Milton Keynes marathon 2025I was supposed to run the Brighton marathon last month, but bug between a charity’s CRM and the marathon meant I didn’t actually have a place. Lots May 3, 2025
Administrative Fairness Lab Conference 2025I was in York for the Administrative Fairness Lab’s conference. Somehow I’ve never visited before. The photo above is from York Minster’s stone April 30, 2025
I was in the Netherlands to deliver a keynote at the User Needs First conference. While I was there I visited the Zaanse Schans open air museum. April 17, 2025 obsidain windmills opensource netherlands
Public sector design — time for a resetPublic services should work much harder for the public. However, the new UK government isn’t going to meet its aspirations for digital and data July 9, 2024
Digital talent and precariousness in governmentGiven there’s a UK election coming up, there’s going to talk about how to get more tech talent into government. Most is probably going to be March 28, 2024
MarathonI’m running the London Marathon in April. I’m doing it for Barnado’s who helped our family through the adoption process and beyond to give something January 28, 2024
Speaker notes: administrative fairness in practiceThe following is (approximatly) the talk I gave as part of the Administrative Fairness Lab’s panel at the ESRC Festival of Social Science. Starting November 14, 2023
Government service design: outcomes and ‘fairness’?Would it be ok if a digital public service makes it simple for users to achieve a proximate outcome (get a widget licence, apply for a widget October 19, 2022
A measure of value for digital public service deliveryUser need: outcomes for people, their representatives or communities Policy intent: meeting explicit outcomes sought by politicians or ones implicit March 16, 2022
DyslexiaI recently came across my assessment for dyslexia from when I was 14. My mum had been fairly ruthless at decluttering, but she’d kept that, a source October 19, 2021
The limits of simpleI came across this paragraph in a review of the work of Elinor Ostrom: The better services are, as defined by professional criteria, the less September 16, 2021
Subsidising R&D for a handful of trillion-dollar tech giantsA good summary of what happens when cloud companies come for an open-source project, in this case Mapbox Mapbox found themselves in a similar August 26, 2021
Composite services are hereI’ve written before, back in the before-times of 2015, about the idea of ‘composite services’. It was slightly clunky thinking then, premised on the August 26, 2021
Service marginaliaIt strikes me that Apple’s privacy labels …. … are the same class of thing as … … scribblings in the margins of a service that give context, help August 25, 2021
How this thing worksThese two plastic scoops came packaged with our dog’s food. It’s one of those monthly subscription services and the scoops came in the welcome pack. August 24, 2021
15 questions for the future of digital practice in governmentI’ve copied these questions over from this thread. There are projects where you need to try and ship something early (even if it’s slightly the May 24, 2021
Useless dataI tend to listen to In Our Time when I’m having trouble sleeping. Or, at least, I listen to it to the end when I can’t sleep. There is this bit at November 12, 2020
How many project management paradigms do you have in your organisation?If you are trying to do upfront design upfront and iteration, you probably 1 August 19, 2020
Public interest technology and covid data - whose job is it?Lockdown rules differ across the UK and are set by different, overlapping layers of government - UK, devolved, local. The result is it’s hard to August 6, 2020
Some unconnected thoughts on contract tracing and COVID Secure venuesSince the debate about digital contact tracing started, I’ve had a picture pop into my head from the Human Geography 101 module from when I was an July 29, 2020
Rishi Sunak's 'Plan for Jobs' speech - some digital gapsI just listened to Rishi Sunak’s announcement about the first steps towards restarting the economy and getting people back to work. I can’t comment July 8, 2020
The UK’s digital strategy should be the wholesale elimination of administrative burdenThe UK government’s aim to use digital to grow the economy as we learn to live with COVID-19 is probably the right one. But will policymakers go June 25, 2020
If government is mostly service design, is most government service design databases and rights?With apologies to Matt Edgar for re-purposing the title of his excellent blog post Most of government is mostly service design most of the time. June 22, 2020
