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Oct 16, 2025: I had an opticians appointment the other day and have some standard age + UV based degradation. The preventative healthcare answer to which is 1) kale …
Oct 15, 2025: Booking marking this case study of GOV.UK Notify from Hannah White and @eaves.ca to wheel out next time there’s a bit of reductive technical …
Oct 14, 2025: Sketching interfaces, riffing off Berg’s Here & There
Oct 14, 2025: Because software is eating the world, there are now theology articles in Wired. (I started reading and couldn’t stop).
Jul 21, 2025: Thoughts on the NHS 10 year plan (with a digital skew) The UK government has published the 10 year plan for the National Health Service. It is based around ‘three big shifts’: analogue to …
May 3, 2025: Milton Keynes marathon 2025 I 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 …
Apr 30, 2025: Administrative Fairness Lab Conference 2025 I was in York for the Administrative Fairness Lab’s conference. Somehow I’ve never visited before. The photo above is from York …
Apr 27, 2025: Designing the seams, not seamless design Designing the seams, not seamless design On YouTube, there’s a compilation of Steve Jobs speeches where he says: ‘It just works. Seamlessly.’ There …
Apr 17, 2025: Standing inside the machine 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. …
Jul 9, 2024: Public sector design — time for a reset Public sector design — time for a reset Public services should work much harder for the public. However, the new UK government isn’t going to meet its …
Jul 9, 2024: Public sector design — time for a reset Public services should work much harder for the public. However, the new UK government isn’t going to meet its aspirations for digital and data …
Mar 28, 2024: Digital talent and precariousness in government Given 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 …
Jan 28, 2024: Marathon Originally published at https://richardpope.orgon January 28, 2024.
Nov 14, 2023: Speaker notes: administrative fairness in practice The following is (approximatly) the talk I gave as part of the Administrative Fairness Lab’s panel at the ESRC Festival of Social Science. …
Feb 3, 2023: A measure of value for digital public service delivery A measure of value for digital public service delivery User need: outcomes for people, their representatives or communities Policy intent: meeting …
Feb 2, 2023: Talk: designing means-tested welfare procedures in government Talk: designing means-tested welfare procedures in government Short talk from the tail-end of last year that I gave to the Administrative Fairness …
Oct 19, 2022: 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 support …
Oct 19, 2021: Dyslexia I 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 …
Sep 16, 2021: The limits of simple I came across this paragraph in a review of the work of Elinor Ostrom: The better services are, as defined by professional criteria, the less …
Aug 26, 2021: Subsidising R&D for a handful of trillion-dollar tech giants A good summary of what happens when cloud companies come for an open-source project, in this case Mapbox Mapbox found themselves in a similar …
Aug 26, 2021: Composite services are here Originally published at https://richardpope.orgon August 26, 2021.
Aug 25, 2021: Service marginalia It strikes me that Apple’s privacy labels …. … are the same class of thing as … … scribblings in the margins of a …
Aug 24, 2021: How this thing works These 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. …
Aug 3, 2021: Building public services with digital public goods The authors would like to gratefully acknowledge the Omidyar Network for supporting their research. The views herein, however, do not necessarily …
Aug 1, 2021: Institutions for the long-term The authors would like to gratefully acknowledge the Omidyar Network for supporting their research. The views herein, however, do not necessarily …
Jul 27, 2021: A transparency stack for digital public goods The authors would like to gratefully acknowledge the Omidyar Network for supporting their research. The views herein, however, do not necessarily …
Jul 20, 2021: From products to digital public goods If digital public goods are going to have the effects hoped for, there will need to be clear routes for their creation, maintenance and adoption. …
Jul 19, 2021: Open-source and platform behaviours in digital public goods The authors would like to gratefully acknowledge the Omidyar Network for supporting their research. The views herein, however, do not necessarily …
Jul 5, 2021: Digital public goods as infrastructure: government as a platform for all? The authors would like to gratefully acknowledge the Omidyar Network for supporting their research. The views herein, however, do not necessarily …
May 24, 2021: Exploring digital public goods — introduction The authors would like to gratefully acknowledge the Omidyar Network for supporting their research. The views herein, however, do not necessarily …
May 24, 2021: 15 questions for the future of digital practice in government Originally published at https://richardpope.orgon May 24, 2021.
