Jason Kitcat
@jasonkitcat.bsky.social
Director of Digital, Data & Technology at UK’s Dept for Business & Trade 🏛 / ❤️ public service / All views my own! 📢 / https://jasonkitcat.com
We're keeping on with learning and evaluating how to make best use of AI in public services. Here's my latest thoughts and provisional conclusions jasonkitcat.com/2026/07/26/m...
More thoughts on AI
It has been about 5 months since I last blogged on AI and so much has happened, there is a lot to ponder and learn. In my specific context, which is relatively low volume but high complexity work (…
jasonkitcat.com
Lovely post from Rainbow in our team, reflecting on their journey delivering Digital & Agile Basics training "What I learned when I started teaching agile" digitaltrade.blog.gov.uk/2026/07/22/w...
What I learned when I started teaching agile
A chance to teach agile became an opportunity for personal growth. Through support, training and practical experience, I discovered new strengths and gained confidence to explore future career possibi...
digitaltrade.blog.gov.uk
In today's post we share more about how we built and evolved 'Ask DBT' our internal AI tool for staff to access key policies and guidance around working for the department. We chose to build most of the tool in-house to reduce costs, find out more digitaltrade.blog.gov.uk/2026/06/24/i...
Introducing Ask DBT: Our new AI tool for making sense of the intranet
How we built a tool that gives colleagues from across DBT a way to ask questions in plain English and get clear, trusted answers drawn entirely from intranet content.
digitaltrade.blog.gov.uk
We've been running our AI cubed model (AI lab, factory & operations) for more than a year now in Department for Business and Trade. In this post, Anthony Love shares 10 things we've learned running our AI experiments touching on ethics, sandboxes and more digitaltrade.blog.gov.uk/2026/05/27/1...
10 things we learned running rapid AI experiments
Read about what DBT's AI teams learned as they ran rapid AI experiments to improve ways of working across the department.
digitaltrade.blog.gov.uk
We implemented one of the first uses of MCP in government, connecting our DBT Assist AI tool with our CRM to help automate and improve how briefings on companies are produced. Read more from the team on how they did it safely and securely digitaltrade.blog.gov.uk/2026/05/14/u...
Using single sign-on and MCP to safely connect AI to live government data
The DBT Assist team shares how they safely connected DBT’s AI tools to live customer relationship management data, overcoming a common challenge faced across government. By leveraging existing single ...
digitaltrade.blog.gov.uk
Super interesting discussion on interoception - how comfort & convenience may undermine our development in understanding our body’s signals stevemagness.substack.com/p/the-hidden...
The Hidden Cost of Comfort
We Padded the World And Nobody Can Feel Anything Anymore
stevemagness.substack.com
We recently wrapped up our annual Data Challenge in DBT, which is a great opportunity to encourage collaboration and innovation across the department. Read more about how we run it, and what we did this year digitaltrade.blog.gov.uk/2026/05/12/d...
DBT Data Challenge 2026: From ideas to impact
How DBT colleagues with all levels of experience turned simple ideas into working prototypes within a week, demonstrating the energy and creativity within Digital, Data and Technology.
digitaltrade.blog.gov.uk
Here's a case study in how our work attracting talent to the UK was reviewed to improve the online journeys as part of our quarterly Firebreak week digitaltrade.blog.gov.uk/2026/05/05/b...
Britain Gets Talent: Fixing a fragmented offer to attract global talent
How might a clearer, more joined‑up digital experience help attract and reassure global talent choosing the UK?
digitaltrade.blog.gov.uk
For the last few years teams across DBT & gov collaborated on the Global Supply Chains Intelligence Programme. We used cutting-edge technology, analysis & data to bring insight into how supply chains connect our economy: digitaltrade.blog.gov.uk/2026/04/28/g...
Global Supply Chains Intelligence Programme: an AI-enabled big data analytical platform for government
The Global Supply Chains Intelligence Programme (GSCIP) team has won the Analysis in Government Impact Award for informing major policy decisions, improving operational outcomes and driving analytical...
digitaltrade.blog.gov.uk
Our content team at Dept Business & Trade are doing fantastic work thinking deeply about what it means when AI is the primary source of information for citizens. Read more about how we're preventing AI misinformation digitaltrade.blog.gov.uk/2026/04/20/h...
