My week: update on Luton Council’s frontline and regulatory services

Find out how we're incorporating waste services in to our low-code platform and transforming our ways of working for ...

Test, Learn and Grow, one year on

Following on from the Test, Learn and Grow One Year On event in Sheffield, Nick Kimber shares his reflections on the ...

Opening GOV.UK Wallet sandbox to digital verification services 

Registered digital verification service (DVS) providers are now able to apply to join the GOV.UK Wallet sandbox.

My week: interviews, apps, appetite for change and a mountain of boxes

Today's weeknotes update comes from DDaT's head of digital development, Kevin Rowe.

Learning across boundaries: How Cumberland and Luton are collaborating on digital innovation

Different places, shared ambitions. Find out how Cumberland Council and Luton Council are collaborating on digital se...

Learning across boundaries: how Cumberland and Luton are collaborating on digital innovation 

One of the strengths of local government digital is the willingness to share. While every council faces its own chall...

Sprint 13: identity crisis? 

Exploring where case management ends, CRM begins and how our digital platform brings the two together.

My week: cinema, pets and teenagers, plus a focus on digital delivery

Today's weeknotes update comes from DDaT's director, Atika Mohammed. There's certainly a lot going on for her at the ...

How we are supercharging Test, Learn and Grow through movement building

True system change doesn't rely on a single central team or a fixed project timeline. Alongside our accelerators, we ...

Creating an accessibility agent with Copilot Studio

Last month, Kubrick Group spent the day with DDaT Luton, running an AI agent hackathon using Microsoft Copilot Studio...

What the UK public tech sector can learn from DrupalCon

I spent last week at DrupalCon in Rotterdam. For non-Drupal folks, they are annual jamborees in Europe, the United St...

Interesting post on the Public Digital blog from Gavin Beckett – Three ways to build intelligence-era digital and tec...

What is Grow?

The Test, Learn and Grow programme is working to design and improve public services so that everyone, whether you use...

Building the foundations for better data sharing across the UK 

Data has the potential to improve services, support innovation and drive growth, but sharing it across organisations ...

Sprint 12: four applications, four sprints and one awesome team

It has been a while since my last update, and a lot has happened. Over the summer, our first tranche of applications ...

Digital devolution: what’s been happening and what’s coming up? 

Explore how we're working with local government to build capability and support innovation.

Love this show and tell from the team at Cumberland, demonstrating how they digitised and improved a previously Excel...

The Nuffield Family Observatory email a ‘Chart of The Month’, which I think is a nice, slow, passive way to consume d...

Show and Tell: Modernising the Accounts Receivable E86 Form

Find out how a new digital Accounts Receivable E86 form has replaced an outdated spreadsheet, making it easier to rai...

Nice update from Jayvik about the advances the digital team in Luton have been making across the development of their...

The new frontier for Luton DDaT!

‘The new frontier’ has a double meaning in this instance! We’re launching the new format for our weeknotes today. In ...

From the digital desk: are you standing up or sitting down?

Hopefully the latter as it’s been a while since I’ve blogged on what’s been happening in DDaT. Since March, we’ve lau...

This looks like it should be a poster in the backdrop of a scuzzy sci-fi dystopia. (from Canary Wharf).

I hope this quote from Professor Peter Fonagy in the trail to his independent review into mental health, ADHD and aut...

The Iron Cage

A few weeks on from my last note and we’ve made more progress. Last week we started our first round of testing protot...

Still very light blogging – work is intense at the moment! Good, but intense. But today I came across Fibery – which ...

Creating the conditions for transformation

CustomerFirst shares early lessons from its work with the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA).

How we made it easier for millions of users to sign into government services

Users can now sign in to GOV.UK One Login with a passkey using their face, fingerprint or passcode, without rememberi...

What the ‘Early Years’ Innovation Challenge showed us about data-sharing and collaboration

What would seamless, trusted data-sharing mean for young children and their families? At a recent Early Years Innovat...

Nationalise Parent Pay?

