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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
absolutely the correct language!
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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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Duncan Brown @duncanjbrown.com · 04/03/2026
please sign me up!
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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 · 16/02/2026
speculative fiction in CHANGELOGs is the genre I didn't know I needed!
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Duncan Brown @duncanjbrown.com · 29/01/2026
Curious as to how the £4,166,666.67 figure was arrived at—a clean two thirds of £6.25m. I wonder what cost £6.25m of which this was considered 2/3 of the work?
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Duncan Brown @duncanjbrown.com · 26/01/2026
aye, captain!
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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 · 05/01/2026
*Delighted* by number 6!
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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 · 30/12/2025
i agree! interesting that software formalises the "doctrine" part into a job role whilst everyone else has the job of balancing doctrine and context all day, decision by decision
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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
thank you!
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Duncan Brown @duncanjbrown.com · 27/12/2025
thanks! i might!
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Duncan Brown @duncanjbrown.com · 27/12/2025
thank you! def worth checking out Le Suite—bold and maybe overambitious, but v interesting to see it happening
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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 think the real lesson to draw from Palantir's many contracts is that government has on the whole so successfully driven away talent that those who show up capable and incentivised to engage with the real problems seem like manna from heaven—& worth the ££££ and the lock-in. We should look to that!
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Duncan Brown @duncanjbrown.com · 08/12/2025
Whereas a module that Palantir chooses to extract and add to their platform is just proprietary software. It's clever: they've harnessed the network effects of a open-source like ecosystem with a completely closed commercial model. Good business! And walled gardens surely have advantages.
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Duncan Brown @duncanjbrown.com · 08/12/2025
That irreducible difference is the space where the design system and friends enable us to play very productively, and those assets are ours.
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Duncan Brown @duncanjbrown.com · 08/12/2025
These are imperfect means to capture "solutions". But there's an irreducible difference between being solving one problem and having a generic solution to more than one—indeed the latter makes for the bad old consultancy model ZS contrasts unfavourably with Palantir's.
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Duncan Brown @duncanjbrown.com · 08/12/2025
ZS observes that for "indie consultants" "there’s no one extracting the patterns. The knowledge compounds in their heads... but it doesn’t get productised. It doesn’t create leverage." We do have that though: open source, the design system, the service manual.
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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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Duncan Brown @duncanjbrown.com · 21/11/2025
this excellent paper has a section called “From antipolitical AI to political AI”? 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 · 08/11/2025
what a brilliant essay. amongst many other things, i’m definitely having “thick” and “thin” construction🧎
A highlighted quote: “In the world of thick construction, objective functions and thus meanings are constantly debated, negotiated, and co-constructed; objectives and meanings are multiple, overlapping, and at times contradictory. In the world of thin construction, overwhelming power—the ability to impose an objective function—leads to semantic power: the ability to impose meaning. “
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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
There are definitely more, especially on interop and open standards!
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Duncan Brown @duncanjbrown.com · 27/10/2025
5. Good software does not make the world worse by deliberately enabling violence or injustice.
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Duncan Brown @duncanjbrown.com · 27/10/2025
4. Good software remains attentive to the needs of its users throughout its lifetime.
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Duncan Brown @duncanjbrown.com · 27/10/2025
3. Good software does not force its user to deviate from standard operating procedures (e.g. just run a process in a container) without very good reason.
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Duncan Brown @duncanjbrown.com · 27/10/2025
2. Good software does not pursue lock-in. It seeks to actively participate in open standards and to improve them where tasteful and appropriate. Ideally it does not need to care what its own commercial model is.
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Duncan Brown @duncanjbrown.com · 27/10/2025
1. Good software works, which means it does what is expected according to the consensus reality shared by the team, the rest of the company, the community, etc, and it can change as the consensus reality changes.
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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 · 25/10/2025
I agree—APIs need good public relations!
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Duncan Brown @duncanjbrown.com · 24/10/2025
Lovely
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Duncan Brown @duncanjbrown.com · 24/10/2025
We’ll definitely blog if we find traction! It’s so hard to argue for the long term in general isn’t it. I feel like someone must have written about this!?
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Duncan Brown @duncanjbrown.com · 24/10/2025
We lived this at DfE didn’t we—70-odd university integrations on 6 month release cycles governing what we could and couldn’t change in the teacher training application form. It wasn’t incompatible, but it was definitely a constraint!
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Duncan Brown @duncanjbrown.com · 24/10/2025
And on a longer term view, of course the habit of procurement lives in so many aspects of the culture
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Duncan Brown @duncanjbrown.com · 24/10/2025
I’ve only been here a few weeks! But @richardpope.org and I are trying to make standards desirable from a both dev and product point of view - excellent developer experience and tangible benefits (a path to NHS App integration, for example) for adopters
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