Thinking

Modernising the vehicle logbook by delivering value early

By breaking the DVLA’s massive, 20-million-transaction paper logbook system into small slices - starting with commercial motor traders - we bypassed the paralysis of multi-year planning. Delivering value early allowed us to establish a continuous pipeline of delivery, proving that the best way to build institutional trust and momentum is to slice the problem thin and just start.

Welsh names and places deserve basic respect

The recent mockery of First Minister Rhun ap Iorwerth exposes a persistent, casual disrespect toward Welsh language and culture within the English-speaking world. This modern dismissal continues a historical pattern of cultural erasure that dates back to the systematic suppression of the language in schools. My own experience navigating the workforce under an accommodated name shows the compromise individuals make when others refuse to invest basic effort. Reclaiming historic Welsh names for our people, our geography, and our democratic institutions requires a fundamental shift in attitude. Learning to pronounce a name or a place correctly is a basic boundary of courtesy, and cultural laziness remains a choice we must reject.

Rebuilding the car tax service in ten weeks in 2014

By replacing a failing legacy system with a working car tax service in just ten weeks, we proved that momentum and iterative delivery manage risk far more effectively than months of traditional planning. This approach turned massive legislative shifts into simple backlog items, demonstrating that 100 days is exactly enough time to prove the ‘art of the possible’ in any complex organisation.

The bridge to nowhere: Why your ‘Target Architecture' won’t ever deliver

Stop funding fictional target architecture blueprints and start funding empowered, long-lived teams. The traditional, rigid approach is too slow for the age of AI and will never solve your real-world legacy tech problems. It’s time to trade the fiction for empowered teams and clear principles.

Why some DVLA digital services don't work at night

Every few months or so, somebody asks on social media why a particular DVLA digital service is turned off over night. Rather than answering it every time, I’ve decided to write this post, so I can point people at it in future. It’s a great case study to show why making government services digitally native can be quite complicated.

Horizon IT scandal: repeating patterns

There is so much that has been written and said about the Horizon scandal over the past 10 years, that it’s hard to pick out what actually happened, and how it got so bad.

When things go really badly wrong, there’s never just one cause. Many things have to have failed. In the case of Horizon, this list is huge: the tech, the supplier, the culture, the investigations, the lawyers, the system of private prosecutions, the management, the politicians, the governance and scrutiny, the recovery. There are things wrong at pretty much every level.

Talking to Parliament about digital government

This week I gave evidence to the Parliament Science and Technology Committee about digital government and the challenges ahead to continue delivering good services to users

The state of blogging in digital government

Publishing blog posts about the work you’re doing is a great way of making things open. In the early days, GDS was great at this. Working out loud and talking openly about even small changes was normal practice. It was just a thing that happened. Fast forward to 2018 and things are different. Blogs that were once active, now lie dormant – untouched for months.

Benefits of controls on government technology spending

Spend controls often focus on immediate savings, but there are many other benefits of introducing controls on technology spending which often get ignored

Deliver little, deliver often, avoid the big bang

When building and running services it’s important get into the habit of releasing updates to users on a regular basis. Always be shipping.

Create the space to let teams deliver

Organisations that create an environment and culture that supports delivery will find they build better services and have more productive teams. Don’t slow down delivery.