UK Gov Comms (NON GOVERNMENT ACCOUNT)
@ukgovcomms.bsky.social
*Not* a government account. A Bluesky account for sharing best practice of government communications in the UK. Run by @bowsy.co.uk.
Nice that HMLR are doing stuff and GDS is blogging about it but it's 2026 and "putting an existing form online" is still a victory. gds.blog.gov.uk/2026/08/05/t...
Turning ambition into action in complex systems
Transforming complex public services starts with action, not perfection. Learn how HM Land Registry used rapid testing, evidence and collaboration to improve a citizen service and build momentum for w...
gds.blog.gov.uk
I'm only sad because I was working on this *ten years ago* when seconded from GDS to the Environment Agency and yet, here we are, doing an Alpha again. www.gov.uk/service-stan...
Digital Waste Tracking (DWT) – Collections of Waste
DEFRA's Digital Waste Tracking (DWT) – Collections of Waste alpha assessment report
gov.uk
Sure, open data is great but got god's sake why is MHCLG spending money to build and support its own platform instead of using data.gov.uk or waiting for the National Data Library? open-data.communities.gov.uk
open-data.communities.gov.uk
Nice piece from GDS about the different kinds of recruitment that can make up a team. The use of "Customer" to describe government service users is still shocking bad though. gds.blog.gov.uk/2026/07/30/t...
Transformation needs deliberately designed teams: here's how we're building them differently
How talent shapes transformation.
gds.blog.gov.uk
Nice to see this team still working excellently in the open despite "digital ID being cancelled". enablingdigitalidentity.blog.gov.uk/2026/07/29/d...
Digital identity fraud risks: why OfDIA is asking for evidence
The National Assessments Centre, which sits within the National Crime Agency (NCA), has been commissioned by the Office for Digital Identities and Attributes (OfDIA) to produce an intelligence assessm...
enablingdigitalidentity.blog.gov.uk
More interesting things out of MHCLG. It'll be really interesting to see if there's measurements on how this helps deliver the new PM's house building agenda. mhclgdigital.blog.gov.uk/2026/07/30/u...
Using AI to support faster local plan consultation analysis
AI is helping planning teams cut through the time-consuming work of consultation analysis. A pilot has been extended with 5 more planning authorities, delivering efficiency gains and freeing officers ...
mhclgdigital.blog.gov.uk
UK gov continues to set up more independent chatbots based on single departmental data focused on single team objectives. How does this fit in with the GOV.UK one? Will that hand over to this one? What would that look like? www.gov.uk/algorithmic-...
DBT: AI Chatbot
A support chatbot that provides AI powered responses to users based on their exporting or business support questions
gov.uk
Nice post from DfE. dfedigital.blog.gov.uk/2026/07/30/e...
Expanding Teaching Vacancies to further education
Teaching Vacancies is expanding to further education. We explain what we have learned from colleges, recruiters and jobseekers, and how we are testing the service before making it more widely availabl...
dfedigital.blog.gov.uk
This is an excellent blog post (even if I personally don't think the chosen name is great). mhclgdigital.blog.gov.uk/2026/07/28/n...
Naming a service: how we chose a name for Share Homes for Ukraine data
How do you choose a clear, accessible name for a new service? Find out how the Homes for Ukraine Digital team found a user-centred name that would work long term for its new system for managing Homes ...
mhclgdigital.blog.gov.uk
It's going to be *extremely* interesting to see how much of what they do is just speeches vs. doing things.
Owen Boswarva@owenboswarva.bsky.social · 2w ago"Kanishka Narayan MP as Minister of State (Minister for Artificial Intelligence) jointly in the Cabinet Office and the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. He will attend Cabinet."
That hugely expensive re-brand that wasn't needed and no-one wanted has turned out to have another unfortunate side-effect? Shocker.
Matt Eason@matteason.me · 2w agoIt's hardly the biggest issue in all of this but this machinery of government kerfuffle is going to expose the short-sightedness of tying the GOV.UK brand to a DSIT brand that's about to go in the bin - the horrible cyan was taken from DSIT's logo
This is extremely well meaning and I congratulate and support everyone involved. But 15 different design systems is definitionally not reuse! Building your own thing and sharing it is great but it's not the same as feeding into one thing that everyone uses. hodigital.blog.gov.uk/2026/07/20/d...
Design once, reuse everywhere
We’ve helped build the Gov Reuse Library, a digital library storing reusable design products and services for colleagues across central and local government to use.
hodigital.blog.gov.uk
This is the good stuff.
Frankie Roberto@frankieroberto.com · 3w agoThe GOVUK design system team have today added the interruption page pattern and component: design-system.service.gov.uk/patterns/int... - based on previous work by teams across government. 🎉 This is a great example of where it is sometimes helpful to add some friction into a digital journey.
Really interesting post from MHCLG on geospatial embedding. Congrats on being shortlisted for a Geography in Government Award in the Innovation category! Are well done for continuing to work in the open! mhclgdigital.blog.gov.uk/2026/07/16/f...
