James Kemp

We are hiring two content designers to join Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS). We mostly work remotely, with our team members spread across multiple locations. Apply by 10am on Monday 14 July: www.civilservicejobs.service.gov.uk/csr/jobs.cgi...

ONS was an early attempt to move out of London. I suspect the locations were chosen more for other reasons than recruiting new statisticians. They thought people would move (which they didn't).

With hindsight they should have picked a couple of uni towns that had great stats professors.

The Highlands of Scotland has gone the same way. Used to be the signal was left behind in the central belt, with a glimmer around Inverness and Fort William.

Now there are masts everywhere.

Got to the point where you go up the mountain if you need help!

That would be fab, thanks.

I've got a bit of my job about trying to join up across government and the public sector in Scotland. So keen to do this sort of thing more.

Also I enjoy it anyway

I somehow managed to miss all the advertising for this and didn't know it was on until too late.

Is there a sign up for the next one?

Worth mentioning it'll be 2 Sept in Edinburgh and 26 Sept in Glasgow.

Both events in the Govt Hub starting at 10:00.

Am just clearing through loads of stuff before going on holiday.

I'm organising some workshops on using Liberating Structures in Edinburgh and Glasgow in September for civil servants (SG, UK depts & ALBs). PM me if interested and I will send details when I'm back from holiday

GovCamp Scotland attendees at Edinburgh Futures Institute

Good vibes, kilts and planning at today’s GovCamp Scotland at Edinburgh Futures Institute #GovCampScotland

Sort of vaguely still here, but lost the spark for social media for some reason.

Will no doubt get back on with it in the fullness of time....

"The triumph of joy over hatred".

We should all aspire to this.

Me standing in the snow next to the cairn on top of Càrn Liath (on the Bheinn a' ghlo). It's cloudy and windy up here, and about 0°C but doesn't feel too cold out of the wind. Càrn Liath is my 10th Munro.

Tha mi air mullach Càrn Liath. 'S e mo dheicheamh Rothach a th' ann an Càrn Liath.

Tha sneachd ann, agus gaothach. Ach chan eil i cho fhuar.

Isn't it just!

White fluffy clouds in a blue sky. Under them are rolling hills and a few mountains with a smidgen of snow surmounting their peaks. In the middle ground a few burns wind through the peat bog. All I can hear is the gurgling of water and the squeaks of small animals in the heather. A gentle breeze keeps me cool.

Stopped for some coffee

Me in my mountain walking jacket and fluorescent yellow high Vis hat. In the background is the mountain Càrn Liath, which is pretty bare with an obvious track all the way to the top.

Made a resolution to walk in the hills at least one day a month. Almost missed it in Feb.

About to go up Càrn Liath near Blair Atholl

Not yet. Will look at that when I'm back home after work!

I bought it for my son, so I'll need to wait for him to come back from uni before I get to play it again.

Would very much like to play with more people too.

Clans of Caledonia Lead your unique Scottish clan to economic might via production, trade, and export.

Played Clans of Caledonia 2 times on 2025-01-23 boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/21... #bggplay via @boardgamegeek.com

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Correct. If the birthdate field contains corrupt or mismatched data, it defaults to 1875-05-20, which serves as a flag. May 20, 1875, is the day the international standards and metrics treaty was signed. Everything is a conspiracy when you don’t know how anything works.

An egg with a thin stick stuck through it and held over glowing embers of a wood fire. The trick is to gently tap the shell many times with a knife until the shell breaks but the membrane inside it doesn't. You then need a sharpened and cleaned green stick about 4mm in diameter to stick through the egg and put over the hottest part of the fire quickly so that the white starts to congeal, which will seal the egg while the rest of the inside cooks.

The cooked egg, peeled (and also half eaten). The darker part on the bottom left of the egg is the shadow from the phone camera. The light is from my head torch and I didn't quite have the angles right. The egg is almost hard boiled, although some of the yolk was still soft.

Did some backwoods cooking with my explorers the other night. I reprised the "egg on a stick" and took more photos this time!

Apropos of nothing in particular: I know some people prefer videos, but if you must do a video guide to <thing>, please also do a written piece so that those of us who don't want to sit through a long video can scan the written piece for the bits we need. Thank you.

Not just this talk - a large number of presentations at Public Sector AI Week look excellent. Confusingly they're not all about AI - which is great.

I find it truly remarkable the number of intelligent, knowledgeable people who have been bamboozled by LLM-based chatbots. Just a total inability to believe any scholarly evidence to the contrary, and total investment in their own emotional fallibility as truth.

The One Team Gov Logo, which is a square rotated slightly clockwise, in the middle of which reads, "One Team Gov".

The weekly One Team Gov breakfast is starting back up 🥳

Initially it'll be virtual only, from 0830 to 0930 every Wednesday.

We'll use leancoffeetable.com to facilitate the discussion.

The videoconference will be on Microsoft Teams.

Q: Would you like to run 1 of them, please?

With pleasure!

Wanna hear more about citizen participation in policymaking?

Wanna hear more about the new era of government digital?

Of course you do!

Sign up for this 👇🏽, it'll be awsm

Once a month on a Monday, we want to offer the data community some motivating words! Here's ours for today: Data architecture is the blueprint for achieving business goals with data. This means that everything you are doing MATTERS as it underpins the success of everything else!

The Ordnance Survey map app is currently half price – £17.50 for a full year, giving you access to every map, at every level of detail, plus nifty route planning tools. You can also download maps to use offline. Way better for walking than Google Maps.

shop.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/maps/os-maps...

Absolutely agree with your points on SCS and valuing delivery. Since being promoted I've apparently stopped being a high performer because I prioritise delivery.

There's NAO and IPA reports praising what I made happen, but that cuts no ice in the performance system.

I'm available for nuGDS now.

I did about three years, then had a year doing other stuff. Spent most of the following decade doing other sorts of transformation and having the same issues.

Oddly I'd love to go back into digital now, but can't find a vacancy.

Today I've mostly been prepping a workshop on innovation for tomorrow to talk through some of the tools I've used.

It's been fun going back over notes on previous projects. Not sure how I'm going to cram it down and have time for a proper discussion.

Mostly I want people to be inspired to try.