iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Jerry Fishenden @ntouk.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

A most enjoyable @computerweekly.bsky.social 60th anniversary event yesterday — here’s to the next 60! 🍾

Bryan Glick gives ComputerWeekly’s 60th anniversary speech to an attentive audience

ComputerWeekly 60th anniversary swag - a bag, notebook and pen

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Jerry Fishenden @ntouk.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

… not sure why they keep resending it …

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Jerry Fishenden @ntouk.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

... an update from Google relating to one of the issues I discuss

Screenshot of a post from Google stating:

Re: our statement on Image Generation in Google Earth:
“We know that people uniquely trust Google Earth for a reliable view of the world. We’ve seen geospatial professionals using this feature for a range of useful purposes, however we’ve also seen people sharing screenshots of generated imagery that appear to violate our policies. So we’re rolling back this feature in Google Earth while we work on implementing stronger guardrails. It's important to note that generated images didn’t appear in the main Google Earth experience for others to see and were watermarked as AI generated.”

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Jerry Fishenden @ntouk.bsky.social · 05/03/2026

Samurai at the British Museum is good … much better than my photos 🙂

A Japanese artistic scene with horsemen in battle

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Jerry Fishenden @ntouk.bsky.social · 20/02/2026

I guess I was expecting a secure identity selector / profile switching a bit like this :)

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Jerry Fishenden @ntouk.bsky.social · 08/02/2026

... and a month or more later, nothing has been fixed.

A screenshot from the Crapita Civil Service Pension website. It shows the response after filling in full contact details ... although it acknowledges "We've sent your enquiry" it then says "Your reference number is NOT FOUND". The website has been like this since it launched, unable to let members re-register and then when they fill in the contact form, failing again.

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Jerry Fishenden @ntouk.bsky.social · 18/01/2026

Gridwatch is such a good app to track the reality of the UK’s live energy metrics …

A pie graph showing the sources of current energy supply in the UK - with gas accounting for over 44%

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Jerry Fishenden @ntouk.bsky.social · 23/12/2025

I'm going to replace a few graphics like this (from the digital government archives) with better (HTML) equivalents in the New Year. Apart from correcting a few obvious typos, anything else I should update/improve on this one while I'm at it?

A table setting out the state of digital government in 2001. It covers the pan-government website UKonline; identification, authentication, and single sign-on; cross-sector connectivity; e-Signatures; and data interoperability

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Jerry Fishenden @ntouk.bsky.social · 22/12/2025

Capita really have excelled themselves taking over the Civil Service pension scheme …

A snapshot of the Civil Service pension website showing that “due to a technical issue” they are currently unable to access records and the contact centre cannot answer any queries …

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Jerry Fishenden @ntouk.bsky.social · 13/12/2025

Winter, when one of my favourite beers starts appearing on draught … one of life’s treats :)

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Jerry Fishenden @ntouk.bsky.social · 28/09/2025

GOV.UK One Login is a mess. Alongside reported security issues & missing features like delegation & support for business, it breaks the government’s identity assurance principles: it's impossible to switch easily between different One Login accounts. How did it ever pass a service assessment?

A warning message within the One Login app — stating that everything will be deleted from the app if the user logs out from one of their One Login accounts in order to log in in again with another one, breaking the government's own identity assurance principles.

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Jerry Fishenden @ntouk.bsky.social · 20/09/2025

Clarksdale … another great experience of the blues and its history

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Jerry Fishenden @ntouk.bsky.social · 20/09/2025

Great to have been in BB King’s Blues Club, Memphis, just a few days before the 100th anniversary of his birth

The cover page of the local free Memphis newspaper featuring BB King to celebrate 100 years since his birth

A blues band — singer, bass, guitar, piano and drums — on stage performing at BB King’s Blues Club

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Jerry Fishenden @ntouk.bsky.social · 17/09/2025

Musical road trip, USA — Nashville, Memphis and New Orleans

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Jerry Fishenden @ntouk.bsky.social · 12/06/2025

A few snaps of the local birdlife here in #Shetland

A puffin stands on a cliff edge looking out to sea

Two hungry gulls sit on a van’s roof at the back of a fish and chip shop

A gannet in flight, a piece of seaweed on its beak for building its nest

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Jerry Fishenden @ntouk.bsky.social · 31/05/2025

Back with the tammie norries … as the excellent Wikipedia entry tells us: “they breed in muckle colonies on seawart cleuchs or islands, nestin in craggy scores or in bourie ben the yird”

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Jerry Fishenden @ntouk.bsky.social · 25/04/2025

Too short of time to read through 30 years of strategies to digitally reform and modernise government? No problem! Here's your friendly AI "bingo card" digest of some of the most regularly re-used soundbites ...

