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Tom Steel

@tomsteel.co.uk
353 followers 118 following 182 posts

Doing digital things for the public sector iam.tomsteel.co.uk

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Reposted by Tom Steel
dxw @dxw.com · 27/08/2026
We're hiring for a number of roles here at dxw, including: - Developer - Senior Developer - Lead Technologist - Product Manager/Senior Product Manager Find all the info on the roles and how to apply here 👉 www.dxw.com/careers/#ope...
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Tom Steel @tomsteel.co.uk · 06/08/2026
“If you don’t make your service easier to use today, the machines will come tomorrow, and they’ll chew through your friction and cause you much, much, much bigger problems.” blog.tomsteel.co.uk/2026/08/04/f...
blog.tomsteel.co.uk
Friction is dead. Deal with it. – Tom blogs
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Tom Loosemore @tomski.com · 04/08/2026
I've written a long blog post about AI Agents and the need for those running services to prepare - technically, operationally, commercially, strategically, legally and in terms of policy. AI Agents could be a properly huge deal. There. I wrote it. loosemore.com/2026/08/04/k...
loosemore.com
Know Your Agent: Why you should act now, to avoid playing catch-up later
Back in March, I was beaten by the bins. I’d spent a happy few evenings (and a great many tokens) trying to build a simple web app: share any UK address, find out which bins to put out, and w…
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Tom Loosemore @tomski.com · 24/07/2026
Termsync.co.uk is most excellent, not least it's running on an open weight LLM hosted under the maker's desk.
termsync.co.uk
TermSync — School term dates, nailed
Subscribe to your child's school term dates. Terms, half-terms, INSET days and holidays land in your calendar and stay up to date on their own.
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Tom Steel @tomsteel.co.uk · 06/07/2026
Worth a read: the Digital Poverty Alliance’s latest report examines accessibility across UK government services, highlighting where barriers remain and opportunities to improve digital inclusion. digitalpovertyalliance.org/wp-content/u...
digitalpovertyalliance.org
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Reposted by Tom Steel
Allen Holub @allenholub.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
Regarding the speed of an AI and the volume of code it can create: None of that matters.
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James East @jameseast.online · 24/05/2026
I was responsible for this (it was literally my idea while I was Product Manager for Media Playout at the BBC) and it is still my proudest achievement ever
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Kriszta Satori @fulelo.bsky.social · 15/05/2026
#BBCNews - 'Millions' of pounds saved by replacing Palantir tech in refugee system www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
bbc.co.uk
UK saves 'millions' of pounds by ditching Palantir for refugee system
The government said its in-house IT system was
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Randall Munroe @xkcd.com · 12/05/2026
Pullback Drive xkcd.com/3244/
Comic. [Person 1 with short hair gestures to car while talking to Person 2.] PERSON 1: You won’t have to worry about gas pries *or* electricity prices with our new pullback drive model. At the factory, we put the car on the ground and tow it all the way backward until it starts clicking. To drive forward, you just release the brake and it goes.
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Duille @duille.com · 12/05/2026
Design legend Margaret Calvert is 90 today. Look at that cake! If you've ever admired a road, rail or metro sign in Britain it's likely she had something to do with it. One of Britain's design heroes - happy birthday to her. Photo by: @oshgallerylondon (IG) Cake by: mybaker.co
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The School of Good Services @theschoolofgood.bsky.social · 08/04/2026
We’ve got a new podcast! Bad Services is out on the 20th of May, but if you can't wait to get stuck in, we’ve just launched a podcast so you can dive into the book early, and listen along as we talk about each chapter over the next few months. good.services/badservicesp...
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Guy Shrubsole @guyshrubsole.bsky.social · 18/03/2026
VICTORY! Government to open up the Land Registry - bringing to an end a thousand years of secrecy shrouding who owns England. I’ve been campaigning for this for ten years: the new Land Use Framework, published later today, makes it government policy. 1/ www.theguardian.com/environment/...
theguardian.com
Government to lift paywall from large parts of the Land Registry
Exclusive: finding out who owns land will become simpler under plans to make the best use of green spaces and hit net zero targets
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Tom Loosemore @tomski.com · 17/03/2026
Brilliant analysis of what went wrong with the expensive redesign of Australia's version of the met office app. leisareichelt.substack.com/p/what-went-...
leisareichelt.substack.com
What went wrong with the BoM Redesign?
