: The Palintir mini manifesto at least makes it clear that if you buy their software you are buying it …
: This is beginning to feel like an inevitability: Davey says war bonds would help to speed up UK …
: Stop searching for AI ‘use-cases’. Design AI into services… …
: At the British Academy for a day long policy lab Noted on the way in: the dedicated Champaign cork …
: Positioning AI https://www.rpp.works/ways-of-doing/positioning-ai/
: Captcha aesthetics are getting weird
: More of this ministers showing prototypes please https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c62d1ql5w0vo
: In the search for calm things to play while kids are having breakfast, I stumbled across David Bowie …
: I have literally no idea if I have verified my identity with Companies House or how to check. I …
: The House of Commons Library on the concept on impeachment* Impeachment is considered obsolete, as …
: Help National Conversations fill the bookshelves of newly elected members of the Senedd and Scottish …
: Getting a grip - designing social objects for AI and humans, and the end of the end-to-end journey …
: This is really welcome from Manish Srivastava on how to do verifiable decisions/appeals in an …
: Stereolab on The Word: youtu.be/Ttq4RLTsz… This track still does odd things to my brain, too …
: In September, I was asked to give some thoughts about the NHS 10-year plan based on some of the …
: While encouraging that the UK is thinking about sovereign payment systems, this all sounds a bit …
: Managed to make it around River Thames Running’s Hampton Court Half Marathon, despite dodgy …
: This, by Ré Dubhthaigh of Dublin City Council, is a wonderfully clear description of why data about …
: Useful phrase from this Chatham House blog post about sovereignty (defence, digital and political) …
: So much work is doomed from the start because of the assumption you can successfully chop up it up …
: Scaling innovations in public health systems: guidance and toolkit - WHO Scaling health innovations …
: Confirmation from Apple that they have, somehow, despite being quite good at creating software, …
: I saw House Above The Sun. Lovely sound and stage presencence. Would definitely recommend.
: Going through some old bookmarks, I found a link. to this javascript library for visualising mosh …
: Noting that there are a couple of weeks left for people to apply for a digital job that could be …
: Given the word ‘Tory’ predates the Conservertive Party, I wonder if it might, at some …
: Quoting Cory Doctorow: Trump denounced the ICC, and then the ICC lost its Outlook access, its email …
: As is now seemingly traditional, new year optimism about work productivity not survived contact with …
: The principles behind indiweb (https://indieweb.org) and open source are, it seems, more important …
: Public institutions who publish on social media should own the definitive version. It’s the …
: 2025 reflections part 1 I’ll publish some positives from 2025 in a follow up post, but I can’t start there. For …
: Using ChatGPT to write an Obsidian addon * and had to tell it to rewrite the code to 00’s era …
: Parts of the proposed amendments to the US ESTA system read like: “our website is awful, …
: From this weeks Beno. I’m sure it will be a useful metaphor for something at some point.
: Aerated concrete and EHCPs I was up until midnight last night trying to battle a local authority Education, Health and Care …
: Given question of government use of X has come up again, I’d like to make the argument for the …
: Musing on what’s different about digital bookings
: Big hair metal covers of K-Pop Deamon Hunters music.apple.com/gb/album/… You are welcome
: MPs on the select committee said the UK needed to develop greater “sovereign” technology capacity, …
: I saw a band called TheWheel2! at the Windmill in Brixton at the weekend. At the time I wrote down …
: Some design provocations about preventative healthcare and designing for the service loop … …
: Some (slightly belated) thoughts on the UK announcability-first announcement on digital identity: …
: Useful reminder from Julia Cream at the Kings Fund that reducing admin burdens requires leadership …
: First visit in years to the common land where I grew up. Hard to describe quite how much it is a …
: I enjoyed this interview with Michael Heseltine: www.thetimes.com/article/9… Hard to disagree …
: I keep wondering when the input methods for LLMs will start to diverge from familiar chat and voice …
: A future where public servants spend their time on hold to Palientir to get anything done … …
: I’ve heard the term “digital by default” pop up a few times recently, so I dug out …
: I had an opticians appointment the other day and have some standard age + UV based degradation. The …
: Booking marking this case study of GOV.UK Notify from Hannah White and @eaves.ca to wheel out next …
: Sketching interfaces, riffing off Berg’s Here & There
: Because software is eating the world, there are now theology articles in Wired. (I started reading …
: 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 …
: Milton Keynes marathon 2025 I was supposed to run the Brighton marathon last month, but bug between a charity’s CRM and …
: Administrative Fairness Lab Conference 2025 I was in York for the Administrative Fairness Lab’s conference. Somehow I’ve never …
: Designing the seams, not seamless design Designing the seams, not seamless design On YouTube, there’s a compilation of Steve Jobs speeches …
: Standing inside the machine I was in the Netherlands to deliver a keynote at the User Needs First conference. While I was there …
: Public sector design — time for a reset Public sector design — time for a reset Public services should work much harder for the public. …
: Public sector design — time for a reset Public services should work much harder for the public. However, the new UK government isn’t …
: 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 …
: Marathon Originally published at https://richardpope.orgon January 28, 2024.
