Paul Maltby

Where are the public sector reformers? Help us find them! When I joined the Institute for Government in 2013, the Government Digital Service (version 1.0) was in full swing. It provided an obvious…

Where are the public sector reformers? Help us find them! medium.com/kinship-work...

But this rapid tech change will have big implications and there appears to be little space outside of the political/media bear-pit to work these through, or how to mould policy, delivery and industry to our collective future advantage. So on balance I rather like Lucy's proposal and wish it well

Working in AI right now is like having one foot in the future. The speed of technology change makes the notion of civil service led 15-year strategy processes feel rather quaint. I worry that a big set piece strategy process would add to the noise and lethargy rather than practically help.

And before long the Government Digital Service had revolutionised the way in which longer-term public service design and delivery questions were framed, and did it with a mantra of 'The Strategy is Delivery'

I still mourn the loss of the practice of strategy and scenario work that pretty much ended with the decline of the PM's Strategy Unit and similar teams across government. But then again in 2010 my new Secretary of State asked, reasonably, along the lines of 'I set the strategy so what do you do?'

Enjoyed Lucy's lecture just now at @blavatnikschool.bsky.social on how to create the process to create a longer-term National Strategy for the UK

TransformGov Talks : September 2025 · Luma Dr Moira Nicolson, Lead Behavioural Scientist (Cabinet Office) and Honorary Research Fellow (UCL) plus Holly Marquez, Senior Behavioural Scientist, (Cabinet…

🚨 6PM, WED 24 September 🚨

Join us at the MoJ or online

* Dr Moira Nicolson & Holly Marquez "Failing Forward: Why Planning for AI Disasters Unlocks Breakthrough Innovation"
* ​Ben Sauer "Always Be Creating Clarity: Daily habits for strategic storytelling"

luma.com/sm09nslz

Please share! Thanks 🙏

Making a service map ...in a policy department Alice Whitehead writes about how the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities produced created a service map.

My old team at MHCLG made one see here publicpolicydesign.blog.gov.uk/2022/02/24/m...

And 'Frenchie' restaurant. Mmmm. Reminds me I need to go back to Paris maps.app.goo.gl/fzgLX5pJCbim...

Some years back when we were doing gov data stuff with the Etalab crew we hung out around the lovely Rue Montorgueil food market and local area, I think the 'Experimental' cocktail bar on Rue Saint Saveur was where we ended up. Who knows if it's still the same but I really liked this area of Paris

Where I have some thoughts on digital improvements that can follow from The Elections Strategy. I think the "digital notices" thing could be a really interesting pattern in legislation

The UK Gov Camp logo, which look like a fireball heading right. The top half is blue and rest is red. In the middle is a white line that looks like the river Thames.

UKGovCamp 2026 ( #ukgc26 ) will be in #Birmingham on Saturday 17 January 2026.

We need a venue:
1️⃣ for 250 people,
2️⃣ 8 breakout rooms,
3️⃣ wheelchair accessible.

@imhuyorks.bsky.social is leading the search.

Please share and reply with ideas 🙂

Don't worry he always gets a bit ;) 🐕

Moss the Airedale begging for some of my lunch

Omg, yep that's my Moss too 😂 Currently pleading for some omelette #Airedale

Inclined plane beer

Can *we all* sign it? The best cafe in the entire world

Oh god, hold on it was the 70s

‘I’ve not got a problem with making myself look disgusting’: the wild rise of Diane Morgan From Avon lady to TikTok superstar, Diane Morgan has become a global comedy darling. As her ‘disgusting’ show Mandy returns, she talks about why she almost asked the BBC to pull it – and why she prete...

Chuffed to see we're getting more Mandy. The show is made sweeter because in my *greatest role* (Joseph, aged 5) Mary was the most beautiful girl at infants school, one Mandy Carter. There is a kind of resemblance too, makes me wonder if 80's Nottingham Mandy is more famous than I realise...

So true. And such valuable work. Like with democracy club its just exasperating that something so fundamental to digital public services/democracy hasn't been done better by the state by now. That feeling is all the more bitter when I've been part of the efforts on the inside to try & improve it

It's imprinted on my brain alongside other data stuff I still re-worry about on a bad day including bloody paf (@jamesomalley.co.uk is on a mission to assuage my regrets), polling station data (@democracyclub.org.uk remain heroes) and water quality data (*gestures broadly and sadly*)

I know! And surely can't have been ten years ago, right? I mean that would make me *mumbles* years old and that would never do

Honestly I think this approach is the right answer now, plus there's lots of clever ways now to infer accuracy in a way that meets user needs. Just feeling a bit melancholy that we were so close to sorting it at source, and so many years ago :(

But I guess the problem could be fixed in a different way now without fixing a canonical list & ownership. The stuff we did with Loti and Beam on rough sleeping data was the moment I changed my view on this type of thing. Still, just feels more elegant to fix the underlying issue #CareerRegrets

I was mainly weeping for the failure to secure agreement to sort this simply at source when the challenge was in my (our) hands all those years ago. I wish it had panned out differently

I don't know the details but my guess is the resultant mistakes and uncertainties in routing cases and data wrongly causes error loops that a team of people have to rectify, probably manually. There is prob delays and frustrations for the end user

Good q. This was in a longer list of challenges for one of those longstanding boring bits of process administration software, of which there's hundreds (thousands?) across the UK gov

DCLG builds local authorities register | UKAuthority

One for any of my old colleagues from the GDS registers team, ten years on. In a list of challenges for a big operational gov service today: 'There is no authoritive list of local authorities'. *weeps quietly in the corner* www.ukauthority.com/articles/dcl...

Intriguing, yes would be interested to read something on that 👍

And fwiw I think the forthcoming wave of AI will require a new coalition of roles cross gov - perhaps 'Transformational Operations'. Not like big set piece digital programmes we've come to expect in ops teams (where we see them), but a radical reframing of the core business models of core processes

Don't bring policy and delivery closer together - make them the same thing <span class="excerpt_part">...April. If you’re an employer and due to pay the levy in April, you can register for the <strong>service</strong> now. If you’re interested in the <strong>service</strong>...

I still reach for @jereeve.bsky.social's paper that helped kick off #OneTeamGov as the reform I'd like to see scale from a structural gov point of view, although many gov teams do much better at this now than they did in 2017 sfadigital.blog.gov.uk/2017/03/24/d...