Aug 19, 2020: How many project management paradigms do you have in your organisation? 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 …
Aug 6, 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 …
Aug 6, 2020: Public interest technology and covid data — who’s job is it? Originally published at https://richardpope.orgon August 6, 2020.
Jul 8, 2020: Rishi Sunak's 'Plan for Jobs' speech - some digital gaps I just listened to Rishi Sunak’s announcement about the first steps towards restarting the economy and getting people back to work. I …
Jun 25, 2020: The UK’s digital strategy should be the wholesale elimination of administrative burden The 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 …
Jun 22, 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. …
Apr 29, 2020: Getting people back into work: ethics, efficacy and trust Government 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. That …
Apr 29, 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 …
Apr 28, 2020: The boring side of tech, transparency and contact tracing The tech-twitter conversation about contact tracing apps has focused on privacy and decentralisation. Regardless of the form it takes in the UK — and …
Apr 15, 2020: The UK government should negotiate free access to Faster Payments to speed up COVID-19 payments The thing about infrastructure is that it fades into the background to the point where people stop questioning how it works. So when the US government …
Apr 8, 2020: Digital public services: cross-civil society collaboration during the COVID19 crisis What other opportunities are there for charities and support groups to work together on datasets during the COVID19 crisis?
Aug 5, 2019: Government as a Platform, the hard problems: part 4 — Data infrastructure and registers HM Government, “Search”, …
Jul 22, 2019: A working definition of Government as a Platform 1. Tim O’Reilly, “Government as a Platform”, Innovations, Vol. 6, Issue. 1, Pages. 13–40, January 2011, …
Apr 30, 2019: Government as a Platform, the hard problems: part 3 – shared components and APIs “Unix philosophy”, Wikipedia, [en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_philosophy) 2. Peter H. Salus, “A Quarter-Century …
Apr 11, 2019: Project update — April 2019 Project update — April 2019 A reminder My name is Richard Pope and I’m a senior fellow at digitalHKS. digitalHKS is focused on understanding the …
Apr 11, 2019: Government as a Platform, the hard problems: part 2 — The design of public-facing services Tom Loosemoore, “Making government as a platform real”, Public Digital blog, 25th September 2018, …
Mar 10, 2019: Government as a Platform, the hard problems: part 1 — Introduction
Dec 7, 2018: Definitions: government-as-a-platform (a proposal) Definitions: government-as-a-platform (a proposal) This is the second of several posts about definitions. The previous one looked at the range of ways …
Nov 27, 2018: Definitions: quotes and themes on ‘government-as-a-platform’ If you think we’ve missed a relevant quote, please get in touch
Nov 27, 2018: The politics of making it easier to design digital services The politics of making it easier to design digital services A couple of weeks ago I asked on Twitter if there was a term in service design for the …
Nov 26, 2018: Digital service standards and platforms You can find the list of service standards here and search them using this Google custom search.
