Tom Loosemore
@tomski.com
3.3K followers 1K following 1K posts
Partner at Public Digital, co-founder Government Digital Service, ex-BBC. Expect occasional small boat sailing.
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tomski.com
The hard problem in Lean/Agile is always working out what questions to ask of whom, and why. Finding out how to reach the right people with the right question. Artefact generation isn't the work, ever since pen and paper. (Or maybe Heroku.)
tomski.com
"AI may be giving you a million prototypes, but if you listen, AI is telling you in quite a painful way that being able to get feedback on your artefacts is much, much more important than the artefacts themselves."

Much hard-earned test and learn wisdom in this post from @duncanjbrown.com
tomski.com
Lee over Sands. One of my favourite places on a windy evening.
Photo of sunset over rough seashore.
Reposted by Tom Loosemore
pubstr.at
"When you’re trying to bring about significant change in any complex system, it’s impossible to know up front exactly what’s going to work, how the various risks are going to pan out or how the context is going to change."
'Being a leader isn’t about becoming great at everything': Civil service reform DG Janet Hughes sets out her priorities
Hughes, who became Cabinet Office DG for civil service reform and efficiency in June, on bringing the spirit of One Team Gov to her new role, test ...
www.civilserviceworld.com
tomski.com
Just seen this Texas TI30 Galaxy on eBay and I'm suddenly back at my comp, being bullied for not having a hideous Casio FX82 like literally everyone else.

No regrets.
Reposted by Tom Loosemore
madlinsudn.bsky.social
The Boring Fund will be open for applications in November.

If your small UK charity needs (up to) £200 to cover something boring like insurance or web hosting, take a look.

They welcome donations too.
The Boring Fund - Open Collective
We support small non-profit organisations (UK) by only funding the really boring (but essential) stuff like insurance, accountancy or admin
opencollective.com
tomski.com
It lets you set a soft, then hard limit, then pulls the app. Like the betting companies, but for apps

Plus, when it comes to money, I'm still a Loosemore...
tomski.com
Replit so very fun. (And so very dangerous.)
tomski.com
Also, writing a good strategy remains the easy bit in federated institutions where no-one ever gets fired. Everyone nods then nothing changes. *That's* why the strategy is delivery.
tomski.com
I've written various public sector digital strategies over the decades. Looking back, most would have been better with as three bullets saying: 1) We want this outcome 2) We know we don't know how to get there 3) So we're going to transform our institution into one optimised for Test & Learn.
Reposted by Tom Loosemore
gavinfreeguard.bsky.social
Kicking off *exactly* two weeks from now...
gavinfreeguard.bsky.social
🚨 2 WEEKS TODAY 🚨

It's Data Bites #58 with @publicdigital.bsky.social, in London & online

6pm, Thu 18 Sept

Speakers include:
- @bothness.bsky.social, ONS
- Andrea Barry, Youth Futures Foundation, on their data dashboard
- Leonardo Mazzone, DBT, on matching companies across datasets.

Sign up!
Data Bites #58 — Public Digital
public.digital
tomski.com
Better than any book is this essay by @danny.spesh.com which captures the mid-90s perfectly. www.spesh.com/danny/wireduk/
Wired UK : A Limey Whinges
www.spesh.com
tomski.com
Pfft. Your glasses, they are rose tinted. Many government website domain names and branding were simply wrong, having failed to keep pace with ever-changing department names/mergers/splits. And much of the content on the 2000+ websites was out of date, if not dangerously wrong.
tomski.com
TBH I'm shocked someone running a think tank at the time was granted so many meetings. If only normal citizens had such access to make the case for their needs to be prioritised at a time of 40% cuts.
tomski.com
I'm afraid i can't help but disagree with you calling civil servants 'vandals'. They were enacting a decision to close 2,000+ government websites made by Cabinet during austerity.
tomski.com
Also, you would be well advised to apologise for calling the dedicated civil servants running GOV.UK 'vandals'.

It's DOGE style language.
tomski.com
Now, I'd also very much like the needs of such professional users to be better met on GOV.UK than they are at present.

But what's the phrase about not recognising you have been in a position of privilege until things become more equitable?
tomski.com
Pre-GOV.UK the information/service needs of ordinary citizens were utterly overwhelmed by a myopic fixation on super-serving think tanks, journalists via countless gov websites run by comms teams from the same backgrounds.
tomski.com
That's an interesting choice of language, Jill. And you and I have never had such a conversation. I'd be very happy to do so.