From pixels to policy: The potential of geospatial embeddings for MHCLG
Geospatial Foundation Models and their embeddings have emerged as one of the most exciting developments in AI. In this post, the AI Lab in MHCLG introduces the concept of image embeddings and their po...
mhclgdigital.blog.gov.uk
Whether this is good or not time will (very rapidly I'm sure) tell. My big question is why on Earth is this being posted on the Ministers account on LinkedIn when GOV.UK has an entire blog platform dedicated to this kind of thing. www.linkedin.com/posts/darren...
We sent a forward-deployed AI engineer to prison. He’s not a criminal - he’s been creating tools that are massively saving staff time, making things safer for everyone. Now they’re being rolled out…...
We sent a forward-deployed AI engineer to prison. He’s not a criminal - he’s been creating tools that are massively saving staff time, making things safer for everyone. Now they’re being rolled out ...
linkedin.com
Digital ID folks still doing it in the open 😁. enablingdigitalidentity.blog.gov.uk/2026/07/13/d...
Digital verification at scale: our keynotes at the European Identity Conference and Identity Week Europe
Over the past month or so, the OfDIA team has attended some digital identity industry events abroad. Not everyone gets the opportunity to attend industry events like this, so we’ve written up the pres...
enablingdigitalidentity.blog.gov.uk
Good obviously but magic AI pixie dust doesn't fix underlying data issues or inability to work across teams and organisations. mhclgdigital.blog.gov.uk/2026/07/13/f...
From engagement to delivery: supporting responsible AI adoption in councils
The Local AI programme in MHCLG is working with councils and the Local Government Association to support responsible AI adoption in local government. Drawing on insights from recent council drop-in se...
mhclgdigital.blog.gov.uk
Very impressive to see LOTI still going strong at 7 years old. All power to Eddie and associates. loti.london/blog/loti-at...
LOTI at Seven - LOTI
Eddie shares highlights of LOTI’s work from July 2025 to June 2026 across our four core pillars: People, Technology, Data and Innovation.
loti.london
The Digital ID folks really leading in working in the open at the moment. Top marks to them. enablingdigitalidentity.blog.gov.uk/2026/07/09/s...
Secure and scalable checks against the digital verification services register
The Office for Digital Identities and Attributes (OfDIA) is introducing machine-readable technology to the digital verification services register. This will allow businesses and public authorities to ...
enablingdigitalidentity.blog.gov.uk
Camden continuing to do the good work. medium.com/@changebydes...
What we learn when we listen: Embedding lived experience in service design and research
Saliha Majeed-Hajaj, Senior Research Officer at Camden, explores how residents’ lived experience can (and should) shape design and research.
medium.com
This is very good obviously - but we're still in a world where such services only exist within the boundaries of a department so many citizens have to work with very large numbers of different organisations. We still don't measure administrative burden. defradigital.blog.gov.uk/2026/07/07/w...
Why senior service ownership matters at Defra... and why now
Senior service ownership could help Defra become more service-led, efficient and user-focused. Laura Churchill shares what her team learned while testing the concept, why plans had to change, and how ...
defradigital.blog.gov.uk
There are many people blogging across the public sector — see @weeknotes-bot.bsky.social and there is the ‘Web of Weeknotes’ by @jukes.ie: medium.com/web-of-weekn... @neillyneil.bsky.social has a great government blog roll, too: neilojwilliams.net/blogroll/
Web of Weeknotes
#weeknotes are blogposts about our working week. for us but shared with you.
medium.com
If only everyone were like @martinjordan.com .
Martin Jordan@martinjordan.com · last mo.As a public servant, I write weekly notes to let people see what I do. In week 218, I participated in the presentation of a paper on common digital identity components and how they work in practice. I also worked on standard training, supported a qualitative study, and discussed spend controls.
Sensible stuff from @ntouk.bsky.social but, given the "30 year" theme of the post I doubt anyone with the power to do anything is listening. www.computerweekly.com/opinion/Deli...
Delivering better government after three decades of disappointment | Computer Weekly
UK governments have spent over three decades telling us that technology will modernise the public sector, cut costs, improve services for citizens and businesses, and boost productivity. Yet despite s...
computerweekly.com
In theory the Service Standard / Service Manual already *did* all of this. It was just so chronically underfunded that it was difficult to do in practice. gds.blog.gov.uk/2026/07/02/e...
Evolving the Service Standard for the future of public services
We’re evolving the Service Standard from a one-off test into a living standard for modern, end-to-end public services. Here’s how – and how to be involved.
gds.blog.gov.uk
I apparently missed this. It's an absolute unmitigated disaster. www.gov.uk/government/p...
Digital Assurance Playbook
gov.uk
Nice to see the NDL apparently doing something but this feels pathetically weak. This isn't a solid structured plan for a "single view for vulnerable children". www.gov.uk/government/n...
Faster support for children to get school ready as Tech Sec vows to better connect public services
New project launched to explore how better data-sharing can help ensure kids are school ready.
gov.uk
