Rob McCarthy

Thanks everyone who came to listen to our talk about "Share & Reuse by Design" at @sdingov.bsky.social ! It's great to start conversations with people from other departments who are as dedicated to normalising and enabling reuse as we are. <3
@robjmccarthy.bsky.social #sdingov

My knees hurt reading this!

AI needs to disappear It’s the middle of 2025 and AI is everywhere. But, I think it should disappear.

Why I think AI needs to disappear: medium.com/@robertjmcca...

Well done Shaun. Doing your kids proud in more ways than one.

And, some courage to push back against the detractors that are comfortable in the status quo. The status quo being; what worked in the past but has now let the boulder roll back a tad.

Having a jam is 100% the best way to make hours of time vanish.

Well… that, and playing Age of Empires.

Has any pre-and-post analysis of the efficiency drive been carried out on X (formerly known as Twitter)?

I’m curious as to what the impact was on user experience, product revenue, business objectives, ethics, etc.

Does anyone know?

You first.

Gee! Finally already.

None of this is to complain about what anyone is doing (love your work @andyjones.bsky.social). But the centre have responsibilities and so do departments.

There are attempts to do more by all… but is it enough?

Is the current model and system frustrating enough to drive change @bowsy.co.uk?

Can the centre really be responsible for it all?

And if they aren’t, can departments be responsible for contributing but potentially then not have their needs met?

Someone has to take the charge on this and solve it structurally rather than stealthily. Which is where I think it’s failing.

I love this convo, but I wish it was more than just a convo.

And, it is frustrating. So frustrating. And it should be so frustrating that it’s being actively solved.

But, who is it frustrating for? I’d argue it’s not frustrating enough for anyone within the current system.

Using Figma is a hill I’ll die on What’s with all the vitriol? It’s just a tool.

Using Figma is a hill I’ll die on: medium.com/@robertjmcca...

Not come across any on GOV.UK (not to say there isn’t any though) but I have seen them in use across front-line NHS digital products for privacy and security reasons, and also for security reasons on internal facing products in gov.

A digital delivery squad model that Government should widely adopt… …and Spotify should actually use.

With a blueprint for modern digital government having been recently released, it got me thinking: what does an effective digital delivery model actually look like?

I thought so much about it, I put pen-to-paper and wrote a blog post: medium.com/@robertjmcca...

There’s a lot to be excited about in the blueprint for modern digital government — Laura Yarrow Last week was quite the ride. We kicked the week off with our Secretary of State (SoS), Peter Kyle, announcing the new Digital Centre, and blueprint for modern digital gov at the GDS office in Londo...

This week I sat down and wrote some thoughts down on the Blueprint for Modern Digital Government. Tldr? : Exciting, bold, and hugely ambitious. Bring it on. www.laurayarrow.net/blog/theres-a-lot-to-be-excited-about-in-the-blueprint-for-modern-digital-government

Government digital servicesX-GOVUK

Blueprint for modern digital government: “Create an inventory of services to measure the progress of service modernisation and publish a version of this in the open.”

Woop woop! 🎉

You’re welcome to start with this?

govuk-digital-services.herokuapp.com

Those terms are certainly eye-rolling-public-sector-jargon.

But, I’m running several successful workstreams on the MoJ Design System. The workstreams are producing excellent work, far from mediocre.

I think the difference is the who, what and how of delivery, rather than what it’s called.

Sounds amazing Shaun, well done to you and your team.

Is this to improve the “handover” of Figma designs to development internally on the GOV Design System team? Or is this to embed Figma into the GOV Design System with accessibility annotations on a central Figma file?

This 👆

We have an amazing Accessibility Specialist that is embedded within the team alongside a fantastic Content Designer, Interaction Designer and Developer. Accessibility is important to the entire team but having an Accessibility Specialist on hand means we can go above mere compliance.

Interruption card - MoJ Design System Design your service using MoJ styles, components and patterns

Sorry to interrupt… but the MoJ Design System have released a component today.

We now have an Interruption card in the Ministry of Justice’s design system, and I have to say it, but the work of the team is at another level.

🤩🤩🤩

design-patterns.service.justice.gov.uk/components/i...

Without calling out any design systems, what does a “best practice” section look like?

Amazing! Well done.

Yes to all you’ve said Dave, thanks for sharing your tips.

And yes to making it as easy for the consuming user as possible. I think that’s definitely key, especially if it comes to a PM prioritising a backlog.

“Why do we need to spend time updating this thing when we already have it”.

An amazing community resource. Thanks for sharing it Frankie.

Morning @greateranglia.bsky.social 👋

Design System folk: I would love to hear tips and techniques you’ve tried and tested to encourage adoption of improved components?

Or another, somewhat corporate way of putting it, what change management techniques have you successfully applied?

It’s easy encouraging teams to adopt a new component into a design system. Right?! It’s shiny… ooohhh aaahhh!

But, how about encouraging adoption of an improved component, especially when a team already has said component in their product. Now that’s harder.

🧵

You’d get more engagement to your post if you had written ‘I love Sharepoint’. That would have been click baity. Probs have gone viral.

Instead, you’re just truth saying.