: Speaker notes: administrative fairness in practice The following is (approximatly) the talk I gave as part of the Administrative Fairness Lab’s …
: A measure of value for digital public service delivery A measure of value for digital public service delivery User need: outcomes for people, their …
: Talk: designing means-tested welfare procedures in government Talk: designing means-tested welfare procedures in government Short talk from the tail-end of last …
: 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 …
: Dyslexia I recently came across my assessment for dyslexia from when I was 14. My mum had been fairly …
: The limits of simple I came across this paragraph in a review of the work of Elinor Ostrom: The better services are, as …
: 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 …
: Composite services are here Originally published at https://richardpope.orgon August 26, 2021.
: Service marginalia It strikes me that Apple’s privacy labels …. … are the same class of thing as …
: How this thing works These two plastic scoops came packaged with our dog’s food. It’s one of those monthly subscription …
: Building public services with digital public goods The authors would like to gratefully acknowledge the Omidyar Network for supporting their research. …
: Institutions for the long-term The authors would like to gratefully acknowledge the Omidyar Network for supporting their research. …
: A transparency stack for digital public goods The authors would like to gratefully acknowledge the Omidyar Network for supporting their research. …
: 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 …
: Open-source and platform behaviours in digital public goods The authors would like to gratefully acknowledge the Omidyar Network for supporting their research. …
: 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. …
: Exploring digital public goods — introduction The authors would like to gratefully acknowledge the Omidyar Network for supporting their research. …
: 15 questions for the future of digital practice in government Originally published at https://richardpope.orgon May 24, 2021.
: 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 …
: 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, …
: Public interest technology and covid data — who’s job is it? Originally published at https://richardpope.orgon August 6, 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 …
: 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 …
: 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 …
: 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 …
: Who governs? Platform privilege, contact tracing and APIs. Apple and Google have, through the design of their contact tracing APIs, removed choices from …
: The boring side of tech, transparency and contact tracing The tech-twitter conversation about contact tracing apps has focused on privacy and …
: 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 …
: 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 …
: Government as a Platform, the hard problems: part 4 — Data infrastructure and registers HM Government, “Search”, …
: 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 …
: Government as a Platform, the hard problems: part 3 – shared components and APIs “Unix philosophy”, Wikipedia, …
: Project update — April 2019 Project update — April 2019 A reminder My name is Richard Pope and I’m a senior fellow at …
: 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, …
: Government as a Platform, the hard problems: part 1 — Introduction
: Definitions: government-as-a-platform (a proposal) Definitions: government-as-a-platform (a proposal) This is the second of several posts about …
: Definitions: quotes and themes on ‘government-as-a-platform’ If you think we’ve missed a relevant quote, please get in touch
: 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 …
: Digital service standards and platforms You can find the list of service standards here and search them using this Google custom search.
: Platforms for government? Platforms for society? Footnotes: 1. GOV.UK Notify and GOV.UK Pay are now available to all local authorities — Government …
: Digital proofs Footnotes: 1 . View or share your driving licence information …
: Real-world government platforms Real-world government platforms ‘Government as a platform’ normally gets talked about in terms of …
: 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 …
: A Right to the Digital City Conclusion Responding to emerging urban issues from gentrification to forced evictions & the …
: 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 …
: A model planning condition for digital infrastructure Following from my previous post about the ability of the UK planning system to deal with digital …
: InLinkUK - targeted advertising, planning permission and public space Our local high street is going to have one of its phoneboxes replaced with an ‘InLink’. …
: Bye2k - government IT and Brexit As Mat points out, one of the unwritten stories about if Brexit can be implemented is that of the …
: 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 …
: GDS Retrospective #3: professions and design In reality, it’s something I think to be simultaneously true and not true. It’s true …
: GDS Retrospective #4: transformation and mental health Transformation projects can be hugely rewarding, but something that needs talking about more is …
: 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 …
: 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 …
: GDS Retrospective #2: tools for making & communities GDS Retrospective #2: tools for making & communities Tools that help teams make things faster …
: A GDS Retrospective #1: knowing when to run A pretty solid approach to building digital services and to digital transformation emerged out of …
: 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 …
: 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 …
: Activity based permissions Activity based permissions I got a CleanSpace Tag pollution monitor via a promotion with the London …
: Retrospective Retrospective I often wonder how different things might have been if I had not gone on holiday after …
: Is the internet the problem? As ever, Julian is both almost certainly right about this and has the clarity of thought to state it …
: Designing digital services that are accountable, understood, and trusted (OSCON 2016 talk)These are… Originally published at blog.memespring.co.ukon November 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 …
: 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 …
: 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 …
: Brexit, open data and dangerous products Originally published at blog.memespring.co.ukon October 24, 2016.