Oct 30, 2018: Platforms for government? Platforms for society? Footnotes: 1. GOV.UK Notify and GOV.UK Pay are now available to all local authorities — Government as a Platform. (2018) …
Oct 30, 2018: Digital proofs Footnotes: 1 . View or share your driving licence information https://www.gov.uk/view-driving-licence 2. Things For Which Cryptographic Signing Would …
Oct 20, 2018: Real-world government platforms Real-world government platforms ‘Government as a platform’ normally gets talked about in terms of shared digital capabilities– things like hosting, …
Oct 4, 2018: Platform land – a new project looking at platforms and government Platform land – a new project looking at platforms and government I’m starting a fellowship at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. The Kennedy …
Mar 28, 2018: A Right to the Digital City Conclusion Responding to emerging urban issues from gentrification to forced evictions & the privatisation of public space, the United Nations …
Feb 27, 2018: A Guide To The New Field Of Software Politics A Guide To The New Field Of Software Politics 2016 was the year it became impossible to ignore the power software exerts on society. Today, in 2018, …
Jan 30, 2018: A model planning condition for digital infrastructure Following from my previous post about the ability of the UK planning system to deal with digital infrastructure like the InLink, it seems there may be …
Nov 11, 2017: InLinkUK - targeted advertising, planning permission and public space Our local high street is going to have one of its phoneboxes replaced with an ‘InLink’. InLink is a public wifi network provided by BT …
Jul 11, 2017: Bye2k - government IT and Brexit As Mat points out, one of the unwritten stories about if Brexit can be implemented is that of the changes required of ‘government IT’. How …
Jul 2, 2017: GDS Retrospective #5: things that have changed To 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 …
Jul 1, 2017: GDS Retrospective #3: professions and design In 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 …
Jul 1, 2017: GDS Retrospective #4: transformation and mental health Transformation projects can be hugely rewarding, but something that needs talking about more is this: they can take a toll on the people doing them. …
May 22, 2017: Google Jobs will break 90 years of welfare policy — here’s what the policy response should be Google Jobs will break 90 years of welfare policy — here’s what the policy response should be In 2013, Ian Duncan-Smith said “looking for work should …
May 21, 2017: Google Jobs will break 90 years of welfare policy - here's what the policy response should be In 2013, Ian Duncan-Smith said “looking for work should be a full-time job”. This was to be policed through the ‘claimant …
Apr 20, 2017: GDS Retrospective #2: tools for making & communities GDS Retrospective #2: tools for making & communities Tools that help teams make things faster and tools help teams talk to each other better are …
Apr 20, 2017: A GDS Retrospective #1: knowing when to run A pretty solid approach to building digital services and to digital transformation emerged out of the work of GDS and others across government. It is …
Apr 16, 2017: GDS Retrospective #1: knowing when to run This 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 services …
Mar 5, 2017: Beckton - a tool to build groups of paying members img {max-width:300px; border:solid 1px #ccc; margin-bottom:5px;} Is it possible to build a general purpose tool for creating a paying membership …
Mar 2, 2017: Activity based permissions Activity based permissions I got a CleanSpace Tag pollution monitor via a promotion with the London Cycling Campaign. Putting aside the fact that …
Mar 2, 2017: Retrospective Retrospective I often wonder how different things might have been if I had not gone on holiday after the beta of GOV.UK launched. Growing …
Feb 16, 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 …
Nov 23, 2016: Designing digital services that are accountable, understood, and trusted (OSCON 2016 talk)These are… Originally published at blog.memespring.co.ukon November 23, 2016.
Nov 23, 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 designing …
Nov 13, 2016: Facebook and Twitter as public service networks (it’s not just about the algorithm) 1) It doesn’t have to be operated by a government, it could be a new institution setup by the industry, but government seems most likely. 2) I had an …
Nov 11, 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 …
Oct 24, 2016: Brexit, open data and dangerous products Originally published at blog.memespring.co.ukon October 24, 2016.
