If you’d told me at the start of the year the ways in which it would unfold and how I’d feel at the end of it, I’m not sure I would have believed you. You see, there’s been 3–4 major life events which have shaped my 2022: grief from losing…

One of the questions I was often asked when leading the User Centred Policy Design team at the Ministry of Justice was ‘but how do you choose and prioritise your projects?’ And it was something I enjoyed discussing — firstly because prioritisation is always tricky and you get to have…

Back in May 2022, Mark Dalgarno approached me asking for feedback on a session proposal for Service Design in Government on ‘What is user-centred policy design good for?’ This was to be a participatory (fishbowl) discussion to bring together the voices of the curious, the practitioners and the ‘experts’ to…

Hello November. Hello NaBloPoMo. Hello you. National Blog Posting Month — affectionately known as NaBloPoMo — occurs every November. It’s a month dedicated to sharing your writing. Folks often commit to publishing something each day. The most organised prepare a draft or two (or more?!) in advance. My first foray*…

I’ve often described myself as a career chameleon. I’ve worked in operations, policy, data and digital — and so far the golden threads that have connected my career have been openness, community and justice. I’ve had the privilege of seeing how different roles solve a problem from the place in…

The original title of these Weeknotes was going to be “February finishes” – they are now called Precious Time / Nuclear Seasons in honour of Nick Keane. Please scroll down towards the end for my stories about Nick. Five things that happened [1] We had a kick-off meeting for a new discovery (the cool…

Five things that happened [1] We had our second ‘UCPD/Policy Labs’ get together of the year, where we focused on building a cross-government pipeline of things we’d like to work on together. First priority is restarting the x-gov policy design meet-up, then writing and publishing case studies and more blog posts. We also want…

I’m not sure if it’s because we’re already in February, or it’s the beautiful dusting of snow this week (and the sunshine and bright skies peaking through), or the lighter evenings, or perhaps even just the fact I’ve treated myself to George Clooney’s tequila to try and make a perfect…

Thank you Sharon for writing yours and inspiring me to write mine. If you’re curious about numerology like I am, you’ll know that 2020 was a 4 year. …