Francis Bacon

Evaluation, security and cost control seem to be the future of software engineering

The UK paid £4.1 million for a bookmarks site Or, as they like to call it, the 'AI Skills Hub'. Which was built by PwC because of course it was

mahadk.com/posts/ai-ski...

👀

AFAIK nuclear launch has system of controls eg multiple people in the chain of command need to turn keys. Something like that would at least take pressure off the engineer who happens to have the db admin password

Not enough just to say 'if there is a bully like Musk in charge then ultimately any control can be overcome'. Even slowing down ability to access would allow times for courts to respond

Feels like this should inspire reflection in UK - how would our legal, technical and social controls withstand similar attempts to abuse our core data/digital infrastructure?

This is brilliant piece, required reading

Trump’s proposed ‘land grabs’ mean US now seen as a risk, says Munich security report Report published before international summit suggests US is moving away from a global leadership role

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

“We may be living in a world where multiple orders coexist or compete and where little is left of near-universal rules, principles, and patterns of cooperation. In such a ‘multi-order’... world, the liberal order's... reach will increasingly be restricted to the west, or what is left of it.”

Will A.I. Eat The Browser? By Om Malik I’m addicted to Apple’s Vision Pro. It’s a nearly perfect entertainment device, serving as my ideal television. Sure, I would like it to be...

"a decade...from now, a customer of AppleNews could ask it to create a curated morning news show featuring information from preselected sources and topics, and...watch it on a future version of Vision Pro" crazystupidtech.com/archive/will...

Aggregator’s AI Risk A single AI can never make everyone happy, which is fundamentally threatening to the Aggregator business model; the solution is personalized AI

Towards personalised AI as a way for big tech to avoid contentious politics stratechery.com/2024/aggrega...

A visual map with pink and green quadrants. Showing different qualitative research methods, plotted between structured vs unstructured, and observational vs conversational.

Doing user research is about looking for clues. And while user research can’t provide certainty, it will inform the bets you place in your organisational strategy.

Doing user research to inform strategy: public.digital/2024/02/21/d...

BBC Four - Storyville, Navalny Alexei Navalny and his team unravel a plot to poison him with deadly nerve agent novichok.

Hero

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

New ruling further exposes organisations claiming copyright on public domain images

No more ‘Big IT’: the failed 90s model has ruined too many lives Governments must reflect on the lessons of the Post Office software scandal — or face further disasters

No more Big IT.

"We have to redesign government so it that it can redesign government services." article by Mike Bracken in the FT this morning, free to read link here:

www.ft.com/content/6b1f...

My cousin's email address recently hacked and I just received a very convincing spear phishing attack from the address. I'm wondering if they're using LLMs to hone the sender's writing style 😱

Creating useful policy steering rooms The experience of working in a 4P room should build skilled public service teams able to work with imperfect evidence, surface edge innovations and make compelling arguments to help decision-making.

Geoff Mulgan provides useful framework for decision-making in complex environments: patterns, proven, promising, possible. (personally the idea of a physical room doesn't add anything for me) apolitical.co/solution-art...

Reflections from UK Charity Camp 2023 — Public Digital

My reflections from UK Charity Camp - thanks @harryharrold.bsky.social and team for organising public.digital/2023/12/15/r...

On my way for the first ever UKCharityCamp, sketching up a session on the train. Thank you for organising @dxw.bsky.social, this event has been missing for too long

Rishi Sunak has lost the man who would implement Lord Maude’s government reforms | Institute for G... New Cabinet Office minister John Glen should build on his predecessor Jeremy Quin’s approach to government reform.

NEW: our verdict on the Maude Review into government accountability & the civil service

After the drama yesterday, will this report have a longer term impact on the way we are governed?

Lots to welcome, some things that would damage - take a look

www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/comment/rish...

Has anyone mentioned the user yet? For a service, the user is an active participant. They co-produce the value with the organisation.

Rapid and collaborative synthesis — Katherine Wastell

To identify user research findings, you need to distill lots of information into meaningful patterns.

Do it with your team, and do it iteratively.

And you'll rapidly synthesise your way to clear findings that the entire team has helped shape.

www.katherinewastell.com/blog/2023/co...

Delighted to announce that we're back and bigger than ever!

Our annual in-person event will be 20th January 2024.

We want to accommodate even more folks this time, so we've expanded to 500 tickets. Sign up for yours as soon as you can.

www.ukgovcamp.com/2023/10/11/u...

#ukgcXL

Teams having to bring together so many different forms of data/knowledge, not sure there is any clear guide on how to do that bit

Interesting article - marketing attribution (huge industry) could shift from deterministic to probabilistic models. mobiledevmemo.com/flying-blind/

This is interestingly the opposite of what a lot of commentators say is needed in UK. Also poses a lot of questions about future democratic control, if local and middle tiers are left only with 'in person delivery'

AI, big data and robotics create a further centralising force in government (from local->central gov). Academic paper from Dunleavy and Margetts: eprints.lse.ac.uk/120352/