Blog Post: Summer 2025 Newsletter

Dear readers.

August (in all senses) greetings from teeming Torbaydos (the era of staycations and south coast visitation continues it seems).

Apologies for the tardiness of the quarterly message, it’s been quite the year so far. You may (or may not) recall my overly effusive enthusiasm (sic) in the previous edition at having moved home earlier in the year (think perfectly nice suburban house swapped for wreck in the countryside) - the full extent of work required is still unknown; but suffice to say it’s extensive and generally sufficient to warm the cockles of even the most ardent DIYer. The current joy and consumer of weekends being a battle - armed only with a trowel, ladder and a paintbrush - with 400 million square meters of external rough cast (much that requires fixing - WHY does this material exist!?)....the Forth bridge springs to mind!!

For extra fun, yesterday, as a notable part of playdate my daughter was enjoying, I had to break down a bathroom door - whose catch had decided it was time to give up the ghost whilst, naturally, a visiting small human was inside - to release a captive (and increasingly anxious) 11 year old. Repairs will have to wait until I run out of paint, weather, brushes or the general will to be outside.

Other than self-inflicted fixer-upping, and while safely ensconsed in front of the screen, the year kicked off with delivering a contract for a Government agency and immediately followed up by an intensive set of development on our PSN platform. A huge thank you to those out there helping and testing with the latter - speaking of, door wide open to all out there who’d like to be part of the testing - there’s free coffee (delivery logitics tbd) and endless waffle available for those that may find themselves caring about the Public Sector market, or any aspect therein.

The aforementioned work has meant further bonding with my new AI bestie ("Marvin" - Douglas Adams fans will understand) and the consequent ponderings on the extent to which our respective digital assistants and new tech can be useful and indeed continue to open up the digital frontier for those of us that work with, and indeed care about, data and all things Government.

This exponential potential (#rhymes) is really a bit of a head spinner and the only brake it seems (for us humans anyway) is the greatest commodity of all; time. We could really do with a bit more of it - partly so I could bore everyone with more regular email updates and, perhaps as importantly, so that we could action the 100 ideas currently on the workbench.

So, and meantime, to the usual format of updates and things that may actually have a positive impact on your day and general workflow:

Updates:

Local election updates have all, of course, been made. The summarised impacts can be seen on our Seat Tracker report (linked below) but for those consuming political data via downloads and feeds, it’s worth noting the Leadership side is all done and the Cabinet and Committee side will also be so shortly. Taking regular updates are, as ever, the key.

Our latest review of Schools and MAT structures has been completed with the latest group changes reflected on the live database. Health has been an area of focus, especially in light of the new 10 year plan (more on that also below) and we have implemented some additional monthly checks for senior posts and structures across Secondary Care Trusts. This approach will be broadened shortly to include Housing Associations and all Further and Higher Education.

The usual updates and checkers continue across Dentists and Care homes and the recent Welsh Government reorganisation is fully reflected in the database.

Summary of all our database updates and changes over the last 90 days:

New:

Much we could (and will) add here, but will save the recent chunk of PSN development for the next edition. Meantime some new and expanded reports to have a gander at:

We have added a new tracking widget and charts added to our Political Seat Tracker report

The latest CQC inspection data has been uploaded and we have added a new chart analysing performance by Local Authority

Our Political gender analysis report (used by the ONS #humblebrag) is now live

Interesting:

A focus on the NHS this time, specifically:

Our summary of 2025 changes across the NHS here

A condensed summary of the new NHS 10 year plan here

That just about covers it for the summer and means I can run back to the paranoid android and get some more coding done before an evening of, yep you guessed it....painting!

Hope you and yours are having a wonderful summer and we’ll be back with more late in the autumn.

James and team at Oscar

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