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Duncan Brown

@duncanjbrown.com
342 followers 459 following 86 posts

I make software. i.AI, NHS, DfE mechanicalsurvival.com

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Duncan Brown @duncanjbrown.com · 15/06/2026
AI chainsaws, continuous finishing, and safety in numbers mechanicalsurvival.com/blog/claude-...
mechanicalsurvival.com
Claude Code is a chainsaw
“Wood, chainsaw, tree” by pb826 on Pixabay I first picked up a chainsaw two summers ago. I was staying with a friend at his farm on Dartmoor. We spent a drizzly afternoon splitting logs with a hatchet...
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Richard Pope @richardpope.org · 13/05/2026
Lobster pots, complexity and starting small in the right way Or the case against use-cases www.platformland.xyz/ways-of-doing/…
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Duncan Brown @duncanjbrown.com · 27/04/2026
I guess any code hosting platform could now dramatically grow its user base and code portfolio by offering free AI security scans for open source software.
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Duncan Brown @duncanjbrown.com · 12/03/2026
It’s frustrating when reports like this cite the “highly interoperable nature” of commercial software as a given. Interoperability doesn’t mean “everything in one place”—it means the opposite. But redefining it allows vendors to present a magical solution.
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Duncan Brown @duncanjbrown.com · 11/03/2026
corollary: if you run an open source library with any users at all, you are now in a vulnerability-finding arms race with those who will mechanically find and exploit security issues in your code… and embarrassingly, any software that depends on it
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Mike Gallagher @mikegallagher.bsky.social · 08/03/2026
new post on translation, holding different versions of reality, and living between worlds mikegallagher.org/posts/of-med...
mikegallagher.org
Mike Gallagher: Of mediation and membranes
On holding multiple versions of reality in your head and translating between them
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Richard Pope @richardpope.org · 04/03/2026
Noting that NHS England currently has job ads out for a CDIO and CDAO (this is in addition to the Department of Health and Social Care CDO): findajob.dwp.gov.uk/details/1794... findajob.dwp.gov.uk/details/1794... There's a month to apply.
findajob.dwp.gov.uk
Chief Information Officer | NHS England | Job details | Find a job
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Duncan Brown @duncanjbrown.com · 20/02/2026
“bottlenecks are not natural obstacles – they are, in most cases, the consequence of increasing production” 💎
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Duncan Brown @duncanjbrown.com · 26/01/2026
“We continue to immediately ban and publicly ridicule everyone who submits AI slop to the project.”
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AndreasThinks @andreasthinks.me · 25/01/2026
So it looks like the government is announcing a National Police Service. Again. It's one of those ideas that seems perfect from the outside, but yet we never seem to be able to get right. It got my brain whirring, so I wrote up some reflections. andreasthinks.me/posts/reflec... #Policing #uk
andreasthinks.me
Reflecting on the National Police Service – Andreas Varotsis
So we’re doing this again…
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dan @danabra.mov · 18/01/2026
formats over apps
overreacted.io
A Social Filesystem — overreacted
Formats over apps.
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Tom Loosemore @tomski.com · 14/01/2026
How many govt services end up crocked, despite the efforts of skilled teams. (Policy and delivery being treated as separate. Shared platform cosplay. Leaders rotating off every 2yrs.) medium.com/@veroj/inter...
medium.com
Interface failure is leadership failure
Thousands of support requests rained down on our teams for the second autumn in a row.
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Liz Lutgendorff @lizlutgendorff.bsky.social · 06/01/2026
Wrote about my first 7 months transforming the technology underpinning the national breast screening programme: lizlutgendorff.substack.com/p/lessons-le...
lizlutgendorff.substack.com
Lessons learned after 7 months at NHSE
Not what I expected but in a good way.
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Duncan Brown @duncanjbrown.com · 04/01/2026
My sense is that the Test and Learn movement in the public sector anchors much more on “build-and-test” than “describe-and-defend” as this essay sets them out… possibly to its detriment?