It is the time of year when the seam of parents grumbling about school apps rises to the surface of social media. Sta...

AI futures: agency for humans not agents

AI may or may not be out to kill us but it will make things profoundly worse and not better if we don’t make sure we ...

Ready made tender clauses for collaboration

We all know that collaboration is often put in the ‘too hard pile’. It’s held back by a tight knot of issues which we...

What is an accelerator?

In Autumn 2025 we started our accelerator projects: small, multidisciplinary teams working alongside places to design...

Integrating with FixMyStreet: Bringing Open311 Support to Liberty Create

Turning Renewals into a Self-Service Experience

How we automated Assisted Waste Collection renewals to reduce administration, improve customer experience and create ...

GOV.UK Pay at 10: how it started and how it's going 

10 years ago, GDS launched GOV.UK Pay, one of its flagship platforms used by public sector service teams. To mark thi...

Supporting devolution through digital, data and AI

Across government, there is a growing focus on how powers, funding and decision-making can be exercised closer to the...

Thanks to Tom Watson’s post about A TechFreedom startup stack, I came across Baserow, which looks like a very well fe...

Just sent round the first LocalGovDigital community email newsletter, which goes to everyone signed up for our new on...

Services Week 2026 Wrap Up

This year's Services Week saw an incredible 4,000 attendees across 80 sessions, delivered by over 30 different govern...

The Colander

We started the alpha about four weeks ago, but almost all of that time has been devoted to getting set up and prepari...

A lovely time by the sea

Light blogging recently – partly due to starting a new contract, and partly due to the fact that I am just back from ...

Two more collaboration contracts

Working at LocalGov Drupal and Open Digital Planning, I’ve seen first hand how collaboration changes the game. It inc...

The Regatta

Busy one last week. These weeknotes coming to you late as I had fun sailing boats all weekend. We did more things th...

GDS: delivering a better GOV.UK experience for business 

GDS and BIST are supporting UK businesses to operate and grow by collaborating across government to improve online ad...

Coined a new (to me!) phrase today: “performative project management”. Can see myself using it a lot from now on!

I love stories like this. Luton’s Hazel Lunn shares the low down on her career in local government, from working in t...

This looks quite interesting: London Productivity Library. A productivity tool from LOTI, for any organisation to dep...

The Ancient Farm

The last couple of weeks looking at helping users do more with their test results have been good, and we’ve made dece...

Keeping the Phones Ringing While Everything Else Changed

See how a new council-wide telephone number helped maintain access to services for residents while managing change du...

On waiting, digital and where the state chooses to operate - an extended version of the preface to Platformland

Below is a slightly longer version of what became the preface to my book Platformland. I started writing before the b...

The Beetroots

Haven’t written a weeknote in almost a month, but a lot has been going on. A quick summary on what we’ve been up to f...

Show and Tell: Building Cumberland's Tour de France subsite in just a few days

See how our web and communications teams designed and built Cumberland's Tour de France subsite in less than a week.

Five fixes for public sector software

Following on from Matt Wood-Hill’s excellent guide to market shaping techniques in government, I thought I’d add a fe...

Is testing and learning a methodology or a core skill?

Today I was chatting with Irina and Trilly about implementing the skills framework for product managers at NHS Englan...

The Relay Race

For the last couple of weeks we’ve been drafting and re-drafting our discovery playback deck, straightening up the st...

Registration Certificate Ordering Project - From Build to Better

Collaborative project with the Registration Service.

Platformlanding with DEFRA and e-synergy today

One month in… NSDC LGD and a solid partnership

Launching our new Newark and Sherwood District Council website By Sian Motley – Project Manager It’s now been a month...

What is Test, Learn and Grow? 

The history of the Test, Learn and Grow programme to date and what we've learned so far.

Why we write

Kara introduces the Test, Learn and Grow blog - why we want to work in the open and how to be involved.

As someone who failed GCSE English (and got a full grant) this is mildly triggering: https://www.theguardian.com/educ...

