Leaving the EU
We appear to be leaving the EU. I woke up this morning, saw the news, tried to go back to sleep, and failed. This is an awful, awful outcome. An act of enormous national self-harm. But, referendums being what they are, there’s no going back.
So: I am going to give myself today and the weekend to be upset about it, and to write things on Twitter and retweet the succinctly-put outrage. And then, on Monday, no more.
Dreadful though this is, our focus must now move to making the best of the situation we’re in. There’s a lot of uncertainty and change in our future, and it’s incumbent on us all to push the change in a good direction.
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dxw’s reason for being has not changed. I started the company to help government be better. To use technology more effectively is part of that work, but it’s not the main part. The main part is helping people to think and work differently: with empathy, with data, with unwavering focus on actual problems and not perceived ones. To find government teams who want change and help them make it. To find user needs and meet them compellingly.
For people in and out of government, this work is more important than ever, because the national government of the UK will soon be the only government that we have. And we need a government that functions effectively in the modern world, that is capable of being relevant and useful. And we’re in the privileged position of spending our days on work that can directly bring that change about.
We’re helping Housing Associations to get better at providing their bread & butter services, freeing resources for them to help the most vulnerable.
We’re helping UKTI to overhaul the way it supports businesses that want to export their goods, to make that service radically more effective. Today, this feels more important than ever.
We’re helping GDS to build a platform for government campaigns, with metrics to measure real effectiveness baked into the service. There’s going to be a lot of change to come, and it’s important that government can talk about it in ways that actually work.
We’re providing tools to public sector organisations to have modern, effective, presentable content sites on the web for a tiny fraction of their usual cost. More than ever before, we cannot afford to waste money building things which should be bought.
So, we’re going to have this moment of reeling and horror, and next week, we’re going to draw a line under it.
And then we’re all going to do what we can do to help.