Andy Gordon

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

Alpha is discovery Discovery is about understanding problems. Alpha is about exploring solutions. When viewed as separate stages, what we learn when exploring solutions cannot feed back into what we understand about the...

When working with teams looking at developing proofs-of-concept, I try to avoid describing it as a discovery – tangible, proven results are the goal.

An alpha-discovery loop is what it is. visitmy.website/2022/04/09/a...

Hi Bluesky – excited to officially introduce ourselves!

We're Earth Species Project, a non-profit decoding animal communication with advanced AI to illuminate the diverse intelligences on earth.

Follow us to join the conversation as we explore the future of interspecies understanding! 💙 🌍

I’m looking at tickets for HowTheLightGetsIn.

Has anyone been?

I’d love to understand how family friendly it is!

#howthelightgetsin

Our key takeaways from UKGovCamp 2025 Ellie, Andy and Miles recently headed to UKGovCamp to share ideas and tackle challenges around making public services work better for everyone. In this blog, they reflect on key themes and takeaways.

Here's me and @andy-gordon.bsky.social reflecting on a wonderful #ukgc25 torchbox.com/blog/takeawa... lots of creative & problem solving fuel and community vibes from a brilliant day

Definitely Ellie!!!

I don't know why it didn't strike me before, but v glad that today's conversations helped shake loose the thought that a library is (partly) a vehicle for literacy, so maybe a National Data Library can be (partly) about data literacy for everyone. Maybe it has to be. #ukgc25

A massive thank you to all the organisers, campmakers and volunteers who make UKGovCamp the best unconference event. #ukgc25 was a joyous and hopeful thing

UKGovCamp was brilliant.

Passionate people coming together to explore big questions.

How might we ask better questions?
Make reality-based decisions that reflect the cyclical and complex nature of government?
What future roles and culture is needed to realise change and attract talent?
#ukgc25

I’d love the catch up Cathy and hope we’ll bump into each - especially given a shared passion for all things SD.

Excited to be attending #ukgc25 for the first time tomorrow!

I’ve have only heard amazing things, and the lead-up has been exceptional— clear, kind and wonderfully inclusive.

Who else is going?

My first time too Gabi! Hopefully see you there!

Reform of the state has to deliver for people Speech on reforming the public sector delivered by the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Pat McFadden at University College London, Stratford.

It's encouraging to hear the government's planned reform of the state, with Pat McFadden highlighting how digital services can work better for everyone:

"Start with something small and try it out. Test it on people. Fix the problems. Change the design. Test it again."

www.gov.uk/government/s...

Having read the transcript, I agree. The ‘start-up’ headlines haven’t helped. The acknowledgement of complexity, unpredictability, and the need to ‘test and learn’, whilst recognising digital as an enabler, definitely feels like the right direction to me!

Yes my first time! Would be lovely to catch up!

Excited to get a ticket to @ukgovcamp.bsky.social.

Who else will be there?

Bristol's first 'Safe Space' for a night out will start this weekend The pilot project is starting after a police chief's niece was stuck waiting for a bus for hours and continually approached by men

BREAKING: Bristol’s first ‘safe space’ for people on a night out is to be trialled in the city centre this weekend.
Idea comes from a police sergeant whose niece had to wait ages for a bus home one night & was continually approached by men.
Full story 👇🏼

www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol...

YouTube video by Google Design Design Is [Messy] : Approaches to engaging with complexity

Still one of my favourites.....

Design Is [Messy] : Approaches to engaging with complexity

www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZEd...

We often see scaling approached by replicating the same solution across diverse contexts. In reality, adaptive strategies like diffusion, decomposition and recomposition work better, tailoring innovations to local dynamics but that requires a very different way of seeing scaling & funding models!

Innovation: Evidence Review This evidence review synthesises key research and policy questions related to place-based innovation, focusing on strengthening local innovation ecosystems across the UK.