A Post-Mortem on Judgement, Usability, and Redesign at Scale
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Lou Downe @loudowne.bsky.social · 17/03/2026
Good Services came out 6 years ago and I am SO excited to finally announce that the Sequel - Bad Services - will be out in late May!
A green book that says Bad Services: How to fix services that don't work
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Terence Eden @edent.tel · 01/03/2026
We've hit FORTY-THOUSAND entries on openbenches.org 🥰 All contributed by people like you. Thank you to all our wonderful supporters, brilliant photographers, and open source coders.
Map showing 40,001 entries on our map.
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Richard Pope @richardpope.org · 24/02/2026
In September, I was asked to give some thoughts about the NHS 10-year plan based on some of the principles in Platformland. Here are the slides and speaker notes: www.rpp.works/ways-of-d…
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Tom Steel @tomsteel.co.uk · 25/10/2025
All careers lead to tech. (If you want them to)
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Allen Holub @allenholub.bsky.social · 22/10/2025
"Fail fast" is not a viable approach to software construction. There's no benefit in constant failure. What we want to do is succeed fast. Do that with small batches and frequent corrections based on feedback. That's not "failure," it's just part of the process. 1/2
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Matt Burgess (WIRED) @mattburgess1.bsky.social · 15/10/2025
“There are few things more dehumanizing than being told by a machine that you’re not real because of your face" For the last month, I've been speaking to people living with facial differences and disfigurements about how face verification tech is failing them. Spoiler: things aren't going well
wired.com
When Face Recognition Doesn’t Know Your Face Is a Face
An estimated 100 million people live with facial differences. As face recognition tech becomes widespread, some say they’re getting blocked from accessing essential systems and services.
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The Register @theregister.com · 24/09/2025
Europe's largest city council delays fix to disastrous Oracle system once more
dlvr.it
Europe's largest city council delays fix to disastrous Oracle system once more
System meant to go live in 2021 costing £20M awaits reimplementation with new £170M price tag Europe's largest local authority has delayed the introduction of a vital income management system (IMS) amid confirmation that total spending on a disastrous Oracle implementation could hit £170 million (c $230 million).…
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The Register @theregister.com · 25/08/2025
The air is hissing out of the overinflated AI balloon
dlvr.it
The air is hissing out of the overinflated AI balloon
Are tech giants getting nervous? They should be Opinion  There tend to be three AI camps. 1) AI is the greatest thing since sliced bread and will transform the world. 2) AI is the spawn of the Devil and will destroy civilization as we know it. And 3) "Write an A-Level paper on the themes in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet."…
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John Cutler @johncutle.fish · 17/08/2025
Trust Day 1/30 sharing my favorite doodles and drawings.
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The Leyton Orientear @leytonorientear.com · 28/07/2025
GREATNESS IS SERVING Read the full story of a very special evening at Leyton's Coach & Horses, where some very special guests helped us tell the full story behind the fantastic new #LOFC mural - and all in a very deserving cause...
theleytonorientear.substack.com
Greatness Is Serving
the real story behind Orient's newest mural: a picture of compassion, loyalty and gratitude
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The Register @theregister.com · 25/07/2025
Microsoft admits it 'cannot guarantee' data sovereignty
dlvr.it
Microsoft admits it 'cannot guarantee' data sovereignty
Under oath in French Senate, exec says it would be compelled – however unlikely – to pass local customer info to US admin Microsoft says it "cannot guarantee" data sovereignty to customers in France – and by implication the wider European Union – should the Trump administration demand access to customer information held on its servers.…
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Anon Opin @anonopin.bsky.social · 01/07/2025
Conspiracy theorists should be required to do work experience in government departments so they can see firsthand the impossibility of any vast secret government conspiracies.
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Randall Munroe @xkcd.com · 19/06/2025
David R. Hagen just solved a small mystery that I mentioned 13 years ago in the mouseover text of a comic drhagen.com/blog/the-mis...
drhagen.com
The Missing 11th of the Month - David R Hagen
Personal website of David R Hagen, scientific software engineer
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steve @visitmy.website · 12/06/2025
Here’s some of the background on Extract, which the Prime Minister announced on Monday, plus the detail on how we incubated the proof-of-concept. There’s boatloads more discovery and alpha work to do. Went full techno-realist with the open para. mhclgdigital.blog.gov.uk/2025/06/12/e...
mhclgdigital.blog.gov.uk
Extract: Using AI to unlock historic planning data
This week, the Prime Minister officially launched Extract, the AI tool which the Digital Planning programme in MHCLG and the Incubator for Artificial Intelligence are developing to transform decades o...