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Duncan Brown @duncanjbrown.com · 29/12/2025
“You want your structural engineers to be drawing, not laying bricks, after all. I don’t know if structural engineering works like this, but software engineering doesn’t. In practice, architecture advice often has to be ignored by the people on the ground.” www.seangoedecke.com/you-cant-des...
seangoedecke.com
You can't design software you don't work on
--
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Duncan Brown @duncanjbrown.com · 27/12/2025
My 2025 #yearnote as—sorry!—a listicle. mechanicalsurvival.com/blog/2025/
mechanicalsurvival.com
10 lessons from 2025
Technology & identity in GDS and the NHS
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Duncan Brown @duncanjbrown.com · 08/12/2025
I disagree with the conclusions of this excellent, reasonable article by @zoescaman.bsky.social zoescaman.substack.com/p/the-palant...
zoescaman.substack.com
The Palantir Model
Where Strategy Goes Next
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Bozhidar Batsov (a.k.a. Bug) @batsov.net · 24/11/2025
One of the many joys of using AI for programming is the creation of huge PRs on complex topics that the authors barely understand, but still suggest "because they work". Here's a great example from #OCaml github.com/ocaml/ocaml/... Kudos to OCaml's maintainers for handling this so gracefully.
github.com
DWARF support for macOS and Linux by joelreymont · Pull Request #14369 · ocaml/ocaml
DWARF v5 Debugging Support for OCaml Native Compiler This PR adds DWARF v5 debug information to the OCaml native compiler, allowing proper source-level debugging in GDB and LLDB. What's Impleme...
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Duncan Brown @duncanjbrown.com · 22/11/2025
This really resonates. Meetings are the synchronisation penalty public servants pay for an overwhelmingly synchronous, distributed system of management. The “meeting culture” is not optional—it expresses a cultural void where autonomy can’t flourish.
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Jeni Tennison @jenitennison.com · 08/11/2025
This fantastic paper "proposes a vision of AI that embraces local vernaculars, the multiplicity of objectives, the responsibilities that come with producing persons, and the potential of instigating rather than circumventing political contestation." read.dukeupress.edu/public-cultu...
read.dukeupress.edu
From Thin to Thick | Public Culture | Duke University Press
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Duncan Brown @duncanjbrown.com · 27/10/2025
A few ideas on what "good software" (not "good code"!) is, touching ethics, interop, commercials and functionality 🧵
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Duncan Brown @duncanjbrown.com · 23/10/2025
"[Open standards] can feel like a burden to the participants. They should! The alternative is each product imposes its incompatible opinions directly on the users rather than working through the trade-offs with competitors first." Yet as we outsource "the work" to suppliers, we outsource this too.
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Duncan Brown @duncanjbrown.com · 20/10/2025
This morning's AWS outage prompted reflections in NHSE towers that "disaster recovery" and "inclusive services" directly overlap. For instance, the Record a vaccination service have designed a paper-only data capture process for when the internet is unavailable
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Duncan Brown @duncanjbrown.com · 18/10/2025
Clichés take hold in political language, a vicious cycle that runs through campaign speeches, through citizens’ expectations, and down into the software we build or procure by cliché, whose accordingly poor performance invites further calls for simplification. mechanicalsurvival.com/blog/design-...
mechanicalsurvival.com
Design by cliché
We reject cliché. We require true names
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olizilla @oli.zilla.org.uk · 08/10/2025
a wonderfully humane take on the real consequences of our choices around ai and teamwork and diversity and pretty sure i would have been ugly crying by the end.
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Rob Bowley @robbowley.net · 08/10/2025
Some reflections on @duncanjbrown.com's recent article "Team dynamics after AI", which is one of the best/most important pieces of writing I've read on AI in a long time
blog.robbowley.net
On “Team dynamics after AI” and the Illusion of Efficiency | Rob Bowley
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Duncan Brown @duncanjbrown.com · 04/10/2025
Why yes that IS a @charity.wtf sticker on my work notebook! 💖
A sombre notebook bearing a psychedelic sticker that reads "IF IT HURTS... DO IT MORE"
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Duncan Brown @duncanjbrown.com · 03/10/2025
Why I don't believe in "small giants": mechanicalsurvival.com/blog/team-dy...
mechanicalsurvival.com
Team dynamics after AI
Small giants and real giants
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Duncan Brown @duncanjbrown.com · 29/07/2025
If prompts are all we have left to record our intentions when we're programming, we should keep them. Automatically, if possible. mechanicalsurvival.com/blog/prompts...
mechanicalsurvival.com
Prompts are design documents
...and we should keep them
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Duncan Brown @duncanjbrown.com · 09/07/2025
In praise of AI applications that can finish. mechanicalsurvival.com/blog/structu...
mechanicalsurvival.com
Structuring unstructured data is a correct use of AI
Who wouldn't want to be desirable, verifiable and adoptable?