Jun 26, 2016: Dear England Dear England, You have another decision to make. A decision about the sort of country you want to be now the referendum has been decided: You can ask …
Jun 19, 2016: EU Thought 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 was …
May 22, 2016: Policy options for getting wider adoption of the jobPosting standard The 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 …
Apr 28, 2016: 2 local government platforms someone should just build 1) Where things are (as a platform) Reuse the datastore and editing tools behind open streetmap and use it to start managing geographical data (parks, …
Apr 14, 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 and …
Apr 12, 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 …
Apr 6, 2016: 7 project ideas Some things from an Evernote notebook called ‘ideas’: Open Need Map A structured wiki for mapping things that are needed by people and …
Mar 2, 2016: Fosdem 2016 links and notes Richard Pope, 02 March 2016 * [Argüman](http://en.arguman.org) is an argument mapping tool. It uses visual presentation of a subject and a limited …
Nov 12, 2015: 10 rules for distributed / networked / platformed government Earlier 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 …
Nov 9, 2015: Changing changes of circumstance: 7 alternative design patterns Lots of government services require their users to report when things in their life or an organisation change. This places a lot of responsibility on …
Oct 13, 2015: This Place Is Ours: check-in to add this pub to the Assets of Community Value Register This 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 …
Sep 30, 2015: Empathy, augmented - public services as digital assistants Empathy, augmented - public services as digital assistants Google Now is probably the best known example of the so called ‘intelligent digital …
Sep 14, 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 …
Jul 2, 2015: Open standards for job vacancies Open standards can be a force-multiplier: a standard voltage for electricity abstracts away how the electricity was generated, this allows companies …
Apr 19, 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)
Mar 14, 2015: Telegraph laws This was part of the telegraph zone of the new Information Age gallery at the Science Museum: New technology, new data integrity and privacy laws? …
Feb 27, 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 …
Feb 15, 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, as a …
Feb 11, 2015: Habitat - Fosdem 2015 talk This 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 to …
Feb 9, 2015: Fosdem 2015 - interesting links Web 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 …
Feb 6, 2015: Signing in & composite services Usernames and passwords are on borrowed time as a design pattern. Examples of the damage it does are everywhere. The only thing keeping it credible is …
Jan 23, 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 …
Jan 17, 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 …
Jan 14, 2015: Abundantly useful It’s nice when things just become quietly, abundantly useful. QR codes have gone from something people plastered over business cards and adverts …
Dec 24, 2014: 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 …
Dec 1, 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 …
Nov 10, 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 …
Oct 5, 2014: Music notes: September Real Lies - Dab Housing Benji Boko - No.1 Sound - Beta Hector Remix - feat. Ricky Rankin Brother culture - Sound Killer Half Man Half Buscuit - …
Oct 4, 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 …
Sep 25, 2014: Info-buildings Image derived from (cc) martin allen Lambeth Council are asking residents with digital skills to help them improve the services they provide. As part …
Aug 25, 2014: Music notes: August 2014 Baxter Dury - Pleasure. Walking south towards Bedlam? Original members of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop at Glastonbury. I was at this and it …
Aug 2, 2014: MOO.COM UX rules - circa 2008 I wrote these up just before I left MOO I think. == General principals == === Optimise for the common case === Adding something to satisfy the needs …
Jul 27, 2014: A recipe for starting & prototyping new projects 1) Know your history. Whatever you are making, someone will have done it before, using the tools and thinking of their time. Start with Wikipedia and …
Jul 24, 2014: Notes - elements and self hosting The 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 …
Jul 21, 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, …
Jul 17, 2014: Cards Who 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 …
Jul 16, 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 …
Jul 6, 2014: Local government Sarah Prag has written a great shopping list of things a ‘GDS for local government’ might need, and points out that some would be …
Jul 6, 2014: Notes: 2034, OSM mapping, triangulation Programming Perl in 2034 by Charlie Stross is just brilliant - he covers what causes things to change, to stay the same and the reality distorting …
Jun 22, 2014: Anatomy of a project space Download larger version to print Checklist Team Team room * Sprint planning room (co-joined)* Fast Internet connection User needs Principles Drawing …
Jun 22, 2014: Timeless We 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. …
Jun 8, 2014: Notes: manuals, homomorphic encryption, lazy database Manuals (XKCD) and manuals (VW Beetle). Time to start understanding more than just the superficial about cryptography: …
Jun 1, 2014: Input 5 tiles is a brilliant example of designing from 1st principles. It is an android keyboard, designed specifically for touch-screens to keep the screen …
May 27, 2014: Moving from Gmail I 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 …
May 21, 2014: Notes: Capital Ring, habitat Completed 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 the …
May 20, 2014: Notes: 5 - 9th May 2014 Walked 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 …