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Tom Steel @tomsteel.co.uk · 29/05/2025
How the OS is bringing Slopey Roofs to homes near you “… and combines it with findings from the Met Office, including information on the sun’s position at specific times and dates, to provide users with the Slopey Roofs tool for assessing the efficiency of roofs for solar panel installation.”
techmonitor.ai
How the OS is bringing slopey roofs to homes near you
The UK’s emissions targets are ambitious. The Ordnance Survey's new Slopey Roofs project may see them being met faster than suspected.
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The Secret Barrister @barristersecret.bsky.social · 01/05/2025
The 99p offer is also available via Kobo, for people looking for a different ebook supplier: www.kobo.com/gb/en/ebook/...
kobo.com
The Secret Barrister ebook by The Secret Barrister - Rakuten Kobo
Read "The Secret Barrister Stories of the Law and How It's Broken" by The Secret Barrister available from Rakuten Kobo. **Writing as S. J. Fleet, The Secret Barrister's first novel, The Cut Throat Tri...
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Met Office - weather and climate @metoffice.gov.uk · 28/04/2025
Would you like to use our new-look weather app? 📲 We’re doing a major upgrade of our Met Office weather app. And we’d love you to try it out, and tell us what you think. Sign-up to get the test version ⤵️ response.questback.com/isa/qbv.dll/...
Met Office building with green trees and blue sky
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Scott Riley @scott.is · 18/03/2025
it's simple really
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Jamie Smart @jamiesmart.bsky.social · 18/03/2025
There’s a great interview with Nick Park about Wallace And Gromit in last month’s Empire, and this bit in particular stood out. It sums up what artists have been trying to say about AI. The mistakes and the learning aren’t things to be bypassed, but a vital part of the process 🤟
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Daniel Storey @danielstorey85.bsky.social · 06/03/2025
I think that one of the best clubs in the country to support at the moment might be...Leyton Orient. It's not just the redemption and the potential, but the human story here. For that, you need to speak to Martin Ling. inews.co.uk/sport/footba...
inews.co.uk
The hidden recovery story at the heart of Leyton Orient's own resurgence
Director of football Martin Ling took over a 'football bomb site' and it turned it into one of the EFL's best clubs to support - he speaks to Daniel Storey
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Know Your Meme @knowyourmeme.com · 09/01/2025
On this day 12 years ago, @kcg.bsky.social posted the “This is Fine” comic.
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Tom Steel @tomsteel.co.uk · 08/01/2025
@da.vebrig.gs your LinkedIn post about a standards regime; how do you score LAs in meeting users needs, when they’re the only people who have the info to know what their needs are? Generic testing (like SOCITM or GDS Accessibility) will have limited value, but some ranking is better than nothing?
gov.uk
Accessibility monitoring of public sector websites and mobile apps from 2022 to 2024
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Tom Steel @tomsteel.co.uk · 29/12/2024
“You know, while you’re out on your walk, go some place where you might feel a little child-like wonder and look around — look at the small things and look at the big things and just follow that sense of mystery and wonder.’ That’s all we asked them to do.” www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/awe-wo...
huffingtonpost.co.uk
Scientists Asked People To Do 1 Thing Differently While Taking A Walk. The Results Were Astounding.
“It [creates] an amazing cascade of physiology that we can find almost any day and is very good for you,”
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Tom Steel @tomsteel.co.uk · 06/12/2024
A new Local Gov weeknote for you to follow; Angie Forson, new at Southwark, is sharing her experience as web and digital programme lead. Hear about Ping Pong, the Open Digital Cooperative and what’s on her reading list. One to watch! angieforson.medium.com
angieforson.medium.com
Angie Forson – Medium
Read writing from Angie Forson on Medium. I love to travel, learn new things, and ensure that products and content I create, focuses on the needs of the end user.
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Tom Steel @tomsteel.co.uk · 28/11/2024
Toblerones.