Who governs? Platform privilege, contact tracing and APIs.Apple and Google have, through the design of their contact tracing APIs, removed choices from democratic governments seeking to respond to the April 29, 2020
Getting people back into work: ethics, efficacy and trustGovernment ministers have a choice about how they use the welfare system to help people who have lost their jobs or businesses get back to work. April 29, 2020
The boring side of tech, transparency and contact tracingThe tech-twitter conversation about contact tracing apps has focused on privacy and decentralisation. Regardless of the form it takes in the UK — April 28, 2020
The UK government should negotiate free access to Faster Payments to speed up COVID-19 paymentsThe thing about infrastructure is that it fades into the background to the point where people stop questioning how it works. So when the US April 15, 2020
Digital public services: cross-civil society collaboration during the COVID19 crisisThis is a quick blog post to write up some ideas from a conversation between Dan Barrett and Richard Pope about how civil society organisations can April 8, 2020
A model planning condition for digital infrastructureFollowing from my previous post about the ability of the UK planning system to deal with digital infrastructure like the InLink, it seems there may January 30, 2018
InLinkUK - targeted advertising, planning permission and public spaceOur local high street is going to have one of its phoneboxes replaced with an ‘InLink’. InLink is a public wifi network provided by BT through November 11, 2017
Bye2k - government IT and BrexitAs Mat points out, one of the unwritten stories about if Brexit can be implemented is that of the changes required of ‘government IT’. How many July 11, 2017
GDS Retrospective #5: things that have changedTo finish of this seris of retrospective posts I thought I’d list 7 things that have changed for the better as a result of the things GDS and others July 2, 2017
GDS Retrospective #4: transformation and mental healthTransformation projects can be hugely rewarding, but something that needs talking about more is this: they can take a toll on the people doing them. July 1, 2017
GDS Retrospective #3: professions and designIn reality, it’s something I think to be simultaneously true and not true. It’s true because you only get good stuff from people with different July 1, 2017
Google Jobs will break 90 years of welfare policy - here's what the policy response should beIn 2013, Ian Duncan-Smith said “looking for work should be a full-time job”. This was to be policed through the ‘claimant commitment’ a document May 21, 2017
GDS Retrospective #2: tools for making & communitiesTools that help teams make things faster and tools help teams talk to each other better are very powerful levers when it comes to digital April 16, 2017
GDS Retrospective #1: knowing when to runThis is part of a series of blog posts about reflections on my time at GDS. See background and caveats. A solid approach to building digital April 16, 2017
Beckton - a tool to build groups of paying membersimg {max-width:300px; border:solid 1px #ccc; margin-bottom:5px;} Is it possible to build a general purpose tool for creating a paying membership March 5, 2017
Activity based permissionsI got a CleanSpace Tag pollution monitor via a promotion with the London Cycling Campaign. Putting aside the fact that users don’t retain rights to March 1, 2017
Is the internet the problem?As ever, Julian is both almost certainly right about this and has the clarity of thought to state it properly (and as ever buried in a post mostly February 16, 2017
RetrospectiveI often wonder how different things might have been if I had not gone on holiday after the beta of GOV.UK launched, or if I’d been clearer in my December 13, 2016
Designing digital services that are accountable, understood, and trusted (OSCON 2016 talk)These are the speaker notes and slides from my talk at OSCON 2016 last month. Hello. Welcome to this session about power and importance of November 23, 2016
Facebook and Twitter as public service networks (it's not just about the algorithm)It’s pretty clear that the code that chooses what we see on social media needs to be more transparent. Hopefully, we will start to see governments1 November 11, 2016
Brexit, open data and dangerous productsThere is going to be so much detail in the Great Repeal Bill - so many tiny decisions with potentially big impact - that it’s going to be hard to October 24, 2016
Dear EnglandYou have another decision to make. A decision about the sort of country you want to be now the referendum has been decided: You can June 26, 2016
EUThought for the Day is an anachronism, but there is one (only one) that has ever stuck in my head. It was broadcast in 2012 by Lionel Blue and it June 19, 2016