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Gavin Freeguard @gavinfreeguard.com · 06/03/2025
A *massive* thank you to @duncanjbrown.com, Elliot from HFEA, @ayymanduh.bsky.social and @mrdudders.bsky.social for being brilliant at Data Bites last night - one of the best we've done Watch back as live: app.sli.do/event/6buz4o... #pddatabites
i.AI's Duncan Brown speaks at Data Bites. Photo by @paulclarke.comHFEA'S Elliot Bridges presents at Data Bites. The screen shows a slide of the HFEA's Data Dashboard. Photo by @paulclarke.comPD's Amanda Smith presents at Data Bites. Photo by @paulclarke.comFull Fact's Andy Dudfield presents at Data Bites. Photo by @paulclarke.com
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AndreasThinks @andreasthinks.me · 08/01/2025
If you're interested in UK #govtech or #opendata, the Incubator for AI have just open-sourced this like of "Awesome UK Government Datasets" and are looking for contributors! github.com/i-dot-ai/awe...
github.com
GitHub - i-dot-ai/awesome-gov-datasets: A curated set of references to useful UK Government datasets
A curated set of references to useful UK Government datasets - GitHub - i-dot-ai/awesome-gov-datasets: A curated set of references to useful UK Government datasets
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Duncan Brown @duncanjbrown.com · 03/01/2025
🧵 Some standout quotes from this paper, which uses the Prison Service as an example of how centralised political control can impoverish us when it annihilates the autonomy of people directly responsible for delivering public services: bristoluniversitypressdigital.com/view/journal...
bristoluniversitypressdigital.com
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Peter Thomas @peterdt847.bsky.social · 01/01/2025
Ministers and officials need to confront the two lies that dog spending reviews: effiencies are rarely that, instead they lead to blunt cuts with unconsidered consequences; the Treasury's self-identity as a strategic performance budgeter is shattered by their increased use of input controls
civilservicereformuk.com
It is time to confront the 2 great lies of UK spending reviews
As we head into an unusually significant ‘outcome focused’ spending review ministers and senior officials should reflect on two mistruths that have dogged public expenditure controls and the accompany...
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Duncan Brown @duncanjbrown.com · 12/12/2024
This was an honour! ❤️
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Duncan Brown @duncanjbrown.com · 12/12/2024
Chris Cunningham eat your heart out
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Duncan Brown @duncanjbrown.com · 10/12/2024
This is righteous. Imo gatekeeping is not only a plausible explanation, but *the best explanation* for all the gratuitous complexity in frontend development that’s sprung up over the last decade.
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Rachel Coldicutt @rachelcoldicutt.bsky.social · 09/12/2024
More detail in here. Test and learn sounds sensible but (a) we all know secondments will mean PwC, (b) planting people from small teams as heroes in big orgs is tough on everyone, (c) why not just give more money and power to people who know what they're doing? www.theguardian.com/politics/202...
theguardian.com
Government seeks Whitehall ‘startup’ culture with tech worker secondments
Pat McFadden to urge departments to adopt ‘test-and-learn’ approach as part of £100m scheme for public sector reform
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Duncan Brown @duncanjbrown.com · 01/12/2024
At DfE “board” had got mixed up with “authority” so people reached for the first when they wanted the second
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Vicki @vickiboykis.com · 27/11/2024
Thinking about this post a lot this week www.ftrain.com/wwic
ftrain.com
The Web Is a Customer Service Medium (Ftrain.com)
I look forward to your feedback.
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Duncan Brown @duncanjbrown.com · 12/11/2024
New language today: the expression “code piece” instead of “piece of code”, for an LLM output. The speaker meant piece as in “artefact”, not piece as in “fragment”, and the LLM had “broken” the piece by making a bad edit.
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Duncan Brown @duncanjbrown.com · 08/11/2024
How do you refactor a country? Whilst top-down reform on a national scale is obviously the road to hell, I think we should take the #Platformland invitation to radicalism seriously. mechanicalsurvival.com/blog/the-way...
mechanicalsurvival.com
The way to Platformland
How do you refactor a country?
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Terence Eden @edent.tel · 19/10/2024
My old team is recruiting. If you're interested in setting the UK Government right on AI, stop snarking online and put your career where your mouth is. ai.gov.uk/join/
List of interesting jobs.
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