A colourful infographic "bingo card" with 20 of the most frequently re-used phrases in government digital announcements — from "world leader in ..." to "powering the future" and "unleash potential"

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Jerry Fishenden @ntouk.bsky.social · 20/04/2025

Love living in London, although also looking forward to being back in Lerwick again soon

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Jerry Fishenden @ntouk.bsky.social · 07/04/2025

... another day, another workshop ...

A photo of a small stack of hardback second editions of my book "Fracture. The collision between technology and democracy—and how we fix it."

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Jerry Fishenden @ntouk.bsky.social · 03/04/2025

no shortage of copyright works that have apparently been used by Meta to train its AI models. I found quite a few of my own amongst them, including at least one book ... #DoTheWriteThing @writersguildgb.bsky.social @alcs.co.uk

The images are screenshots of works in the LibGen database that show copyright works allegedly used by Meta to train its AI models. They include at least one of my books and multiple articles, including some co-written with colleagues

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Jerry Fishenden @ntouk.bsky.social · 02/04/2025

... and here's that briefly summarised as an image

A summary visual overview of the structure of Fracture illustrating what was described in the previous posts

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Jerry Fishenden @ntouk.bsky.social · 26/03/2025

that recent Heathrow power outage reminded me of another example of a lack of resilience I mention in my book ...

However, even when organisations think they’re resilient, it isn’t always true. One example I encountered involved a nationally important organisation keen to avoid a single point of network failure. They contracted two different companies to ensure that should one of their networks go down the other would remain available. Everything looked good on paper. Until one day a digger involved in construction work suddenly took out both networks simultaneously. How was this possible? It turned out that the two different contractors had routed their cables through the same underground duct and failed to ensure the two networks were physically well-separated.

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Jerry Fishenden @ntouk.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

Conspirators’ Corner seems like the perfect place to sit in the pub :)

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Jerry Fishenden @ntouk.bsky.social · 31/01/2025

The first proof of the second edition of Fracture has arrived … lots of work still to do!

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Jerry Fishenden @ntouk.bsky.social · 30/01/2025

I've been sourcing additional content and updating my book "Fracture" in preparation for its Second Edition. I recently found this slide from 2000 describing how the best teams were working in Whitehall back then—very similar to the recent discussion about the role and value of 'test-and-learn'.

A PowerPoint slide from 2000 with a bullet point summary of how to develop digitally-enabled policy initiatives through 'Baby Steps': build and learn, iterative, and trial and error, including the need to set expectations with citizens and politicians

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Jerry Fishenden @ntouk.bsky.social · 01/12/2024

December … which brings one of the greatest Christmas traditions, the ceremony of the advent calendar of Fullers beers. And today the wonderful Yuletide festival commences to reveal a very fine HSB.

A box labelled Fullers of Chiswick, 24 beers of Christmas

A box labelled Fullers of Chiswick, 24 beers of Christmas seen from another angle. On the top are 24 numbered doors from 1 to 24 … which will doubtless provide access to the advent beers

A bottle of HSB beer on top of the Fullers advent box - it is the beer that was behind door number 1

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Jerry Fishenden @ntouk.bsky.social · 23/11/2024

What an amazing creative company, making beautiful globes in my former manor of Stokie Would love one of these … will start saving :) bellerbyandco.com

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Jerry Fishenden @ntouk.bsky.social · 16/11/2024

A summary of the digital principles set out by the UK government in 1996. We remain a long way from achieving these ambitions nearly 30 years later.

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Jerry Fishenden @ntouk.bsky.social · 15/11/2024

A few snapshots from 2002/2003 of the UK government's progress with digital transformation. User research was helping redesign government around citizens' life events, displacing the department-centric approach of the 1990s—and all made possible by the implementation of cross-government platforms

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Jerry Fishenden @ntouk.bsky.social · 13/11/2024

The 2nd Edition of 'Fracture. The collision between technology and democracy—and how we fix it' is being published Q1 next year. It's a major update. In full colour. In the meantime, if you have any feedback on the current edition—improvements, things to add, lose, etc.—let me know :)

The draft cover of version two of my book Fracture. It has a computer screen with the title displayed on it, and an election ballot box dimmed in the background.

