Podcast
At Play In The Garden of Eden
Hosted by Joe Tibbetts · EN
Two men, one an American Ai engineer and game designer living in Seattle and an English documentary film maker living in Dover, England in conversation about AI, documentaries, chess, human stupidity and the future of the human race.
83episodes
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Local Digital programme from MHCLG steps up a gear with £7.5m fund
Sep 26, 201800:25:56Tap to summarizeOn 24 September the Ministry for Housing, Communities & Local Government launched its £7.5m Local Digital Fund via a post on the Local Digital Collaboration Unit's blog by Minister Rishi Sunak. In this video, MHCLG's Chief Digital Officer Paul Malty describes the Fund as part of a wider initiative that is also asking local councils to sign up to a 'Digital Declaration' that, if its princlples are followed, will help break dependence on inflexible technology, allow adoption of the best digital ways of working, and ultimately help authorities excellent local services for less. Also part of the programme is a commitment to train around 1000 local government staff in digital skills. Emma Collingridge, who spent 15 years on digital transformation at Stockport Council until moving to a role in central government in August, describes how innovative councils like Stockport might use the Fund to enable them to create reusable tools and products that will help service teams in other authorities redesign their services to Declaration standards. Timing is tight. Councils interested in funding must sign up to the Local Digital Declaration and put in an expression of interest by 5 October. MHCLG's Local Digital Team will evaluate expressions of interest and cluster applications where similar projects are proposed to encourage collaboration on common issues. Successful 'expressions of interest' will be able to apply for funding between 15 October and 18 November, and decisions will be announced on 3 December. The Local Digital Team is using the local digital peer network LocalGov Digital's Slack as a community base. Interested parties need to become a member and join the #mhclg-digital Slack channel to ask questions and identify others to join up with. CLGdotTV has also seen calls for collaboration by individuals preparing expressions of interest going out through Twitter and other social media channels. Twitter hashtags #localdigital and #localgovdigital are good hashtags for discovering these.
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A new Social Care and Support Guide launched on NHS.UK 27th September
Sep 26, 201800:26:08Tap to summarizeThis programme is essential viewing for anybody responsible for provision of information, advice and guidance on adult social care.
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Arrests for dealing cannabis are going down among adults but going up among young people
Sep 22, 201800:29:37Tap to summarizeA combination of drivers is leading to a reduction in arrests for dealing cannabis among UK adult population. Arrests amongst young people, however, have risen dramatically. The effect of this is to criminalise a significant cohort of the next generation before they even get out of the starting blocks. Over the last six years, there has been a 54% increase in the number of young people presenting at hospitals with cannabis related mental health problems. The total number of young people entering the hospital system with cannabis related mental health problems is twice that for adults. The cannabis available today is far stronger than it was, say, twenty years ago. And it continues to get stronger. But there are no plans to regulate the strength of cannabis for sale nor to force retailers (for that's what "dealers" are) to state the strenth of their product on the packaging. For our society this is a crisis in the making. For the young people on the streets and in hospital and their families it is a crisis that has already arrived. The scale of the human tragedy, the social and finacial costs, and the failures by successive governments to get to grips with this problem are totally unacceptable. Who should be held accountable and what are the remedies available to us? Will planned Government legislation to force social media companies to change their ways, due this autumn, have the desired effect. Can the police change their practices without more resources? Will the public health costs of this steadily worsening situation force this or some future UK government to change its policy on legalisation? Click the play button now.
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Can young people ever be safe in an uncontrolled drugs market?
Sep 21, 201800:38:30Tap to summarizeIan Birrell is, in his own words, a reporter, columnist, campaigner, co-founder of @africaexpress citizen of the world and a bit more besides. He is also a former deputy editor of the Independent and worked as a speechwriter for David Cameron during the 2010 election campaign. Andrew Boff is the Conservative Group Leader in the Greater London Assembly. He is a serial contender for the London Mayoral elections having stood for the Conservative nomination in 2000, 2004 and 2008 coming second on two occasions.
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Cyber security is no longer the exclusive concern of governments, police forces and big organisations.
