Congrats all - you are all amazing !

Some thoughts from my day held yesterday in London with Citizen Experience. After a great Leader's Night in my head, we kicked off with Home Office and Honey D particularly with my cu The rest of the morning was hosted by Mark Dunwell N (Service Design), Unit4 Ka Service Race Forum (Open and Liam Walsh (Implemen Some key takeaways for m Strategic digital investm The Summit opened with a AI are now mission-critical change. It was fantastic to thinking at the heart of so AI in action From case studies to round production. Champions ind Citizen-first design Speakers reiterated: don’t Data interoperability & Cross-government data-sh —highlighting the importa Modern workplace & c Hybrid working, digital too agreed that internal cultur

Joanna R. describes the transformation of working culture needed to transform government, including dumping the organisational siloes which create duplication and slow everything down. Empowered multi-disciplinary teams are the way forward - and including cyber security colleagues right from the start makes things go even faster! 👏👏👏

Last night, I had the opportunity to attend the Government Transformation Leaders’ Night at the historic Church House, Westminster, as a guest of Oracle, joined by over 100 public sector leaders from across the UK and beyond. It was an insightful evening of discussion and reflection, in the very room where the first Parliament once sat. The keynote from Christine Bellamy, Chief Product Officer at HM Government, was deeply thought-provoking, as was the State of Digital Leadership in Government panel featuring Honey Dacanay (Director General, Digital Policy, Government of Canada), Julian David OBE (CEO techUK), Nick Bolton (CEO Ordnance Survey), and Richard Davies (UK Country Managing Partner, Netcompany). One idea that keeps ringing true consistently: Technology isn’t a project – it’s a process. It is continuous, cultural, and connected. I first started working with government on the RM project for DWP (Oracle HRMS implementation), then on the Central Payment System, Europe’s largest Oracle Financials implementation at the time, and eventually Universal Credit. Alongside private sector clients, I’ve supported digital initiatives at MoJ, MoD, HMRC, BEIS, DfE, Shared Services and beyond, as well as worked with governments internationally. Public Sector transformation is something I’m very familiar with and have seen evolve over the years. However, the conversations last night made it clear: we’re not just delivering digital services anymore – we’re preparing for a digital generation. Enter Gen Alpha (born after 2010) a digitally native generation, who don’t typically browse the internet or use Google the way previous generations do. Their world is built on AI, automation, and immersive content, and they’re growing up in a globally connected environment. Their first point of information may well be a trusted circle of friends, influencers and AI-driven tools. As service designers and delivery leaders, we have to keep evolving, building services that are not just accessible, but truly aligned with how the next generation lives and thinks. Big changes are yet to come and public services must be prepared to meet them. Thank you to the lovely Fiona McAdoo and Oracle team for the invitation, and to everyone who made the evening such a valuable experience.

We’re at the Government Transformation Summit hosted by the Government Transformation Magazine! Today we are exploring effective transformation strategy and practice behind driving meaningful change in government. Change leaders have come together to discuss transformation strategy, implementing and harnessing the power of data and AI, delivering service modernisation, knowledge sharing and user-centric design and experience. Our Client Directors, Sarah Doherty-David and Danielle McCarter, are chairing the Change Management Roundtable, exploring the importance of people and culture in driving meaningful change within government organisations. They are joined by change leaders, Sarah Ormerod - Programme Director, Passport Transformation Programme, Home Office, and Madelaine Simpkin - Deputy Director, Corporate Transformation, DWP. Together, they’re exploring how to drive meaningful, people-centred change in government. At Grayce, we believe successful transformation is rooted in strong leadership, open communication, and the right talent to deliver lasting impact. If you’re passionate about Change Management, we’d love to hear from you! Discover how Grayce can support your transformation journey with our model.

