit more detail about my next book exploring the interplay of politics, policymaking, and digital, data and technology. Right now,

book extract (work in progress)

My book exploring digital, data and technology—and how politicians and policymakers can understand and use them more effectively—is (slowly!) taking shape. It’s currently around 270

“Dysfunctional, damaging and sometimes dangerous”

“Dysfunctional, damaging and sometimes dangerous” That’s how the Public Accounts Committee describes government technology in the press release that accompanies their latest report, “Challenges in

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

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

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

policy making in the digital age

UK Authority have published my article Rethinking policy making in the digital age. It explores the need for a national digital infrastructure that provides open,

‘Blueshift’ and the evergreen promise of the ‘future’ of work

15 years ago at Microsoft, I proposed a programme called ‘Blueshift’. It was a deliberate provocation, an attempt to move away from rusty soundbites about

fixing organisational design

I’m still seeing service design in many brownfield organisations being compromised by current organisational policies, dogma, assumptions, culture, silos, processes, egos and structures. However much

Rethinking public services

I suspect it would be hard to find many people who disagree with empowering citizens (although I have encountered a few). Public services need to

The intelligent state — or when “good enough” isn’t, er, “good enough”

Some years back (well, the late 1990’s to be precise), I started setting out a vision of what I thought a future state might look