Kind of Digital

Dave — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 16:13:53 +0000

Adam Wainwright, Senior Content Designer in the GOV.UK Content Operations team writes Launching GOV.UK’s new content and publishing guidance:

Around 3,000 people across government publish content on GOV.UK. That’s a significant number of individuals using our tools and writing to a consistent style and standard. In the GOV.UK Content Operations team at the Government Digital Service (GDS), we’re at the end of a major project to improve the guidance for government publishers. This has culminated in the launch of the new GOV.UK Content and publishing guidance site, which brings together all relevant guidance in one easy-to-navigate place for the first time.

Dave — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 16:05:43 +0000

Dave Richardson of Newark and Sherwood District Council shares his reflections on the recent LGR Camp hosted at the council’s offices:

Kate from Cumberland Council had attendees listening intently as she shared some warts and all experiences, though it is clear that the challenges are all worth it as progress is slowly made to shape teams and systems into the new normal. A fascinating point was about people’s skills and whilst many in county organisations often have depth of knowledge due to tighter role remits, the breadth and flexibility of District/Borough Council staff is also highly valued.

Well worth a read in full on their localgov.blog hosted blog 😀

Dave — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 15:34:08 +0000

My friends at Optima Digital Solutions are highlighting a security issue with the Granicus govService platform:

On Friday 5th June, the MHCLG sent out a notice to authorities regarding a security advisory identified on the Granicus govService platform.

This notice was raised as a result of Optima informing an affected authoritity about exposed tokens as part of a wider vulnerability scan we do across authorities using the Granicus govService platform, even for those who are not our clients. We do this for the good of the public sector, which is possible thanks to our extensive understanding of the Granicus govService platform.

If you need help sorting this issue out, or have any other Granicus support needs, I can wholeheartedly recommend them – they’ve done sterling work for a number of my customers.

Dave — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 10:57:31 +0000

My battle with GoDaddy customer support continues over my borked locali.se domain. In the meantime, dave@sensibletech.co.uk will still reach me 😩

Dave — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 10:45:51 +0000

Matt Hill-Wood – Co-designing digital planning products at scale:

Certain principles were clear:

Councils, particularly the people closest to the ‘frontline’ of planning services, need to be as close to product decisions as possible

Decisions must be informed by voices from a range of councils, so that the outputs work in a variety of contexts

Central government should tread lightly in order to create genuine and sustainable partnerships by ensuring council teams have agency at all times.

Dave — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 10:30:50 +0000

This looks like an important read – the first from from the House of Commons Science, Innovation and Technology Committee on Rewiring the state: Delivering digital government:

Our inquiry identified four building blocks for successful digital transformation, and four barriers to realising its benefits. The building blocks are:

Money: Money is undoubtedly being spent on digital initiatives but inadequate data on digital spend prevents the government from making informed decisions or holding those responsible to account.

People: The public sector needs more of the right people to deliver digital transformation of the state, and cultural change to ensure skills are valued and embedded in leadership levels.

Information and data security: The current government is not holding itself to the standards of information security needed to secure public trust, or to prevent massive data breaches from happening again.

Delivery: The government has a vision but needs a plan to deliver it. There is still time to turn things around but without a detailed, measurable plan, this digital transformation agenda may not succeed.

Dave — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 08:34:17 +0000

Jason Snell on the proliferation of vibe-coded Mac apps, and his experience of making one himself:

The process of building the app reinforced something I’ve been thinking about for quite a while: coding is a specific skill, but it’s only one part of a much larger process. Great developers aren’t necessarily great coders, though they can be. Apps must be envisioned, their specifications defined. The act of trying to describe an app to an AI coding engine is a clarifying one. The more you describe the app, the harder your brain has to work, because it’s always more complicated than you think it’s going to be. The decisions you make determine what the app comes to be. It’s authorship of a sort, but defined in a way that takes the writing of code out of the equation, which is weird, since the act of coding has usually been an inextricable part of the process of making software.

Dave — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 08:23:29 +0000

Good, thoughtful stuff from Steve Messer in his latest week note:

My main hypothesis is that the existing set of products, platforms and enabling services was not built for a joined-up, personalised paradigm. Service teams are attempting to better meet the needs of patients and users in that more joined-up world, but what’s available to them doesn’t help in an ideal way…

Alongside this, there’s the tendency to want to solve common problems with big platforms. This is an organisational want – it doesn’t come from the teams. But big platforms that solve many needs take a long time to research, architect and build. By the time it’s ready, the need hasn’t been met, expectations have changed, and it’s time to think about a new big platform.

A digital standard for local government

Dave — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 14:00:02 +0000

The service standard has had a difficult time getting traction in local government, as a report from the LGA made clear – and this despite councils theoretically committing to it when they signed the digital declaration.

But when Atika asked about ways of working to embed the digital principles of user-centricity, iterative delivery, and data-informed practice into the work her team does, I thought immediately of the standard. Or, more accurately, a standard – and one that could be used by not just Luton, but all councils.

So Atika commissioned me to produce a version of the service standard more suitable for local government usage, and over the last few months I have been picking away at it. At the end of May I had a bit of a breakthrough and finished a usable draft for comment. I presented the standard to the DDaT management team this afternoon and will be talking about it to the whole team on Monday.

The original 15 points of the series standard are now the 5 points of the Local Government Digital Standard. They are:

Have you designed around fulfilling the needs of your users?
Have you ensured what you have made is easy for everyone to use across all channels?
Have you ensured your team has all the skills and perspectives required to do good work?
Have you used the best technology available to meet the needs of all your users all of the time?
Are there mechanisms and plans in place to review performance of your team’s work and improve it based on that data?

More important than the specific points though, I think, is the focus this standard has on learning and improvement, rather than on strict assessments and no/no-go decisions.

All the supporting guidance is grounded in the local government context, and the focus of the standard is always on how could we do this better next time?. It can be used with any piece of work, whether a simple online form, a full end to end digital service, or the rollout of a new piece of internal software.

There is currently a slidedeck that covers the detail of the points, with further guidance documents for each one too, as well as an example process for using the standard and a template for a checklist to use at the end of a piece of work.

It is still in draft form and am making tweaks based on feedback, and no doubt will make more once it has been tested in the real world. At that point, it will be published openly online so all councils can make use of it, if they choose to. My big thanks to Atika for encouraging that openness!

If you would like an early peak at the standard, just let me know.

Dave — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 09:15:46 +0000

Steph Gray on how he leant into using AI tools on a recent web build:

It’s been the first project on which I’ve used significant amounts of AI support with the build. For me, for this kind of work, using Claude in particular has felt like working with 18v cordless power tools where previously I was using hand tools.

This feels right – the human is in charge, there’s no danger of the agent running off and doing mad things that can’t be fixed or supported in the future. Use the robot for the grunt work, and humans to bring the humanity.