Neil Tamplin

"Transformation isn’t about forcing change through sheer will. It's about creating environments where testing and learning feels natural and inevitable."

public.digital/pd-insights/...

[Make things open] Picking a platform As a side-effect of my evangelism for working in the open I semi-regularly get asked for recommendations about which publishing platform someone should use and how they should get started. Firstly …

[Make things open] Picking a platform

digitalbydefault.com/2025/06/08/m...

When I am yabbering on about working in the open I sometimes get asked my opinion about what platform to use so I decided to write my really basic advice up for any future asks.

You know Data Orchard? They're good people doing great work, helping not-for-profits get better with data.

They're recruiting an Analytics Engineer, look:
https://www.dataorchard.org.uk/news/use-your-data-skills-were-recruiting-for-analyst-engineer

Deadline 7th July.
RT welcome!

#jobs

👋 Anyone got great examples of annual report / review for a public sector org?

Accessible, no fluff and waffle, to the point. HTML not designed for print as vanity document?

Bonus point if you have any evidence to back up design approach?

Context windows — 5 perspectives on gen AI Product for the people is an unconference for public sector product-ish people. The seventh edition was held in London on 4 April. Kicking…

Lovely sketch-notes from one of the participants! medium.com/@karinasketc...

Mindful friction for AI Product for the people is an unconference for public sector product-ish people. The seventh edition was held in London on 4 April. Dev…

Karina’s gone and published her sketchnotes from @devmoran.bsky.social's talk too! medium.com/@karinasketc...

Eject disk. A manifesto for everyone stuck in the system that keeps crashing you. What follows here isn’t a framework or a fix—it’s a declaration. A reckoning. And a call to return to ourselves before we try to ...

The best thing I’ve read in ages. (Hat tip to @twice0.bsky.social for sharing originally.)

brilliantcrank.com/eject-disk/

We've opened a ticket ballot for GovCamp Scotland 2025 www.govcamp.scot/tickets.

Please register and spread the word 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

This promises to be a great opportunity to connect with people involved in digital across the public sector in Scotland. Tickets to be released next week…

If you have some training budget you would like to use up before the end of the financial year, I have some availability for coaching sessions. Make an inquiry here, let me know your timescales and anything else important and I will be in touch.
21cmindset.com/inquiry/

We just had an epiphany: in a world of Al nothing will be as valuable as humans! .•• Ok you can laugh at us for realizing it so late, but we are going to kick off work to allow Klarna to become the best at offering a human to speak to!!! So excited about this, more to come! We will continue to invest and improve our Al support. But the truth is the cost savings it generates and improvement in quality. Allows us to double down on making sure the human service part of Klarna becomes even better. More to come!

Klarna, the company that got so much press for dropping customer service and replacing them with AI, is now saying that they are now going to "become the best at offering a human to speak to." Great stuff!

Mentoring | Cyber Women

Hello folks interested in user research! I've opened up a couple slots a week to offer free mentoring/advice/CV reviews. Take a look here: www.cyberwomen.co.uk/mentoring if you're keen

Love using Obsidian! Highly recommend

If you're involved with #localgov #digital then this event is for you.

Meet with Theo Blackwell, who is looking at how the new digital centre might collaborate and innovate with local government to deliver the blueprint for modern digital government.

events.teams.microsoft.com/event/73aad7...

Cyfle cyffrous i fod yn rhan o Fwrdd Ymddiriedolwyr ProMo Cymru ⭐️ Awyddus i groesawu wynebau newydd i greu bwrdd amrywiol a chynhwysol. Yn croesawu ceisiadau gan ferched ac unigolion o gefndiroedd lleiafrifoedd ethnig yn arbennig ✅ Manylion pellach yma: promo.cymru/cy/2025/02/0...

Great opportunity to join our Trustee Board. Click the link to find out more.

How else could chatbots be made more appealing? The popularity of r1’s chain of thought suggests that they should communicate more about their process, and in particular offer the user guidance on how to refine their queries when they don’t get the answer they’re looking for. Just telling users how a chatbot understood their question seems to build an outsized amount of trust. I also think there’s something appealing about r1’s humility — in conveying its own lack of certainty, it sounds less like the authoritative robots we have come to expect and more like Star Wars’ C-3PO. That’s somewhat counterintuitive — I don’t know many people who think the final form of superintelligence is a bumbling droid — and yet too often we forget how alien and unapproachable these systems remain to all but the most devoted AI nerds.

DeepSeek took off in part because, in a first, it offered a reasoning model that explains to you what it's doing. Its success shows how little AI product teams have done so far to make their products appealing to normal people: www.platformer.news/deepseek-des...

"DOGE has become the great Wishing Well of political punditry." // The difficulties of IT modernization in large organizations, well explained in a mini-case study. It's always people and culture, etc. open.substack.com/pub/arnoldkl...

Hello 🙂 I'm looking for my next public sector role and would appreciate your support. Let me know if you hear of anything or wanna catch up. #OpenToWork

💼 Preferably agile delivery manager.
📜 Open to contract, permanent or temporary roles.
🌎 Remote or based in Manchester, London or Sheffield.

If anyone knows of any office furniture going spare in Cardiff, please let me know

Gadewch i mi wybod o unrhyw ddodrefn swyddfa sbâr yng Nghaerdydd

Microsoft is using Bing to trick people into thinking they’re on Google It’s the latest attempt to get people to use Bing instead of Google.

ddn't have this on my bing card

Congrats on the first weeknote. 👏👏👏

I think my #localgov chums would be fascinated by the podcast “The Fifth Floor” (Y Pumed Llawr) by former Welsh Government minister @waterslee.bsky.social . It’s a fascinating description of what happens when a huge _scope_ meets (relatively) limited _scale_ meets … a complex workforce environment.

We’re All in ‘Dark Mode’ Now How light-on-black became a way of life

I must confess, I'm a bit of a 'dark mode' enjoyer. 🙋‍♂️

www.theatlantic.com/technology/a...

Software, the Tough Tomato Principle, and the Great Weirdening of the World Marshall McLuhan’s theory that “the medium is the message” famously describes how media are not neutral. Rather, a medium’s nature has a deep impact on the very content of its messages. One…

Software, the Tough Tomato Principle, and the Great Weirdening of the World

Resilience comes in different flavours.
Absorbing an unexpected shock and ‘bouncing back’, can cause a change, but retaining your purpose and identity is an important characteristic to survive in a volatile world. Be more salt marsh.
- Chris Bolton
whatsthepont.blog/2024/11/19/b...

It amuses me that the dog thinks she’s perfectly camouflaged.

Any good e-recruitment software out there that align to Gds Standards?

And also handle bilingual / multi-language

A flow chart titled: Should I say resources? Do you mean people? If yes, say people If no Do you mean people and things? If yes say People and the things If no Do you mean things? If yes, say the things

Reposting my popular post from elsewhere. It's still relevant 6 years later. I made a handy flowchart called "Should I say resources?" Please use as needed.

I’ve said “do we *definitely* need to do that before Christmas?” a lot this week. Solidarity. ✊