Policy options for getting wider adoption of the jobPosting standardThe UK government has adopted the schema.org jobPosting standard as the format that it will use to publish job vacancies on the web. Better job May 22, 2016
2 local government platforms someone should just buildReuse the datastore and editing tools behind open streetmap and use it to start managing geographical data (parks, opening times, protected views, April 28, 2016
Gherkin - a universal language for accountable bots?You can’t view source in Google Now. Software agents of one sort or another (bots, digital assistants, news feed algorithms) seem set to make more April 14, 2016
It’s not about the technology! (Apart from when it is).“Digital/transformation/business is not about technology it’s about design / strategy / culture” is a recurring meme. It can be a comforting thing April 12, 2016
7 project ideasSome things from an Evernote notebook called ‘ideas’: Open Need Map A structured wiki for mapping things that are needed by people and April 6, 2016
Fosdem 2016 links and notesRichard Pope, 02 March 2016 There was lots of talk about making it easier for IoT devices to talk to each other. (Everyone seems to be trying to March 2, 2016
UK Digital Strategy submissions - data sharing / labour market dataThe UK government is asking for ideas from the public towards its digital strategy. I’ve submitted the following 2: ## Labour market data and job January 17, 2016
Trust through doing: 3 links3 just-about-related links on the subject of trust and clicktivism: Back in March, I saw Ethan Zuckerman talk at The Impacts of Civic Technology January 10, 2016
Why technologists should join Which? (or what I learned failing to stand for election)Earlier this year Nicola and I decided to move house. After 10 years on Electric Avenue we’ve moved to suburban West Norwood. Mostly driven by the December 8, 2015
10 rules for distributed / networked / platformed governmentEarlier this year, when I was working with Jamie, Tom, Anna, Paul, Stephen and Adam on a vision for Government as a Platform, I got stuck on the November 12, 2015
Changing changes of circumstance: 7 alternative design patternsLots of government services require their users to report when things in their life or an organisation change. This places a lot of responsibility November 9, 2015
This Place Is Ours: check-in to add this pub to the Assets of Community Value RegisterThis has been sitting in my Google Docs since May, so I figured I’d just publish it here. “This Place Is Ours” is the working name for an app that October 13, 2015
Empathy, augmented - public services as digital assistantsGoogle Now is probably the best known example of the so called ‘intelligent digital assistants’*. It suggests relevant information based on your September 30, 2015
Product Land (Part 3)This is the 3rd and final part of an essay about design and possibilities. The first part - You can’t build what you can’t think of in the first September 14, 2015
Open standards for job vacanciesOpen standards can be a force-multiplier: a standard voltage for electricity abstracts away how the electricity was generated, this allows companies July 2, 2015
Brand archaeology[Reverse of a TfL bike key with plastic pealed back to reveal a Barclay’]s URL](https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7704/16995499017_535832226d_k_d.jpg) April 19, 2015
Telegraph lawsThis was part of the telegraph zone of the new Information Age gallery at the Science Museum: New technology, new data integrity and privacy laws? March 14, 2015
Mobile first design & dev (for £2.75)Video of Chrome web tools mobile setup. I’m late to this, but the Chrome DevTools remote debugger for Android or the Firefox mobile developer tools March 3, 2015
Permissions. Understood.This is part follow up to The challenge for web developers in 2015, part inspired by Francis Irving’s The advert wars. Better patterns for helping February 27, 2015
Product Land (Part 2)Tools for exploring the margins. In the part 1 I set out the proposition that the way we think about building digital products is too linear and, February 15, 2015
Habitat - Fosdem 2015 talkThis is the talk I gave at Fosdem 2015 about a proof-of-concept personal datastore called Habitat. My name is Richard Pope, and I am going to talk February 11, 2015
Fosdem 2015 - interesting linksWeb pages in Firefox are getting a Bluetooth API for pairing and sharing data directly between devices and web apps. GeoTrelis is a tool for doing February 9, 2015
Signing in & composite servicesUsernames and passwords are on borrowed time as a design pattern. Examples of the damage it does are everywhere. The only thing keeping it credible February 6, 2015
