Thanks!

But the cost is not the only question govt needs to answer to make this scheme work. Following our panel with @rachelcoldicutt.bsky.social @matthewfeeney.bsky.social @morganwild.bsky.social & Sir David Normington, I highlight some qs for govt: (4/4)

www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/article/comm...

Just *don't do* the thing you suspect might be completely terrible. You don't need to do a long interview in the Guardian about it.

My one and only article in an academic journal is this frustratingly evergreen take on guys saying they just can't stop themselves from ending the world hdsr.mitpress.mit.edu/pub/wz35dvpo...

My Saturday job as a teen was working in the library, back in the stamp days, and I absolutely loved it!

I mean, I really like community tech, but it's so interesting how it just doesn't resonate with people who are less technical - they find it a bit of an oxymoron, which is a lesson in and of itself.

I think it's probably a v useful conversation to have and will help less technical funders etc no end

I was unexpectedly a bit Peter Kyle there, but honestly, if you can't have decent customer service and no one picks up the phone, then it would at least be nice to have some good old-fashioned service design so that everything isn't a total PITA

and then of course I had to fill out a form. Computers should be brilliant at this stuff, but rather than making life easier, so much effort is going into making machines that create pictures of dancing prawns and hallucinate meeting notes and, honestly, who is this stuff *all for*?!

To book an opticians appointment, I had to put in my postcode and be returned a list of branches of Boots that have appointments *at some point* over the next 6 weeks. I couldn't pick one opticians or a date range, but had to click through about 10 different pages to find a date and place I can do

For instance, to book some vaccinations at the GP earlier I had to fill out a form which then triggered an alert in the NHS app, which I then had to log into, in order to fill out another form to then take a phone call in order to book an appointment.

partly why I was interested in trying out "public interest" (which is admittedly also a US term), which I think does a good job of describing beneficiaries, even if it lacks general precision?

but also @prateekbuch.bsky.social has some similar observations on infra. I think, really, what I care about is the fact that there is absolutely bags of cash out there for folk making extractive tech, very little investment or support for the good stuff (whatever it is called)

@jamestplunkett.bsky.social and I went back and forth on what to call this. Don't think I'd be revealing any secrets if I said he preferred civic tech, I was worried that was too closely aligned with gov tech. I mean, naming things is HARD.

So. Many. Of. These.

I am totally here for good Web governance but don't think the chair of the OBR needs to be across the WordPress plug-in situation

Oh, hang on, just clicked on something and Adobe Acrobat decided to join the party so prob need to spend 30 minutes doing some kind of ritual incantation before I can actually type any words anywhere