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Jerry Fishenden @ntouk.bsky.social · 12/11/2024

Every time I put it through its paces, AI does little to live up to the hype 🙄 Still, it’s good to see the “Boss” and their, er, campervan (?) have such an important role in cloud and edge computing and the Internet of Things … presumably driving all the bits over to, er, the “Blowe tegagy” etc.

An AI generated image full of nonsense text and a complete lack of understanding of the topic

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Jerry Fishenden @ntouk.bsky.social · 08/11/2024

The original GOV.UK—the CCTA Government Information Service—launched 30 years ago this month, in November 1994. By 1996, it had brought together 120 public sector bodies and 60 government departments and agencies, providing a single online point of entry to public services and information.

A screenshot of the original UK government website, the CCTA Government Information Service, in 1994

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Jerry Fishenden @ntouk.bsky.social · 05/11/2024

Of course, govts' tendency to champion technology as a magical cure-all to complex political issues is nothing new. As this updated graphic from my book Fracture* illustrates, the UK government has been claiming mystical powers for technology since at least, er, 1996. *Second Edition due Q1 2025

An image of a UK Government spokesperson making a series of announcements from 1996 to 2024 about how technology will transform the public sector

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Jerry Fishenden @ntouk.bsky.social · 10/10/2024

Today would have been Kirsty MacColl’s 65th birthday … It seemed like a good day to wander past her former home in Ealing on my way home

A photo of the green commemorative plaque on Kirsty MacColl's former home in Ealing. It says she lived and recorded here 1985-2000.

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Jerry Fishenden @ntouk.bsky.social · 05/10/2024

… your regular reminder … “may” doing a lot of heavy lifting here …

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Jerry Fishenden @ntouk.bsky.social · 10/08/2024

lol, not sure what The Guardian’s smokin’ …

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Jerry Fishenden @ntouk.bsky.social · 07/08/2024

I spent a lot of time when I was younger on the 73 bus between Stoke Newington and central London. Fond memories of their entertaining conductors (less fond memories of the cigarette smoke fog of the upper deck). It was good to ride on one again at the recent Routemaster 75th anniversary

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Jerry Fishenden @ntouk.bsky.social · 05/08/2024

Having walked past it dozens of times, I finally found time to pop into Pitzhanger Manor, Sir John Soane’s old country gaff in what is now central Ealing. Well worth a visit (along with the Soane museum in Lincoln’s Inn Fields which has all the furniture, ornaments etc which were once in the Manor)

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Jerry Fishenden @ntouk.bsky.social · 03/05/2024

After a month of visits around the EU, walking over London Bridge earlier this week was a great welcome home. Love this city

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Jerry Fishenden @ntouk.bsky.social · 19/04/2024

… ah, a perfect end of day drink here in Stockholm

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Jerry Fishenden @ntouk.bsky.social · 13/04/2024

Great to have been in Prague again, after a long gap. Early morning was the ideal time to roam the old city, before the mass tour groups were unleashed.

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Jerry Fishenden @ntouk.bsky.social · 31/03/2024

An Easter Sunday wander around the docklands near Trinity Buoy Wharf and Virginia Quay — having previously visited Jamestown in Virginia it was good to see where the settlers departed from in 1606. Lots of history and art in this area. And then a cheeky pint in The Gun seemed appropriate ….

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Jerry Fishenden @ntouk.bsky.social · 04/03/2024

It’s great to be back in Belgium … and even more so to enjoy a bit of relaxation after work :)

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Jerry Fishenden @ntouk.bsky.social · 09/02/2024

government use of technology—promising an imminent revolutionary improvement in citizens' lives and better public services since, er, at least 1996 The next government will need to learn from what's worked—and what hasn't—if it's to finally realise the benefits of technology

A list of government strategies from 1996 to 2024, claiming that technology is about to deliver "better and more efficient services". The extracts come from strategies published in 1996, 1998, 2009, 2011, 2013, 2017, 2021, 2022, 2024.

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