Six shelves of huge Toblerones in an assortment of colours and flavours. All huge.
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Tom Steel @tomsteel.co.uk · 18/11/2024
Wow. Bluesky has properly arrived.
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Tom Steel @tomsteel.co.uk · 15/11/2024
Based on your headline I'm hoping the bot was trained on Scarf Lady from Sarah and Duck sarah-and-duck.fandom.com/wiki/Scarf_L...
sarah-and-duck.fandom.com
Scarf Lady
Scarf Lady is a secondary character in Sarah & Duck. Scarf Lady is an elderly lady. She is quite forgetful, often mixing up words or misinterpreting things. She loves knitting, and shows masterful ski...
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Tom Steel @tomsteel.co.uk · 15/11/2024
This is one of the best uses of AI i've seen so far: uk.pcmag.com/security/155... A bot which keeps scammers busy in conversational loops of confusion.
uk.pcmag.com
This 'AI Granny' Bores Scammers to Tears
After a survey found that 71% of Brits want revenge on scammers, mobile operator O2 deploys Daisy, an AI tool that keeps fraudsters on the line to waste their time.
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Tom Steel @tomsteel.co.uk · 17/10/2024
What’s your main source of news? Is it somewhere which has its own journalists (The Times, BBC, ITV, The Guardian) or do you use an aggregated site/app (Twitter, Flipboard, Apple News)? Because curiosity.
media.tenor.com
a black cat is peeking out from behind a cabinet
Alt: A curious black cat walks up to the camera and stares down the lens in intrigue.
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Tom Steel @tomsteel.co.uk · 26/09/2024
The diligent @colinstenning.bsky.social has been at it again, documenting chatbot use across Local Authorities. digitalhealthcheck.co.uk/2024/09/chat... I’m glad I don’t live near Telford & Wrekin.
digitalhealthcheck.co.uk
Chatbots on council websites - 2024
Over half of councils in the UK and Ireland with chatbots choose to place them on all web pages and under half only place them on the service pages that they relate to. Chatbot usage is probably impro...
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Tom Steel @tomsteel.co.uk · 24/09/2024
You know a platform is hitting the big time when Sam Pepys arrives.
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Nit Nurse With Wound @dannybirchall.bsky.social · 24/09/2024
I wrote a thing about one of my favourite websites from long ago, that was called 'Flickr'. medium.com/@dannybircha...
medium.com
Flickr, the habits of photography, and me
Remember Flickr, the photo-sharing website? It’s still there, but it now also has the Flickr Foundation, an organisation that exists to…
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Allen Holub @allenholub.bsky.social · 23/09/2024
That bogus “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses” quote was never uttered by Henry Ford. It's used by people who hold the customers in contempt—who think they're such stable geniuses that they don't need to ask. 1/8
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Tom Steel @tomsteel.co.uk · 20/09/2024
There’s a rare Associate Product Manager role available at the Ministry Of Justice - perfect for any User Centred Design people who want to make the best pivot of their career! www.civilservicejobs.service.gov.uk/csr/jobs.cgi...
civilservicejobs.service.gov.uk
Associate Product Manager (Ref: 90749) - Civil Service Jobs - GOV.UKGOV.UK
Search and apply for jobs in the UK Civil Service
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Tom Steel @tomsteel.co.uk · 19/09/2024
Following some skeets (?) yesterday, I've been thinking about Recycling Data as a thing, and wrote some words at blog.tomsteel.co.uk/2024/09/19/w... That makes four posts this year. Urgh. At least I'm not thinking about Recycling Data as a thing any more.
blog.tomsteel.co.uk
What a waste – Tom blogs
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Tom Steel @tomsteel.co.uk · 18/09/2024
This got me thinking. Is data more like the stuff we put in recycling bins? We know that most of it could be put to good use, but that takes considerable time and effort. Perhaps we shouldn’t produce so much stuff that needs recycling in the first place?
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James Wallis @jameswallis.bsky.social · 05/09/2024
Ever wanted to design a board game but don't know where to start? I'm running the Game Design Masterclass, a high-energy crash course in the theory and practice of game design, on Tuesday 10th Sept at Badger Badger in east London. A few tickets are still available. www.gamedesignmasterclass.com
gamedesignmasterclass.com
Game Design Masterclass – a crash course in how to make games
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