Notes on week 43 of 2025:

  • also known as week notes,
  • covers 20 to 26 Oct 2025,
  • started 24 October 2025,
  • published 13 February 2026.

The Pensions Regulator


Working group members

The official list of the 15 members of the pensions data and digital working group has now been published. INSERT LINK 


I've already had one-to-ones with 13 of the 15, and have got one more next week on Monday. That means I can now start the analysis of everything I've learnt from those one-to-ones, which will influence the design of the first meeting at the end of November.


1-2-1 engagement

Mary and I had a really interesting conversation about whether it should be called research or engagement. 


This followed a really useful conversation with kat Gordy, the head of user centre design, and at the head of user research, and their colleague Robert. 


Marion's suggestion was that rather than say I'm doing informal research with members of the working group, I should say I'm doing one-to-one engagement with them. 


This made me realise that I have an in ner user research voice that wants to be heard and seen. But as I'm not professional user researcher, and barely an amateur one, I think Marian's suggestion is brilliant. 


Although I will be taking a lot of work, cat Anna and Robert said, especially the idea of coming up with an overarching user research question, rather than a research question. 


This in no way shape or form is because I don't value user research, I really, really do. It's more that I need to recognise that my role as engagement, not research. 


I will pick this up with cat, Anna and Robert and see what their thoughts are, but for the moment I'm doing one-to-one engagement, not research

Threads in Teams

Towards the end of the week, I had a brilliant chat with SD, who introduced me to threaded replies chats in Microsoft teams. 


I knew this had been coming for a while, especially after learning that department for Education is going to be switching slack off in favour of teams, and the lots of the criticism that's invoked that threading wasn't available in teams. 


But now it is🙂


Yes, the user experience is nowhere near as good as it is in slack which is a very mature product with excellent chat features. 


Yes, I do worry about Microsoft's unstoppable Mark take over the whole other digital data and technology sphere. 


But I'm a pragmatist, and I realise that being able to have threaded chats in teams is much better than having two separate platforms in the same organisation (I'm thinking about DFE here, not CPR).

Tidy kanban board

Also, it's the end of the week I tided up my public kanban board which is on Trello. 


Channelling my inner Russell Davis, I've probably been trying to reduce my work to three things which are: 


I do love a nice tidy kanban bored 🙂


Volunteering 


Cheadle community library

Had a really good session with Lee trusty. Ivan and his fellow trustee Mike in the library on Saturday. 


Earlier in the week, a bunch of trustees and other volunteers had met to talk about how they could improve the layouts of the library. 


So Ivan, Mike and I sat down and talked through those plans, and then walked around the library looking at things and moving and figuring out what we could do. 


We've put a date in for Saturday the 8th of November to prioritise the work, and then start redesigning the layout of the off of the library.


Earlier in the week on Thursday afternoon, Ivan and I 10 attended some training for charities on communications. 


Home is a little bit wary of this. Having spent over a decade learning the hard way how to use social media properly, but I was pleasantly surprised about some of the contact content but especially the interactions with other people that were there for the course. 


The only downside of the course was that they hadn't left enough space for discussion and conversation between people that were there. 


This meant that the content was quite rushed and delivered quite fast, which meant by the end of the session I was quite frazzled. 


Fortunately, they handed out feedback forms which everyone filled in there and then, and I made some what I thought we used for suggestions on the pace and the content and the design. 


I'm really thankful to Ivan for suggesting that we go on this training and I have definitely come away with stuff that I can use to help the library.

OneTeamGov North

Tuesday was the monthly one-team governor North lean coffee and co-working day. 


Although I was quite knackered when I arrived, I sat with cat quartermaster fellow UKgovcamp organiser and mainly listened to the lean coffee, but occasionally chipping in here and there. 


It didn't seem to be many as people as last time that stayed for the co-working day, although maybe the office in general is just quieter than normal. 


But stay person, Stephen Gill, Dan and I all fellow wanting of North organisers managed to have some time to ourselves to sit and think about what we want to do over the coming months.


ADHD Pathfinding

Sean Murphy is now the service owner for the ADHD pathfinding, and she and I had a brilliant backlog refinement session with himmel who set up the project and John who's training up to be a delivery manager. 


Sean, use the awesome ice water! Steamway of prioritising everything in the backlog. 

If you're not familiar with it, you basically look at each item and decide. Is this steam as in it's? It's currently in progress. Is it water? As in? We know enough about it to get going and it's probably going to happen soon. Or is it ice which you can probably guess what that one is.


UKGovCamp handover

David Durant has found us an awesome Treasurer who is going to take over from me. 


Manny is a certified accountant and has worked in the Civil Service and elsewhere and has loads of experience. 


I can't think of anyone better. I'd rather be handing over the financial reins of gov. Camp too and Manny and I had a couple of conversations and chats on slack. 


David Durant now has access to the admin account and all the passwords and stuff that go with it and I know he'll do an awesome job of tea keeping on top of all of that. 


I'll be down in London on Wednesday night to attend the transform. Gov talks that David runs and also spend some time with him and Manny to sign all the stuff so that they can become selling access to the bank account and so that hmrc's knows to contact them not me and future. 


I plan to leave the UK gulf Camp organisers channel on slack next week, which will be sad, but I think important that I draw a wonderful blue line underneath my time at UKgovcamp, again. 


And no, I'm not coming out of retirement again to run ukgovcamp. This is my last time and I'm very happy that there's a team in place that will carry on this awesome event and Community.


Mental health


Much better than last week and the week before where I had to do a lot of peopleing. 


But I was genuinely knackered by the end of the week to the point where I had to ask my colleague Lucy if we could reschedule a meeting till Monday, which I'm very proud of for taking care of myself.

Psychoeducation

The last of the eight autism psycho-education sessions happened on Monday. 


This last session was really interesting, as the organisers invited is to talk about their experience of our journey to getting the diagnosis and being on the training. 


Over the next few days about 10 people join the group and I made them all admin so that it was fair and equal access to the group. 


I then did a series of polls asking about doing an ongoing support meetup starting with the day and then the time of day and then a particular hour we could meet. 


WhatsApp poll feature was really useful cuz it all just happened inside the group and didn't have to go off to a third party. 


But when we eventually agreed on the time and day, I should have gone with my gut instinct of using something like Google meet, rather than using whatsapps built-in event creation tool. 


When it came to the actual meetup, it turned out that it was actually a little bit challenging to join on anything other than mobile, so I've asked the people that turned up about their experience in the hope that will use something different next time.

Therapy

I'm really enjoying therapy at the moment, and blessed that I've found the therapist I have. 


They do an excellent job of creating space And leaving pauses for me to think and fill in the blanks. 


This is in stark contrast to the therapist I had before, he felt that they had to fill the empty void with questions and comments when I didn't immediately answer.

Sleep

Still waking up around 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning and going downstairs for a little midnight snack. 


Need to get on top of this and I know what to do. I'm just being lazy.