“Innovation policies are increasingly 'shifting away from top-down and centralised approaches towards policies that favour cooperative, multi-actor and often more 'place-based' approaches”.
Read our @lpiphub.bsky.social evidence review on #innovation here:

www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/cit...

Changes in global temperature (1850-2023)

Find similar graphics for your country or city: www.ShowYourStripes.info

#ShowYourStripes

A radical invitation to collaborate How can we transform public service design and delivery by focusing on the power of human relationships? We talked to Nick Kimber and Osian Jones of London Borough of Camden to explore how they are ch...

How can we transform public service design and delivery by focusing on the power of human relationships?

We talked to @nick80.bsky.social and Osian Jones about the work being done at Camden Council to build a new relational approach to public services. www.ucl.ac.uk/policy-lab/n...

Brilliant article on alternative approaches to complex problems at scale.

We’re excited to announce the speakers for our upcoming unconference shaping the future of AI policy for creative industries!

On 19th November hear from:

@mialeslie.bsky.social, Lex Fefegha, Dr Erinma Ochu, Dr Susan Oman, and Henry Cooke!

Tickets: lu.ma/q03v8qrb

Promising Trouble 5 Nov Written By Rachel Coldicutt OBE and Dr Matt Dowse What good is innovation if it doesn't work for everyone? An open invitation to a thinking party on community-driven technologies and inclusive growth.

Rather than accruing benefits only to a small, socially elite group of innovators, a truly modern innovation economy must seek to create more plural, more equitable opportunities that are accessible beyond major research institutions and massive tech corporations, that prioritise regeneration over extraction, and that uplift and empower people and communities in their diversity. "Small" in this case does not mean a lack of ambition; it denotes a lack of concentration - a tendency towards pluralism, and an embrace of many possible, parallel realities and futures that are imagined within limits. The resource intensive nature of modern technologies at scale make these steps urgent, and it seems likely that a shift to smaller-scale and more distributed approaches to computing will become an imperative over the coming decade. [4]

1. Funding: What needs to shift to make viable technology investment that prioritises long-term social returns rather than short-term profit and status? 2. Measurement: What are the metrics and measurement approaches that will make this attractive to policy makers? 3. Infrastructure: What infrastructures are needed to foster long-term, vision-led investments in technology capabilities that prioritise equitable, regenerative, health societies?

4. Intelligences: What interventions are needed to enable technologies to be created and altered to enable a "repertoire of intelligences" [5] rather than support returns to a small number of Silicon Valley companies and investors? 5. Organising: What methods of organising are needed? What does organising in this new normal look like? How can communities organise for a new innovation economy?

Don't pace around nervously! Read this new essay by me and Matt Dowse from the Centre for Sociodigital Futures.

What if innovation were rethought as if people, rather than firms, are the things that matter most?

www.promisingtrouble.net/blog/innovat...

@carefultrouble.bsky.social

Approaching a National Data Library: lessons from GOV.UK Registers These insights offer valuable considerations for anyone working on data infrastructure initiatives, digital transformation in government, or building platforms that serve collective public needs.

me: I've lost my writing mojo
also me: let me just write and publish a thing I've been stewing on, off & on, since 2018.
Anyway. I wrote about Registers, and a National Data Library. Sort of. I'd love to know what you think. torchbox.com/blog/nationa...

What might a Policy Standard in government look like? Government is becoming more familiar with doing user-centred policy design, whether in creating programmes, support interventions, funding or even legislation. This post discusses the potential for a ...

I am loving the blogging activity from MHCLG lately, and this is a great provocation for a post-Budget Friday mhclgdigital.blog.gov.uk/2024/10/30/w... - skipping to the weekend with daydreams of solve-a-whole-problem systems-level policy design bouncing round my brain.

The long slog of public service transformation Recipes for sustained slow change

"Designing public services is a baton relay ultramarathon. We pick it up from those before us, carry it for a bit, and hand the baton to the generation after us."

medium.com/the-service-...

Yes, I'm in Sharon!

Thank you!