Coco

ICYMI last week our work was featured in the BBC: www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

2 x G6 Service Owner civil servant jobs: Help GDS help the public sector make services that are: - accessible & inclusive (SO: Accessibility & Inclusion) and; - delivered by local government (SO: GDS Local) Agile and user-centred designer types please. 'Servant leaders' please. Link in thread.

After nearly four years working on one of the best programmes in Government, it’s time for a change. Next month I’ll be joining MHCLG’s Local AI team as their first Service Owner 🎉

Stay in bed, human

I see a certain US tech/data company are in the news (again). A reminder that there are alternatives, if you can assemble a great team and are brave enough to take on the work. We’ve done it, and you can too. Happy to chat with anyone on the same journey 👋🏻

To new beginnings 🥂

I hope Josh O’Connor gets Bond, if only so that I can update my claim to fame* 🌟 *We went to the same school, I watched him as Fagin in the senior production, and even at 17/18 he stood out a mile.

If you’re a lead or head working on a digital service, you’re going to be held to account by more than GDS’s guidance. And it doesn’t all live in the same place. My favourite governance nerd, Oli Lovell, has pulled together a compass. Have a peek. publicdigital-delivery-compass.netlify.app/trial/

One of my biggest challenges in returning to study has been re-learning how to do long form writing. I’ve been training for 10 years to write succinctly for time-poor audiences! Summarise something incredibly complex in 500 words - I got you 😌 Expand that concept to 5000 words urrr 😱😵‍💫😂

Exhausted after our service assessment! 4+ hours of intense concentration is no joke… The team were superb. The panel asked thoughtful questions. Whatever the final result, that was a tremendously useful process for us 😊🤞🏻

Dress rehearsal done. Beta assessment is tomorrow. So proud of the team for their hard work bringing together the story of 2 years of work, in a succinct and exciting presentation. Now it’s their time to shine ✨

After a total bin-fire of a summer, things are starting to look brighter around here ☺️✨

What an absolute joy it is to see Miranda back on telly #CelebrityTraitors

Last week one of my wonderful team members secured a hard-earned and well-deserved promotion 🤩 This is one of the most satisfying parts of my job: seeing people I’ve mentored outgrow my support 🚀

Don’t want to get my hopes up too early, but it’s looking promising 🍒

Beautiful day for a contest ☀️

Can’t believe #TheTraitors casting team have found a celebrity with even less poker face than Alan Carr.

Final rehearsal before the Royal Albert Hall 🤞🏻

Our band commissioned a 3D printing company to make miniature keepsakes of our European trophy 🥹💚

This is much more like it 🍒 #EXEvGLO

Home safely from an enjoyable few days at #SDinGov 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 There’ll be no blog post from me this year; I simply have nothing left in the tank! You’re probably all sick of my voice anyway 😂 If you want to hear about HFU, our awesome team are writing about it: mhclgdigital.blog.gov.uk/category/hom...

New job role at GDS: Deputy Director for Digital Standards and Inclusive Design. Deadline end of 8th October. Public sector only... Come be my boss! If you're nice, and good. www.civilservicejobs.service.gov.uk/csr/index.cg...

Passed my last assessment before my apprenticeship portfolio gateway 🎉 Thank goodness!! The most stressful results day wondering if I’d need to rapidly rewrite my assignment… 😅

Talk is done, and my brain is overstimulated and ready for some quiet 😅 Time for a quiet evening in my hotel with new Bake Off and Ted Lasso 📺

Thank you to everyone who came to our talk @sdingov.bsky.social today, and for the thoughtful questions! 🇺🇦 Now to relax and enjoy the rest of the conference 😊

Who’s going to be at SDinGov this week? 👋🏻

Check out our lovely shiny openly-available GitHub repo 😍 It’s not always easy to work in the open, but it is worth it to ensure we’re contributing back to the knowledge pool that enabled us to do our work. Hopefully it helps another team on their journey 🚀 mhclgdigital.blog.gov.uk/2026/09/18/m...

Just recorded a piece with radio 3 about the band, and our European title winning piece ‘West Wind’ by Oliver Waespi 🤩 my episode of ‘Brass Banding with Hannah Peel’ should be out early November! 🎶

Good evening Birmingham! Delighted to be here ☀️ Tomorrow we attempt to take the British Open title at your beautiful concert hall! 🎺 🥁

I spoke last week about the importance of shouting about your own work, else nobody will find you! The Civil service awards are open for nominations. We’re writing an entry. If you’re in CS, why don’t you have a go too? 😄 www.civilserviceawards.com

6th university assignment is in 🙌🏻 Final project and portfolio submission still to come. I massively underestimated how much work this apprenticeship would be 😅 nevertheless I’m so glad I signed up, as I’m learning loads!!

Next up: Edinburgh! I’ll be at all three days of SDinGov, and really looking forward to corridor camping once our talk is out of the way 😄

Lovely job for this morning - writing an awards nomination for one of my team 🥰

Should I buy this t shirt? 😆

Doubly exciting day - I found out that I passed my latest uni assignment 🥳 I wrote it in a 4 day blur when I was on a cocktail of antibiotics in July, and I knew it wasn’t my best work but I was determined to submit something, so a pass is a huge win!

Thank you @jukes.ie @debblanch44.bsky.social and @visitmy.website for another terrific day! Lovely to meet lots of new people, and hear about brilliant work happening across the sector 🤗

Amazed/terrified to hear we’ve been assigned the BIG room at SDinGov 😅

Who’s coming to Product for the People on Thursday? 👀 So excited to see people after being in a bubble for a while!

Spring was incredible but frenetic. Summer was a blur of sickness and sadness. Here’s hoping for a lighter, quieter autumn 🧡

Another bonus of blogging: being able to reference my own and my colleagues‘ work when writing uni assignments 🤩 #WorkInTheOpen

Talk is written 🥳 see y’all next Thursday!

Temporarily lost my sparkle while I navigate a painful break up, but it’ll be back soon ✨ How do younger people cope with all these big feelings though. It’s hard enough now, with a fully developed frontal cortex…

Whoever those lucky civil servants are who get the secondments into mayoral authorities, I hope they have the subtle balance of enough self-confidence to drive the roles forward, tempered with enough humility to recognise the skills and expertise that already exist locally. No superheroes, please.

Talk writing for Product for the People is going well 😅

Another great morning sharing our work with colleagues from other gov departments 🙌🏻 We don’t expect anyone to carbon copy what we do, but if we can help accelerate their progress then we will try to do so! Relatedly, we’ve recently made our web app repo public 👀 Hopefully blog post coming soon!