“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
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
new tech observations from the UK (ntouk) 