🙏 A big thank you to everyone who joined us at yesterday’s Government Transformation Summit! It was a brilliant day filled with thought-provoking discussions on the power of digital transformation to revolutionise public services, enhance citizen experiences, and drive economic growth across the UK. The energy in the room was inspiring, and it’s clear that we’re at a pivotal moment for change in the public sector. Here are just a few of the standout moments and key takeaways from the day: 🌟 Andrew Western MP, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Transformation at DWP, delivered a compelling keynote on Delivering More with Digital, Data and AI. 📢 One of the most striking insights: 1 in 10 Civil Servants will be in digital roles by 2030. This highlights the scale of transformation ahead - and the urgent need to build digital capability across government. At GRAYCE, we’re proud to be part of the solution, helping to plug the digital skills gap and develop a workforce ready for the 4th industrial revolution. 🌟 Joanna R., Director General for the Customer Services Group at the Home Office, posed the powerful question: “Is Government Ready?” 📢 Her reflections on the importance of talent, innovation, and creating the right structures for success really resonated. At Grayce, we believe in the power of early-career professionals and our Accelerated Development Model is designed to nurture that talent - creating professional spaces for learning, growth, and innovation. It was fantastic to hear leaders like Joanna championing the need for freedom to innovate and the value of investing in people. 🌟 James Mitton, Director General for Enterprise Transformation at HMRC, shared his perspective on how to embed a truly agile mindset across government. 📢 Everything is legacy given today’s pace of change. To keep up, we must make failure cheap, hire people who think differently, and trust good people to deliver. This aligns perfectly with Grayce’s belief that early-career professionals bring the creativity, adaptability, and fresh thinking needed to drive transformation from the ground up. 👏 A huge thank you to all the speakers, panelists, and everyone who joined our roundtable discussions. It’s a fascinating time to be supporting change and transformation across the public sector!

Excellent work James and Ed! 🍻

On Monday night, I had the privilege of attending the Government Transformation Magazine Leaders Night. It was fantastic to join over 100 leaders from across the public and private sectors to share insight, accelerate transformation, and reimagine the role of the modern state. The keynote from Christine Bellamy, Chief Product Officer at HM Government was both inspiring and a clear call to action – challenging us to lead with purpose, embrace change and design for lasting impact. Key themes included: The responsibility of leadership to continually challenge ourselves – questioning the status quo and driving meaningful change. The need to foster greater innovation – not just through technology, but by rethinking how we collaborate, deliver services, and empower people. A bold focus on future generations – and the importance of building services that earn and sustain their trust. A big thank you to our table – John Fitzpatrick, Andrew Pearce, Ade Bamigboye, Selina Holliday, Andy Tyack and Richard Baines- for the great conversation, insights and laughs throughout the evening!

Great couple of days at the Government Transformation Magazine Summit. Good event well run. Key takeaways: I am loving the shift in how we engage and listen to each other at these events. There was a real candour from all in the room and that’s how we will make lasting improvements for citizens. Along the same lines the whole public sector feel was tangible. Central gov listening to local gov, to NHS colleagues to each other. I heard offers of help and collaboration across the whole event. Let’s keep that going it’s gold Suppliers shared insights freely and with a sense of partnerships for outcomes feel. Keep doing that folks, we pay more attention when we aren’t being ‘sold to’ 😉 Ideas are becoming actions…. Speakers were able to share what they were actually doing with AI, with UCD, with data, with cyber, with change…. Our confidence is growing, our ambition is strong and in that place the hurdles (of which there are a few) will be resolved, especially if we continue to speak with the strength of collective voice I heard this week. Oh and on the subject of us needing to hire more pirates. (James Mitton I’m going to be using that one for a while). Capt Cara Thresh Sparrow of our Innovation and Common Services Pirate Ship will be at Think Digital Partners Think Data tomorrow if you want to catch her for a chat 🏴‍☠️ Now for a kip

Great to meet everyone today and discuss all things AI and data. Thanks to both Mercator Digital and Chris Darriet-Jones for co hosting at the table and to all those at Government Transformation Magazine for organising the event.

