Tom Steel

The other good analogy (but more complex to visualise) is a restaurant - the user is focused on enjoying a meal, but there needs to be a building, staff, ingredients, fire safety, furniture, payments system, alcohol license, plates and cutlery, cold storage, gas and electric supplies etc.

Would something like this help? For users, they see a rope, but in government, a service is comprised of many different threads which may be visible to different extents.

All careers lead to tech.

(If you want them to)

"Fail fast" is not a viable approach to software construction. There's no benefit in constant failure. What we want to do is succeed fast. Do that with small batches and frequent corrections based on feedback. That's not "failure," it's just part of the process.
1/2

When Face Recognition Doesn’t Know Your Face Is a Face An estimated 100 million people live with facial differences. As face recognition tech becomes widespread, some say they’re getting blocked from accessing essential systems and services.

“There are few things more dehumanizing than being told by a machine that you’re not real because of your face"

For the last month, I've been speaking to people living with facial differences and disfigurements about how face verification tech is failing them. Spoiler: things aren't going well

Europe's largest city council delays fix to disastrous Oracle system once more System meant to go live in 2021 costing £20M awaits reimplementation with new £170M price tag Europe's largest local authority has delayed the introduction of a vital income management system (IMS) amid confirmation that total spending on a disastrous Oracle implementation could hit £170 million (c $230 million).…

Europe's largest city council delays fix to disastrous Oracle system once more

The air is hissing out of the overinflated AI balloon Are tech giants getting nervous? They should be Opinion  There tend to be three AI camps. 1) AI is the greatest thing since sliced bread and will transform the world. 2) AI is the spawn of the Devil and will destroy civilization as we know it. And 3) "Write an A-Level paper on the themes in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet."…

The air is hissing out of the overinflated AI balloon

Trust

Day 1/30 sharing my favorite doodles and drawings.

Greatness Is Serving the real story behind Orient's newest mural: a picture of compassion, loyalty and gratitude

GREATNESS IS SERVING

Read the full story of a very special evening at Leyton's Coach & Horses, where some very special guests helped us tell the full story behind the fantastic new #LOFC mural - and all in a very deserving cause...

What checks? Some bsky.app/profile/f0p....

Microsoft admits it 'cannot guarantee' data sovereignty Under oath in French Senate, exec says it would be compelled – however unlikely – to pass local customer info to US admin Microsoft says it "cannot guarantee" data sovereignty to customers in France – and by implication the wider European Union – should the Trump administration demand access to customer information held on its servers.…

Microsoft admits it 'cannot guarantee' data sovereignty

At least you didn’t get covered in everyone’s beer when that equaliser went in!

Conspiracy theorists should be required to do work experience in government departments so they can see firsthand the impossibility of any vast secret government conspiracies.

Cheerleading is a team sport.

David R. Hagen just solved a small mystery that I mentioned 13 years ago in the mouseover text of a comic drhagen.com/blog/the-mis...

Extract: Using AI to unlock historic planning data This week, the Prime Minister officially launched Extract, the AI tool which the Digital Planning programme in MHCLG and the Incubator for Artificial Intelligence are developing to transform decades o...

Here’s some of the background on Extract, which the Prime Minister announced on Monday, plus the detail on how we incubated the proof-of-concept.

There’s boatloads more discovery and alpha work to do. Went full techno-realist with the open para. mhclgdigital.blog.gov.uk/2025/06/12/e...

Some helpful examples there, but it disappointingly tars health imaging with the same brush as language interpretation. AI use in cancer imaging has proven to be a success, finding cancers missed by doctors.

AI ≠ bad.

How the OS is bringing slopey roofs to homes near you The UK’s emissions targets are ambitious. The Ordnance Survey's new Slopey Roofs project may see them being met faster than suspected.

How the OS is bringing Slopey Roofs to homes near you

“… and combines it with findings from the Met Office, including information on the sun’s position at specific times and dates, to provide users with the Slopey Roofs tool for assessing the efficiency of roofs for solar panel installation.”

The Secret Barrister ebook by The Secret Barrister - Rakuten Kobo Read "The Secret Barrister Stories of the Law and How It's Broken" by The Secret Barrister available from Rakuten Kobo. **Writing as S. J. Fleet, The Secret Barrister's first novel, The Cut Throat Tri...

The 99p offer is also available via Kobo, for people looking for a different ebook supplier: www.kobo.com/gb/en/ebook/...

Met Office building with green trees and blue sky

Would you like to use our new-look weather app? 📲

We’re doing a major upgrade of our Met Office weather app. And we’d love you to try it out, and tell us what you think.

Sign-up to get the test version ⤵️

response.questback.com/isa/qbv.dll/...

it's simple really

There’s a great interview with Nick Park about Wallace And Gromit in last month’s Empire, and this bit in particular stood out. It sums up what artists have been trying to say about AI. The mistakes and the learning aren’t things to be bypassed, but a vital part of the process 🤟

The hidden recovery story at the heart of Leyton Orient's own resurgence Director of football Martin Ling took over a 'football bomb site' and it turned it into one of the EFL's best clubs to support - he speaks to Daniel Storey

I think that one of the best clubs in the country to support at the moment might be...Leyton Orient.

It's not just the redemption and the potential, but the human story here. For that, you need to speak to Martin Ling.

inews.co.uk/sport/footba...

On this day 12 years ago, @kcg.bsky.social posted the “This is Fine” comic.

Accessibility monitoring of public sector websites and mobile apps from 2022 to 2024

@da.vebrig.gs your LinkedIn post about a standards regime; how do you score LAs in meeting users needs, when they’re the only people who have the info to know what their needs are?
Generic testing (like SOCITM or GDS Accessibility) will have limited value, but some ranking is better than nothing?

Scientists Asked People To Do 1 Thing Differently While Taking A Walk. The Results Were Astounding. “It [creates] an amazing cascade of physiology that we can find almost any day and is very good for you,”

“You know, while you’re out on your walk, go some place where you might feel a little child-like wonder and look around — look at the small things and look at the big things and just follow that sense of mystery and wonder.’
That’s all we asked them to do.”
www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/awe-wo...

Scientists Asked People To Do 1 Thing Differently While Taking A Walk. The Results Were Astounding. “It [creates] an amazing cascade of physiology that we can find almost any day and is very good for you,”

Reminds me of this I saw about the benefits of bringing some awe into your life www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/awe-wo...

Joke? Toblerones are no joke.

Comes down to how you measure success - if doing something as fast as possible was always the measure, we wouldn’t have speed limits or traffic calming measures.
Ensuring a resilient, effective and useful service means some parts need to be delivered slowly.

Angie Forson – Medium Read writing from Angie Forson on Medium. I love to travel, learn new things, and ensure that products and content I create, focuses on the needs of the end user.

A new Local Gov weeknote for you to follow; Angie Forson, new at Southwark, is sharing her experience as web and digital programme lead. Hear about Ping Pong, the Open Digital Cooperative and what’s on her reading list. One to watch!

angieforson.medium.com