Democracy at the point of use?I went to hear Vernon Bogdanor talk about the (first) 1974 General Election the other day. It’s part of a seris about post-war elections that is January 23, 2015
The challenge for web designers in 2015 (or how to cheat at the future)This is a second attempt at articulating this issue, and was inspired by a conversation with @psd who also pointed me at a TEDx talk entitled A time January 17, 2015
Abundantly usefulIt’s nice when things just become quietly, abundantly useful. QR codes have gone from something people plastered over business cards and adverts in January 14, 2015
Time to start designing and demoing mobile first?I’ve always had a bit of a problem with responsive design. It too easy to assume the most important context is the size of the screen, too easy to December 24, 2014
co-op v2?There’s a quote in this O’Reilly Radar trailer for a talk about the bitcoin blockchain that has slightly melted my brain: I think 10 years from now December 1, 2014
Product Land (Part 1)You can’t build what you can’t think of in the first place. This is the first of a couple of posts about why I think we need better ways for November 10, 2014
Music notes: SeptemberReal Lies - Dab Housing Benji Boko - No.1 Sound - Beta Hector Remix - feat. Ricky Rankin Brother culture - Sound Killer Half Man Half Buscuit - October 5, 2014
OpenStreetMap as infrastructure - a localgov map?The Moabi project is reusing the tools of the OpenStreetMap project to map natural resource use in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. This is an October 4, 2014
Info-buildingsImage derived from (cc) martin allen Lambeth Council are asking residents with digital skills to help them improve the services they provide. As September 25, 2014
Music notes: August 2014Baxter Dury - Pleasure. Walking south towards Bedlam? Original members of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop at Glastonbury. I was at this and it wasn’t August 25, 2014
MOO.COM UX rules - circa 2008I wrote these up just before I left MOO I think. == General principals == === Optimise for the common case === Adding something to satisfy the August 2, 2014
A recipe for starting & prototyping new projectsWhatever you are making, someone will have done it before, using the tools and thinking of their time. Start with Wikipedia and work out from there. July 27, 2014
Notes - elements and self hostingThe BBC World Service series Elements uses the elements of the periodic table to look at the world economy. Well worth a listen. Ark OS goes into July 24, 2014
Where are the dedicated writing devices?For some reason, I seem to be thinking a lot about input at the moment. Something specifically that feels lacking - dedicated, internet enabled, July 21, 2014
CardsWho has done this before? Who are your users? What are their needs? What is the right metaphor? What tools do you need as a team? What does the law July 17, 2014
Cucumber tests for regulatory data?This is a write up of an idea that came out of the Environment Agency hackday. How do we know software is working? We can run the software and look July 16, 2014
Notes: 2034, OSM mapping, triangulationProgramming Perl in 2034 by Charlie Stross is just brilliant - he covers what causes things to change, to stay the same and the reality distorting July 6, 2014
Local governmentSarah Prag has written a great shopping list of things a ‘GDS for local government’ might need, and points out that some would be controversial. July 6, 2014
TimelessWe went to see Goldie’s Timeless end-to-end at the Festival Hall as part of the Meltdown Festival on Saturday. Live drums, live vocals. Amazing. June 22, 2014
Anatomy of a project spaceDownload larger version to print Team Team room * Sprint planning room (co-joined)* Fast Internet connection User needs Principles Drawing of June 22, 2014
Notes: manuals, homomorphic encryption, lazy databaseManuals (XKCD) and manuals (VW Beetle). Time to start understanding more than just the superficial about cryptography: June 8, 2014
Input5 tiles is a brilliant example of designing from 1st principles. It is an android keyboard, designed specifically for touch-screens to keep the June 1, 2014
Moving from GmailI finally got around to moving my email from Gmail to Fastmail. It’s been churning away moving over 8 years worth of emails for over 24 hours now. May 27, 2014
Notes: Capital Ring, habitatCompleted the Capital Ring. Last 3 stages were a bit epic - about 19 miles in one day. Nearly walked into a deer. The Capital Ring is well worth May 21, 2014
Notes: 5 - 9th May 2014Walked stages 9 and 8 of the Capital Ring South Kenton to Osterly (3 more to go). Final show and tell of the Land Registry concept. More work on May 20, 2014