Wrapping up Government Transformation Magazine Summit on Data and AI with insightful topics on AI adoption in the UK Public Sector. An opportunity to hear our leaders at the leaders night. During the day, an interesting keynote delivered by Simon King (FBCS) bringing our AI opportunities action plan to life with his vision. I am honored for the opportunity to share my thoughts as a panel member on the practical questions around AI enablement and Scale in the Public Sector. Key highlights being: be pragmatic, take risk-aware and assured AI delivery approach where don't repeat yourself, but do it once, scale incremently and iteratively. Lean on our strategic commercial partners. Later, I hosted three roundtables on the topic of "Trustworthy AI" with very kind Diane Barlow sponsored by IBM, Mark Goossens and Giles Hartwright. Trustworthy AI is a difficult topic to navigate around when a few delegates being too strict around their expectations from the AI, where it shall be accurate 100% from the first pass or there shall be a silver bullet solving each and every bias, fairness and ethical challenge right away. I had a realisation that I might be living in a utopian world where my belief and learnings point me towards a way of carefully instrument trust while building an AI empowered application in a modular way and evlauate it for trustworthiness at every layer. But then having more delegates sharing their success stories where teams are taking pragmatic steps in building trust in the AI applications reassured me that it will indeed take time to get it right, we are on the right path. We discussed how do we precieve trust in domain-specific AI apps versus how it is perceived in the generic AI applications. We are carefully building trust in downstream specialised AI use cases by employing streamlined responsible Model for Innovation activities. The delegates shared many great insights around the process they are using that naturally mapped to the Responsible Model for innovation with the trustworthiness at its core given as: 1) Understand the use case requirements, 2) bring in the business domain expert early in the application development lifecycle, 3) Start with the user centered design right from the beginning 4) build transparency and explainability in your solutions 5) evaluate iteratively and incrementally to incrementally build trust 6) know what your AI application offers and what the limitations are 7) Educate and train your users 8) user behaviour and interaction is also important with a feedback loop addressing concerns from the end user. Gladly, networked with my peers in the public sector who are sharing the same energy driving AI adoption in the public sector Amanda S. Svensson, Duncan Brown, Diane Barlow, Tina Churcher, Shehroze Junejo. Catching up with Sumitra Varma is always a bonus. Thank you David Wilde FIoD, FBCS, Assoc CIPD, James Smith, Ed Tillotson.

Congrats to all of you!!

🌟 I'm thrilled to share that I’ve been named in this year’s Government Transformation Top 100 in the Transformation category! 🌟 I’m grateful to the Government Transformation Magazine for this recognition. It’s a privilege to be acknowledged alongside many inspiring colleagues who are driving meaningful change across government and pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in public service. This award acknowledges the important work we’re doing at hashtag #CDDO to advance AI adoption, drive innovation, and make government services more effective, efficient, and future-ready. hashtag #GovernmentTransformation hashtag #PublicSectorInnovation hashtag #Transformation hashtag #GovTransSummit hashtag #CDDO

The Government Transformation Magazine Expo and the Data + AI Summit were such a dream. I was beyond delighted to learn that our Revenue Scotland and Office for National Statistics team won the recent Snowflake Public Sector Hackathon! ❄️ Thank you to Charles Baird and Fiona James, here in the photo with me, who I think are visionaries when it comes to government data sharing by enabling and supporting the organisation of events like this hackathon. I'm so proud of everyone in our Sugar Plumb Data Fairies team: Dana Seman Bobulska, Mary Cleaton, Shaurya Bhagat, Lucy Astley-Jones - we were the ultimate team.Thank you immensely to Andrew Newland MBA, Rebecca O'Connor, Timothy Parish, Simon Tobias, Janet Broome, Irfan Rasul, Flora Chu, Tony Hoad and everyone else at Snowflake who supported our team and myself both at the hackathon but also yesterday and today at the Expo - you guys are the GOAT. Last but not least, thank you Ayesha Peacock for giving me the opportunity to be a speaker at the Citizens Theatre and being so kind and helpful. You made my participation in the Expo and therefore my unexpected in person meeting with Duncan Hart possible! This Expo filled me with lots of hope for Data and Digital in the Civil Service. Networking with so many wonderful people, deepening those existing connections but also making new ones further strengthened my conviction that there are numerous do-gooders in our sector and we can achieve great results together to serve the citizens - ourselves - as well as we can!

Conferences have truly become the places where I get to reconnect with friends and engage with world leaders shaping the Data and AI transformation landscape. This morning, I had the privilege of meeting the Under Secretary of State for Transformation at the UK Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) Andrew Western, the wonderful Dr. Julia Borggräfe from Metaplan Germany, my friend Richard Patterson from the U.S. Department of State, Marten Kaevats from IEEE, and Ryan Hum from Service Canada. I had the honour to also speak to that crowd with Jason Bett, a few other colleagues from the Government of Canada, and many other countries driving change across the globe. A big thank you to the incredible team - James Smith, David Wilde FIoD, FBCS, Assoc CIPD, Ed Tillotson, Sarah Jeffery, Karolina Przeklas, Rafael, Ella, and staff - for bringing us all together at the beautiful InterContinental London The O2. Here’s to more inspiring conversations and connections! hashtag #AI hashtag #DataTransformation hashtag #Networking hashtag #Leadership hashtag #Innovation