Sep 21, 201800:31:34Tap to summarizeIn a recent podcast I asked Andy Bates Executive Director of the Global Cyber Alliance if we were cyber safer than we were a year ago. He thought not but was optimistic about the answer to the same question if asked in a years time. There have, however, been a number of welcome advances in the last year by Andy's reckoning. One is that big organisations, even those in competition with each other, have started to collaborate on fighting the cyber threat. And while there is still much to do at government and multinational level the targets for a cyber threat awareness upgrade are now shifting slightly towards smaller enterprises and, wait for it, you and me. This programme is all about SMEs and the ordinary individual, the woman and man wondering how there is so little change from £10 when you get a coffee and a bun in a global coffee shop franchise. Sound like you? It certainly sounds like me. We need to take a long hard look at our cyber security. The answer to the other problem is to carry a flask of coffee and bake your own buns. Andy Bates asks the questions and Melanie Oldham @bobsbusinessuk advisor to SMEs on how to keep safe on the web and Peter Goodman Chief Constable of Derbyshire and NPCC Lead on Cybercrime give the answers. Watch it, tremble and then mend your ways.
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We have seen the future of work and it works!
Sep 21, 201800:24:09Tap to summarizeA surprising number of people today seem to think that they were the first to say "There is no such thing as a career path, it's crazy paving and you have to lay it yourself" I know two things for certain. It wasn't me that said it first and I first heard it more than 20 years ago. Whoever did say it first was remarkably prescient. In the private sector portfolio careers, with a number of major changes to direction throughout a long working life and having more than one skill set at all times so that flip-flopping from one activity to another on a daily basis, have become common place. But is this approach to work and work patterns accepted in the local government arena?
Transcribe →Why 'data camps' are no longer just for geeks
Sep 21, 201800:27:30Tap to summarizeTime was when people who talked a lot about data were highly numerate statisticians and analysts who talked mostly to fellow professionals about apis, uris, and specialist computer programmes the rest of us had never heard of. These days, according to Jamie Whyte and Julian Tait of Open Data Manchester, more and more non-specialist managers are showing up at data events and responding enthusiastically to data analysis published in mainstream or social media. One reason is that there is growing awareness generally of our increasingly data-driven society, with words like 'algorithm' and acronyms like 'GDPR' entering everyday conversation, thanks to wide discussion of the Cambridge Analytica/Facebook and other data-related affairs. Another reason is that people who love data are learning to make it make it more accessible to people who have had an aversion to graphs, charts and anything related to 'maths' since primary school. Better, more creative visualisation of data is encouraging people to engage who would not look twice at a spreadsheet.
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Smart stab vests and geolocating for frontline blue-light services. Smart gets mobile.
Sep 20, 201800:15:00Tap to summarizeRichard Rawcliffe deals with all public sector applications for DELL products and services in UK. His viewpoint is necessarily the widest and most far reaching overview of where we are and where we are going in the digital delivery of local public services. We invited him to our Blackfriars studio to give us his take on some of the headline challenges and opportunities.
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The state of drug treatment in the United Kingdom
Sep 15, 201800:24:20Tap to summarizeVolteface is a think tank looking at alternatives to current drug policies. Volteface encourages fresh thinking and new ideas via and online and print magazine and through an ongoing programme of private and public events. Volteface works with an array of partners across civil society, business, media and government to foster public engagement, formulate new evidence-based policy ideas and acts as a thoughtful advocate for change. We are UK-based and focused whilst engaging with ideas and practice from across the world. Liz McCulloch is Head of Policy at Volteface and Prun Bijral is the Medical Director for the national drug treatment charity Change, Grow, Live. All content © Volteface 2018 See Lizzie McCulloch's report Black Sheep: An Investigation into Existing Support for Problematic Cannabis Use here
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Bluffers run the country
Sep 10, 201800:25:45Tap to summarizeAndrew Greenaway is a self-confessed, Oxford trained, Whitehall polished bluffer. It's time, he says, to stop bluffing and promote those who know what's what. Greenway studied PPE at Oxford. Oxford graduates in philosophy, politics and economics often end up in Westminster, Whitehall or the media. Studying three different subjects in three years, however, gives little opportunity to become expert or even well-versed in any subject. It does however train you how to bluff your way in the corridors of power. As a skilled bluffer Greenway left university and became a management consultant. Within two years he had joined the Civil Service never having had a proper job. Six years later having paid brief visits to five different and largely unrelated Whitehall departments he became a "senior civil servant". He left Whitehall in 2014 and now works as a partner in Public Digital advising governments and large organisations around the world on institutional reform. Now Greenway has written a book "Bluffocracy" together with James Ball (PPE at Oxford now a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist) It's high time that government by bluffers came to an end says Greenway, giving a credible impression of someone who knows what he is talking about, and Brexit which will either be a crisis or feel so much like one that few will be able to tell the difference, presents the perfect opportunity to usher in a new era, an era where politicians and bureaucrats are valued for knowing what they are talking about rather than the panache with which they bluff.
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