There’s a pattern emerging across organisations — and it’s particularly visible in local government. London councils are rolling out Microsoft Copilot licences and presenting it as an AI strategy. Ealing trialled 250 seats. Enfield expanded to 635. Hammersmith & Fulham enabled Copilot for Edge so staff could “get familiarised”. Licences are purchased, pilots are launched,...
Transformation gets a lot of attention – new systems, new platforms, new initiatives — it all creates a sense of progress. It’s visible, easy to explain, and gives people something concrete to point to. Simplification doesn’t work like that. From what I have seen, simplification is usually the harder problem — and the one that...
For a CTO delivering technology isn’t the hard part. Most organisations, given enough time and budget, will eventually implement systems, platforms, or tools. Where things fall short is what happens around that delivery — and how consistently it is carried through, how well it holds together over time, and whether the value actually remains intact....
“We live in a time when the institutions that run society are struggling to cope with the complexities of the real world, and so they retreat into simplified versions of it.” Adam Curtis, HyperNormalisation 2016 Complexity makes people nervous. And when institutions get overwhelmed, they don’t reach for transparency — they reach for control. Or...
