Leighton M
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l8nm.bsky.social
Leighton M
@l8nm.bsky.social
User Researcher in UKGov

Pro swimmer. Amateur parent. Terrible runner.
Reposted by Leighton M
🌱 Decolonising service design in government - an open discussion - Friday 2 May 🌞

In government service design in the UK and across the world, colonial legacies shape everything from our contexts and practices to tools and language.

www.tickettailor.com/events/clara...
Select tickets – Decolonising service design in government - an open discussion [90 mins] – Zoom
"Coloniality exists when patterns of power that emerged as a result of colonialism endure...” Wangũi wa Kamonji.  In government...
www.tickettailor.com
March 21, 2025 at 9:47 AM
Reposted by Leighton M
As someone who has reported on AI for 7 years and covered China tech as well, I think the biggest lesson to be drawn from DeepSeek is the huge cracks it illustrates with the current dominant paradigm of AI development. A long thread. 1/
January 27, 2025 at 2:12 PM
Reposted by Leighton M
Was looking for this link for ages and finally found it so I'm posting it here to not lose it - LLMs do NOT summarize.

A summary strips out everything but the essential. GenAI merely shortens the text - with no understanding of what was important.
When ChatGPT summarises, it actually does nothing of the kind.
One of the use cases I thought was reasonable to expect from ChatGPT and Friends (LLMs) was summarising. It turns out I was wrong. What ChatGPT isn’t summarising at all, it only looks like it…
ea.rna.nl
January 22, 2025 at 12:03 AM
Reposted by Leighton M
he did it twice just in case
January 20, 2025 at 8:23 PM
Reposted by Leighton M
I wrote a first draft for a tribute to @vickytnz.bsky.social we're hoping to do at @ukgovcamp.bsky.social 2025.

imranhussain.uk/remembering-...
Remembering Vicky Teinaki – Imran Hussain
imranhussain.uk
January 13, 2025 at 3:24 PM
"Good services are verbs, bad services are nouns"
Terrific piece. Labour should just keep talking about improving the NHS for months (we've all got a story) and ditch the abstract nonsense of missions, pillars etc.
New post just out:

"Policy vs Politics: the paralysis of technocratic government in a populist age"

Why Labour is getting stuck on identifying an approach to governing.

(£/free trial)

open.substack.com/pub/samf/p/p...
December 8, 2024 at 12:19 PM
Reposted by Leighton M
I was saying pretty much exactly what this thread says on the radio earlier.

It's not about a war with the civil service but harnessing the frustration *within* the civil service to put forward a systematic reform programme.
Reflecting on Starmer’s comments on the CS yday and on the response it’s got in Whitehall since.

If there’s any piece of advice I’d give Starmer - and at this fragile juncture I want to shout it from the rooftops - it would be:

‘Blame the system, not the people’.

🧵
December 6, 2024 at 4:37 PM
One of the coolest things about parenting is following the kids into hobbies, clubs, passions I previously had no clue about.

Today I have watching a DIVING competition. I have zero understanding but say things like 'oh that was perfect form' and clap non-stop for an hour. So cool
November 30, 2024 at 5:42 PM
Reposted by Leighton M
Many orgs have leaders who are so busy and overstretched that they can barely pay attention to something for more than ten minutes. Meanwhile, armies are working to boil complex things down into "simple" summaries, so those precious 10 minutes are "productive"

cutlefish.substack.com/p/tbm-242-th...
TBM 242: The Simplicity Fetish
...and why it is so draining and burnout-inducing
cutlefish.substack.com
November 29, 2024 at 7:14 PM
20 mins into The Substance and lots of wtf moments already 😬
November 29, 2024 at 8:55 PM
Autism 'support' in schools seems mostly about neurotypical adults giving their take on how they would deal with a situation. And penalising if this isn't followed. 'Just talk to people'. 'You're not trying because you're not contributing' 😬
November 28, 2024 at 7:34 PM
A great, thoughtful read from Kuba&team 💚 I've recently been exploring whether AI might help call handlers find information quicker&easier for callers. Came to the same conclusion re. providing sources, but wondering whether this makes the tool redundant coz its an additional,not replacement, tool 🤔
Just published something about how we’re designing GOV.UK Chat, a product that’s currently in a private beta across some GOV.UK pages

insidegovuk.blog.gov.uk/2024/11/28/h...
How we’re designing GOV.UK Chat
Learn more about our approach to designing GOV.UK’s experimental chatbot.
insidegovuk.blog.gov.uk
November 28, 2024 at 7:26 PM
Reposted by Leighton M
Just published something about how we’re designing GOV.UK Chat, a product that’s currently in a private beta across some GOV.UK pages

insidegovuk.blog.gov.uk/2024/11/28/h...
How we’re designing GOV.UK Chat
Learn more about our approach to designing GOV.UK’s experimental chatbot.
insidegovuk.blog.gov.uk
November 28, 2024 at 12:56 PM
Reposted by Leighton M
This is your friendly reminder to use Pascal case in your hash tags

#ThisIsPascalCase
#thisisnotpascalcase

The uppercase letters at the beginning of every work help screen readers identify the beginning of words

#WotSkies #Accessibility
November 21, 2024 at 2:46 AM
Reposted by Leighton M
🚨Geeky research klaxon🚨

Am extremely pleased to see HM Treasury publish their 'areas of research interest'. Have seen other departments do this but can't remember HMT doing it before 👏🏼

Lots in there but am very excited for the public service reform areas - transformational and place based 🙌🏻
November 13, 2024 at 10:47 PM
Just told my wife that I've deactivated 'most' of my Twitter accounts, and she was perplexed as to why I'd need more than one.

Who's weirder, her or me?
November 17, 2024 at 5:58 PM
Reposted by Leighton M
This is clever. Great work @theo.io 👏 bsky-follow-finder.theo.io
November 17, 2024 at 8:07 AM
Wait, am I the last one here?
November 17, 2024 at 12:04 PM