How we’re preventing AI misinformation at DBT
At the Department for Business and Trade (DBT), we are proactively building a content lifecycle that guards against AI providing the public with incorrect government information.
digitaltrade.blog.gov.uk
User research on how businesses experience government support is key to how we develop the Digital Business Growth Service, read more about how we do it from our lead user researcher digitaltrade.blog.gov.uk/2026/03/24/h...
How we’re making strategic decisions based on the needs of businesses
Find out what we have learned as we take a more strategic view of user research insights to improve decision making and support businesses more meaningfully.
digitaltrade.blog.gov.uk
Delighted to share our experiences running a multi-disciplinary co-lab to help develop DBT's Business Growth Service, more in the post: digitaltrade.blog.gov.uk/2026/03/11/s...
Strengthening business support through user-centred, evidence-led collaboration
How our Digital, Data and Technology team's first Co-Lab collaborated with policy and Local Business Support teams across DBT to make policy and services more user-centred and effective.
digitaltrade.blog.gov.uk
Well this is lovely - Haruki Murakami and Harry Styles in conversation about running (News+ link) apple.news/ABXj0KVisTzK...
There Are Few Things Harry Styles Has to Himself. Running Is One of Them. — Runner’s World
The global pop superstar chats with legendary author and fellow marathoner Haruki Murakami on the sublime simplicity of running—and how it nourishes the creative life.
apple.news
Lovely post on Flickr's URL structures unsung.aresluna.org/unsung-heroe... - I absolutely adored how Flickr was built and worked hard to emulate it. Cal Henderson ran a brilliant workshop sharing more of their engineering process for scaling, which became essential for managing growth at Netmums
Unsung heroes: Flickr’s URLs scheme – Unsung
A blog about software craft and quality
unsung.aresluna.org
Tracey Wilson writes about how Department for Business and Trade are working on improving our published content in a world of AI summaries. digitaltrade.blog.gov.uk/2026/03/03/c...
Content isn’t static: what I learned about content ownership in the world of AI summaries
We reviewed a number of Department for Business and Trade (DBT) tagged pages flagged for review to confirm ownership and decide next action: update or retire. Without clear ownership and ongoing stewa...
digitaltrade.blog.gov.uk
Re-posting for morning readers 👇
Jason Kitcat@jasonkitcat.bsky.social · 5mo agoMore pondering on AI as I wrangle with what it means for public servants... Here's where I've got to so far: There is a useful path to take between hype and doom. It's time to keep experimenting and learning as nobody knows what the future will bring. jasonkitcat.com/2026/03/02/s...
More pondering on AI as I wrangle with what it means for public servants... Here's where I've got to so far: There is a useful path to take between hype and doom. It's time to keep experimenting and learning as nobody knows what the future will bring. jasonkitcat.com/2026/03/02/s...
Some thoughts on AI
“Anyone who tries to tell us they know the future is simply trying to own it.” — Margaret Heffernan in her introduction to Uncharted Take a deep breath. Nobody knows what is going to happen with AI…
jasonkitcat.com
A nice piece of work: Towards a science of AI agent reliability AI 'reliability lags capability, and that reliability will remain a barrier to deployment unless researchers and developers focus effort on improving reliability as a separate dimension from accuracy' www.normaltech.ai/p/new-paper-...
New Paper: Towards a science of AI agent reliability
Quantifying the capability-reliability gap
normaltech.ai
We can’t be sure an AI “ClawBot” did post a nasty blog post when their code was rejected, but an ArsTechnica journalist did use AI hallucinated quotes when reporting the story….
It's so easy to fall into a "build it and they will come" mindset when creating digital products & services. We work to overcome this with our wonderful Engagement & Strategic Adoption team, here are reflections on how we've boosted adoption of our CRM tool digitaltrade.blog.gov.uk/2026/02/17/d...
