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“Distribute power as widely and irretrievably as possible”
From Danny O’Brien’s 1997 email describing a trip to SF to meet Louis Rossetto, founder of Wired magazine. At the time Danny and Tony worked on Wired’s UK edition, as did I. … — read more
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Ten rules to help design a digital, democratic government
The peerless Richard Pope has published 10 rules for anyone redesigning a democratic government to make the most of this digital era. Richard’s 10 Rules for designing a digital, democratic government are: Split data from services. Hold it in organisations with appropriate accountability (central government, local government, professional bodies) and make the quality of the data independently verifiable.… — read more
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Blockchain vs Democracy (aka ‘software is politics, now’)
The Economist succinctly nails the issue I have with “federated trust” distributed ledgers such as Blockchain / Ethereum: The idea of making trust a matter of coding, rather than of democratic politics, legitimacy and accountability, is not necessarily an appealing or empowering one. To be clear, append-only, immutable, verifiable ledgers (distributed or otherwise) are properly exciting as a… — read more
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Keynote at Web Directions 2015, Sydney
Run by the wonderfully energetic John Allsopp, Web Directions 2015 is a cross-disciplinary conference for those blessed with living the Southern Hermisphere . It’s been going since 2004, and was held this year in Luna Park, a surreal 30s-era funfair in the shadow of Sydney Harbour bridge. I was invited to give the closing keynote… — read more
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Presentation to Code for America Summit 2015
Here’s a link to the presentation I gave to this year’s Code for America Summit. It explains why I believe a new institutional architecture is required to support a natively digital nation, and what form these new institutions might take. It’s basically me presenting the ideas of Richard Pope. The video of the talk will be more meaningful, but… — read more
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Stuff that matters, done the right way
There are so many committed teams delivering digital services all over government, it feels unnatural to highlight just one – but when it comes to doing stuff that matters, at scale, and under pressure, the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) team developing the Universal Credit (UC) Digital Service is impossible to ignore. Here’s a… — read more
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Done.
It’s five years since Martha Lane Fox tempted me into digital government. The mission: put the needs of users at the heart of the design of public services. The report we wrote in 2010 was subtitled “Revolution, not evolution.” Martha, we got that bit 100% right. And the conversation inside government has changed. It’s increasingly about the redesign of services centred on the needs of… — read more
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Keynote at the Code For America Summit 2014
Code for America are a fantastic US not for profit, injecting digital thinking into all levels of the US Government through a range of initiatives. For example, they’ve been instrumental in the setting up of the nascent US Digital Service. Last year Mike gave an overview of the UK Government Digital Service at their annual… — read more
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Scotland D14 Conference Talk: Reinvention, not repair
A couple of weeks ago I had the pleasure of speaking at the D14 Conference in Glasgow. I had a fine day, going to several interesting workshops, and catching up with old friends from my BBC and Channel 4 days. The speech itself seemed to go ok; the questions were excellent. And in my talk I was invited… — read more
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Webstock 2014 talk: Institutions: An Internet survival guide
Earlier this year I was honoured to be invited to talk at Webstock 14. Webstock is a truly fabulous, unique conference, organised for the pure love of the web, not the money. If you get a chance, go. As a speaker, it was easily the best organised conference I’ve attended, as well as the friendliest. While… — read more
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Tom Loosemore 