Published today with @kinship.works NHS Operating Patterns - Ways to do good work together, in a decentralised system

The Broad Bean

The previous weeknote was all about the need for a community of teams to change the experience of the NHS App collect...

From Awareness to Ownership: Our Cyber Journey Since 2023

In 2023, I wrote about how local government can lead the way in cyber security – drawing on Newark and Sherwood Distr...

Show and Tell: AI categorisation and distribution of shared mailbox email

See how our Intelligent Automation team is using AI to help teams categorise and route shared mailbox emails more eff...

The Base Comes First

This week was good. Frankie joined us along with Jamie. We got the chance to hang out in a team day. We got a better ...

LGRcamping

Local gov camp parked its bus at Newark during May to deliver an interactive and insightful day to all that attended....

Supporting the Unreasonable Customer Policy

Helping the Complaints team apply the Unreasonable Customer Conduct (UCP) policy consistently and manage cases clearly.

The Curry House Storm

Last week was the end of my second full working week on the Innovation & Analysis team in Digital Prevention Services...

Elderflower lemonade

The Bach Wen

Last week was the end of my first full working week on the Innovation & Analysis team in Digital Prevention Services ...

Co-designing better housing services

How we brought content, service design and housing expertise together to create a simpler, more joined-up experience ...

What have drawings of peas got to do with prototyping digital services? www.platformland.xyz/ways-of-d…

The Pembroke Dock

New week, new work. This week I joined the Innovation & Analysis team in Digital Prevention Services at NHS England....

Why it’s important to thinking of public sector super apps from the viewpoint of ‘the system’, not just ‘the citizen’...

Lobster pots, complexity and starting small in the right way Or the case against use-cases https://www.platformland.x...

I can’t tell isn’t was just a late 80s early 90s blip (or age induced nostalgia), but it seemed when I was younger qu...

Elections and the Community Fund

I’ve mentioned the LocalGov Drupal Community Fund a few times now, so here’s more info on how it works and what we’ve...

In 2018 (ish) at Harvard Kennedy School I saw a talk about cyber (my poor filing system means I can’t find the notes)...

Discussing Practical AI for Projects

In March, I had the pleasure of attending one of my favourite conferences – Housing Technology. A notable development...

Popped in to see Larry

Given generative AI is all about predicting next words, when do I get a better spell check!? (I regularly have to Goo...

Good thoughts from @edent.tel on closing open-source repos because Mythos: https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2026/04/does-myth...

Marty Cagan’s ‘new standard’ for Product in the age of AI

Yesterday I joined a talk by Marty Cagan on the ‘new standard’ for product management in the age of AI. Marty’s main ...

Reflecting on VIPER and looking at future phases

See how VIPER has developed from a project in Cumbria into an open source platform designed to help emergency respond...

Keep coming back to this video in the context of AI-based public services: [www.youtube.com/watch If mentalizing / ep...

The Palintir mini manifesto at least makes it clear that if you buy their software you are buying it to a transnation...

End of week 1 Digital placement for Carlisle College T Level Students

Nine Carlisle College T Level students spent their first week gaining hands-on experience across digital, cyber secur...

Kickstarting collaboration during LGR

Earlier this month I attended LGR Camp in London, a get together of councils and suppliers who’re going through Local...

Having a gander at Goose

Today I’ve been having a play with Goose, a new AI agent that you can run on your local machine. No subscriptions, h...

This is beginning to feel like an inevitability: Davey says war bonds would help to speed up UK defence spending

Kingsdown, Kent

Stop searching for AI ‘use-cases’. Design AI into services… https://www.platformland.xyz/ways-of-doing/stop-searching...

The Dangers

This will be the last weeknote of this series (series 21!) which started last summer. I’ve finished up at MHCLG and S...

How to have a whip round

For international readers, a whip round is “an informal British phrase for collecting money from a group of people, o...

It’s all about the question

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about how to help people get started with AI. Not the technical side — there are pl...

A new flatpack collaborative model for the public sector

Following on from my post about software partnerships, I wanted to share a few findings from work finished late last ...