: Dear England Dear England, You have another decision to make. A decision about the sort of country you want to be …
: EU Thought for the Day is an anachronism, but there is one (only one) that has ever stuck in my head. …
: 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 …
: 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 …
: Gherkin - a universal language for accountable bots? You can’t view source in Google Now. Software agents of one sort or another (bots, digital …
: It’s not about the technology! (Apart from when it is). “Digital/transformation/business is not about technology it’s about design / strategy / …
: 7 project ideas Some things from an Evernote notebook called ‘ideas’: Open Need Map A structured wiki …
: Fosdem 2016 links and notes Richard Pope, 02 March 2016 * [Argüman](http://en.arguman.org) is an argument mapping tool. It uses …
: 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 …
: Changing changes of circumstance: 7 alternative design patterns Lots of government services require their users to report when things in their life or an …
: 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. …
: Empathy, augmented - public services as digital assistants Empathy, augmented - public services as digital assistants Google Now is probably the best known …
: Product Land (Part 3) This is the 3rd and final part of an essay about design and possibilities. The first part - You …
: Open standards for job vacancies Open standards can be a force-multiplier: a standard voltage for electricity abstracts away how the …
: Brand archaeology ![Reverse of a TfL bike key with plastic pealed back to reveal a Barclay']s …
: Telegraph laws This was part of the telegraph zone of the new Information Age gallery at the Science Museum: New …
: Permissions. Understood. This is part follow up to The challenge for web developers in 2015, part inspired by Francis …
: Product Land (Part 2) Tools for exploring the margins. In the part 1 I set out the proposition that the way we think about …
: Habitat - Fosdem 2015 talk This is the talk I gave at Fosdem 2015 about a proof-of-concept personal datastore called Habitat. …
: Fosdem 2015 - interesting links Web pages in Firefox are getting a Bluetooth API for pairing and sharing data directly between …
: Signing in & composite services Usernames and passwords are on borrowed time as a design pattern. Examples of the damage it does are …
: Democracy at the point of use? I went to hear Vernon Bogdanor talk about the (first) 1974 General Election the other day. …
: 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 …
: Abundantly useful It’s nice when things just become quietly, abundantly useful. QR codes have gone from …
: 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 …
: co-op v2? There’s a quote in this O’Reilly Radar trailer for a talk about the bitcoin blockchain that …
: Product Land (Part 1) You can’t build what you can’t think of in the first place. This is the first of a …
: Music notes: September Real Lies - Dab Housing Benji Boko - No.1 Sound - Beta Hector Remix - feat. Ricky Rankin Brother …
: OpenStreetMap as infrastructure - a localgov map? The Moabi project is reusing the tools of the OpenStreetMap project to map natural resource use in …
: Info-buildings Image derived from (cc) martin allen Lambeth Council are asking residents with digital skills to …
: Music notes: August 2014 Baxter Dury - Pleasure. Walking south towards Bedlam? Original members of the BBC Radiophonic …
: MOO.COM UX rules - circa 2008 I wrote these up just before I left MOO I think. == General principals == === Optimise for the …
: 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 …
: Notes - elements and self hosting The BBC World Service series Elements uses the elements of the periodic table to look at the world …
: Where are the dedicated writing devices? For some reason, I seem to be thinking a lot about input at the moment. Something specifically that …
: Cards Who has done this before? Who are your users? What are their needs? What is the right metaphor? …
: 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 …
: Local government Sarah Prag has written a great shopping list of things a ‘GDS for local government’ …
: Notes: 2034, OSM mapping, triangulation Programming Perl in 2034 by Charlie Stross is just brilliant - he covers what causes things to …
: Anatomy of a project space Download larger version to print Checklist Team Team room * Sprint planning room (co-joined)* Fast …
: Timeless We went to see Goldie’s Timeless end-to-end at the Festival Hall as part of the Meltdown …
: Notes: manuals, homomorphic encryption, lazy database Manuals (XKCD) and manuals (VW Beetle). Time to start understanding more than just the superficial …
: Input 5 tiles is a brilliant example of designing from 1st principles. It is an android keyboard, designed …
: Moving from Gmail I finally got around to moving my email from Gmail to Fastmail. It’s been churning away moving …
: Notes: Capital Ring, habitat Completed the Capital Ring. Last 3 stages were a bit epic - about 19 miles in one day. Nearly walked …
: 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 …