Driving success through digital adoption
Digital adoption is about people. Our work on Data Hub shows that change is a process, and through collaboration and support teams can embrace tools that help improve workflows, strengthen business en...
digitaltrade.blog.gov.uk
Nostalgia alert - illustrated catalogue of Walkman models (not just Sony ones) walkman.land via @densediscovery.bsky.social
Walkman.land
The most complete portable pocket audio cassette player database. WML is a tribute to the Walkmans.
walkman.land
We have long championed the importance of monitoring & evaluation in digital teams, so we're delighted to have succeeded in getting 'digital evaluator' added as a role in the UK Govt Digital & Data framework digitaltrade.blog.gov.uk/2026/02/12/a...
A new evaluator role to support modern digital government
Discover the new Digital Evaluator role! Learn how it ensures accountability, value for money, and continuous improvement in UK government digital projects.
digitaltrade.blog.gov.uk
Every quarter we encourage our DDaT teams to pause & take part in a Firebreak week. It's a way to encourage us to work on challenges in new ways, with a different mix of colleagues. I think it's a core ingredient to sustaining and encouraging innovation digitaltrade.blog.gov.uk/2026/02/09/h...
How breaking the routine fuels fresh ideas and delivers value
Every 3 months, DBT Digital, Data and Technology colleagues are free to pause routine work to test fresh ideas. They gain insight, build skills and deliver improvements for colleagues, the public and ...
digitaltrade.blog.gov.uk
I'm going to share a very good story about the internet. I won't tell it well because I apparently have the flu, but I think we all need a good story about the internet. It starts in 2021, when I took a sabbatical and got a little workspace to write a design book.
We've recently launched DBT Assist, our generative AI tool for helping colleagues with their work. It's a tool powered by working in the open: Using the Redbox code from i.AI we learnt and iterated, sharing our learnings for others to hopefully build on too digitaltrade.blog.gov.uk/2026/02/04/f...
From Redbox to Assist: Building AI tools that balance innovation and trust
When I.AI closed their Redbox product in December 2025, DBT had already diverged substantially from that original platform. Two years of user research and iteration created something distinct, shaped ...
digitaltrade.blog.gov.uk
I’m so incredibly proud of our team at Dept Business & Trade who won well deserved recognition as Women in Tech’s Best Public Sector Employer 2025. In this post we share practical insight into how we beat the sector for recruiting & retaining brilliant women digitaltrade.blog.gov.uk/2026/01/27/e...
Empowering Women in Tech: DBT’s focus on inclusion and innovation
“Diversity in Digital and Data leads to better outcomes for all of DBT and the businesses we support in the UK and beyond.”
digitaltrade.blog.gov.uk
With about 8,000 colleagues working in more than 100 countries around the world for Department for Business and Trade, finding the right person to talk to can be a blocker to collaboration. Read more about how we've been iterating our People Finder digitaltrade.blog.gov.uk/2025/12/08/a...
A User Centred approach to helping colleagues collaborate by improving DBT’s People Finder
How DBT's Employee Experience team combined user research, design and delivery expertise to improve the department's intranet.
digitaltrade.blog.gov.uk
In the lead up to Small Business Saturday, we're sharing more about our work at DBT launching an Export Support AI chatbot on business.gov.uk and learning from our users, read more from Kai Hellström on our blog digitaltrade.blog.gov.uk/2025/11/27/l...
Launching the Export Support Chatbot: Empowering small businesses to go global
How DBT's Export Support Chatbot will supply small businesses with the knowledge they need to export.
digitaltrade.blog.gov.uk
Our brilliant Head of Content Design Andrea Leary writes how increasing use of AI bots to find businesses answers is driving some of Dept Business & Trade's thinking for content design, relevance and accuracy. Read the post digitaltrade.blog.gov.uk/2025/11/11/h...
How AI-ready content can boost policy effectiveness
As use of generative AI grows, so does the opportunity to meet businesses’ quests for information. Only if DBT’s online content is designed to meet users’ needs.
digitaltrade.blog.gov.uk