Stefan Czerniawski
@pubstr.at
Blogging less than the olden days. Still working to make public services better, now in healthcare regulation.
I really need someone to form a social movement standing up for people (me) who have used em dashes for decades and are also big fans of Emily Dickinson. No one really enjoys the appearance of a colon in a sentence and, to be clear, I do not care about the grammatical rules.
Describing this as merely having blogged rather undersells the breadth and depth of this grand tour of how government works and doesn't.
Gavin Freeguard@gavinfreeguard.com · 6d agoI have blogged! The State of the Present: Andy Burnham’s new government or - Why the abolition of DSIT is baffling and bad - Why I'm worried about what it means for civil service reform - Some opportunities for the new government around data, digital, open government medium.com/state-of-the...
Out to dinner in the English countryside. Polish chef spots a Polish name on the order chit and adds a complimentary off-menu mizeria in a spirit of solidarity. Perfection achieved.
In pleasing coincidence, this quotation appeared moments after finishing @bluejo.eurosky.social's Everybody's Perfect, a beautifully written ode to the hazy rumour of the Serenissima, set in a world where the stones have yet to harden.
Beth Levin@betheena.bsky.social · 4w ago'I did not paint Venice. I painted the moment before her: still only light on the water, a rumour of towers in the haze. Wait a little and the stone would harden. I loved her best while she was still arriving.' J. M. W. Turner Arriving in Venice, detail, 1844 housed in the National Gallery of Art
An anecdote told against Burnham, but which actually illustrates why the Treasury is such a defective organisation. (I have no idea whether he can or would make tough fiscal decisions, but this story tells us nothing either way)
Thomas Penny@thomaswpenny.bsky.social · 2mo agoI have doubts Andy Burnham is the guy to make tough fiscal decisions because of the way he was as Chief Secretary to the Treasury. (Short thread) He was evidently lovely to work with, but too generous with the money. Here’s a story from a civil servant who worked with him…
Legislative minds assume too easily that legislation solves problems. Writing rules is easy (though writing good rules is very much harder); changing behaviour is hard. What the government needs but does not have (or show any understanding of needing) is a theory of change.
Ann Kempster@annkempster.com · 2mo agoYou don't drive successful change through (cackhanded) sledgehammer legislative solutions. You need to take people with you, and industry. Think of the journey around smoking over the last 50 years. Think about how gambling harms are being approached now (see again, smoking).
The northern line is experimenting with autonomous route creation. This is a southbound train with ideas of its own. As an opening move, Borough has been relocated to the Charing Cross branch. But wait for the punchline in the final seconds.
A great sub-thread by @cjforms.bsky.social (responding to an equally great post by @rachelcoldicutt.bsky.social) on how sorting out the easy but unglamorous stuff is essential but exposes the harder and even more important stuff behind.
Caroline Jarrett@cjforms.bsky.social · 2mo agoThank you for mentioning me. I’m brooding on your very interesting essay. I’ve been talking for years about the “relationship” aspect of forms but there are things in your essay about the dehumanising aspects of reducing things to forms that are powerful …
The postman delivers a single CD in a ludicrously oversized box. Which suddenly makes sense when the box is opened - a page to disc ratio of 230:1 must surely be unbeatable
Thanks @jukes.ie - the only endorsement a job can ever need :-)
Help me find an outstanding Senior Digital Comms Manager - with a brief to build something new and exciting by helping an organisation shift on a generation in its understanding and approach. And getting to work with the incomparable @joannerewcastle.bsky.social - either of us happy to talk/DM
ce0668li.webitrent.com
ce0668li.webitrent.com
Tube strike with a twist - trains, but apparently not for passengers
Autobiographical memory is a deeply weird and very variable thing. This is a story of two brothers, one of whom seems so strange to me as to be almost inhuman (and it's not the one who wrote the story). (@neillyneil.bsky.social - you might find this interesting)
You Must Remember This - The American Scholar
On the nature of autobiographical memory
theamericanscholar.org
It is pretty obvious from the design of lasting power of attorney forms that they are set up for bulk scanning, as is entirely sensible. So to require six weeks just to open an envelope and drop the contents into a hopper is quite remarkable, and not in a wholly reassuring way.
Lasting Power of Attorney is an important and sensitive government service. Once the form has been filled in, it has to be sent off - to an address in Birmingham which Royal Mail doesn't believe exists. Hardly reassuring. #FixTheForms
1455: email from TfL announcing that tube strikes this week are cancelled. Helpful. 1838: bus dot matrix display warns of impending tube strikes this week. Not helpful. Message consistency is a fine thing.
I've been involved with government transformation efforts for 15 years and, like many other veterans of this kind of work, have come to the conclusion that fixing the majority of the most important issues in government can't be done without a fundamental change in how government is structured.
Aveek Bhattacharya@aveek18.bsky.social · 3mo ago"the absence of a team responsible for long-term strategy means there is no one looking at big cross-departmental issues - like the implications of AI or the consequences of falling birth rates" One reason I left government was because I realised this was the job I wanted and it doesn't exist
Hammersmith, Albert, now Vauxhall. The secret plan to revive the fortunes of Thames watermen gathers pace.
tfl.gov.uk
The root cause of many government problems is that the government does not exist. Sometimes the polite fiction holds up, and sometimes the seething mess is laid bare. The question of why a login service requires 1700 words of Ts&Cs we can leave for another time.
Lambeth announces its results with characteristic branding panache
An election leaflet drops through the letterbox - one of many, this is the most intensively leafletted election I can remember. But I've never seen anything quite like this before.
"It could be that what’s happening is incentivized stupidity." Or it could be worse than that.
The stupidity of politics
No sane person would run a household or business with the lack of thinking that the government devotes to its affairs.
chrisdillow.substack.com
How is it possible to tell this story without acknowledging the perfection of its nominative determinism?
‘There’s no streetlights’: North Yorkshire restaurant told to stop driving diners home
Award-winning chef and husband ordered to stop offering lifts home from rurally located Hansom
theguardian.com
I was going to pull out a quotable one liner, as you do. But this whole post by @pollymackenzie.bsky.social is end to end quotable one liners, so if you have any interest in a better civil service and a better government, just read the whole thing.
Going for gold
Thoughts on civil service reform
howtorunacountry.substack.com