Latest news and ideas

Ahead of her SDinGov session, The Data and Analytics Ecosystem: The Hidden Layer of Service Transformation (24 September, 2pm), Dr Angela Orviz explores why service designers need to understand the data and analytics ecosystems that underpin public services and previews the themes that will be discussed during the talk.

Organisations have access to more insight than ever before. User research, analytics, operational data and performance reporting all provide valuable perspectives on how services are performing. Yet many teams still face a familiar challenge: deciding what to improve first.  Through our work supporting service transformation, we have seen that the issue is rarely a lack of evidence. More often, teams struggle to connect different sources of insight in a way that supports confident decision making and prioritisation.  By bringing together user needs, operational knowledge and quantitative data, organisations can develop a richer understanding of end-to-end journeys and make more informed decisions about where to focus their efforts. This article explores why connecting insight matters, what we have learned from doing it in practice and how it can help teams prioritise improvements that deliver meaningful value for users and organisations alike. 

AI assistants are becoming increasingly capable, but their real value comes from connecting securely with enterprise systems. Model Context Protocol (MCP) provides a standardised way for AI models to interact with tools, APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) and data sources, and MCP servers are the infrastructure that makes this possible. This blog explores what MCP servers are, why they matter for DevOps teams, and the operational considerations involved in deploying them securely, reliably and at scale.

AI is transforming the way content designers work, creating new opportunities to improve how content is researched, designed, managed and maintained. In this blog, Laurna Robertson explores how AI can support each stage of the content lifecycle, from discovery and planning through to content design and maintenance, while highlighting the importance of human judgement, accessibility and user focus.

Henry Rex, Opencast Government Relations Director, reflects on nearly a decade of attending the Modernising Criminal Justice conference, exploring what’s changed, what hasn't and what it means for organisations working to transform justice services. 

User-centred design (UCD) often gets taught as a clear, structured process: speak to users, validate decisions, iterate, deliver. In an ideal world, everything flows neatly. But in reality? It very rarely works like that.  Here, Opencast Senior Interaction Designer James Tabiner shares his perspective on what it means to practise UCD in the real world, especially in environments shaped by constraints like tight budgets, shifting deadlines, limited user access, or small teams.  His core message: the real skill isn’t just doing UCD well; it’s knowing what to do when you can’t. 

In this blog, Rachel Derbyshire, Senior Interaction Designer at Opencast, explores the increasingly complex global landscape of AI regulation in 2026. As governments accelerate efforts to govern artificial intelligence, organisations are facing a fragmented and often challenging environment to navigate. From the EU’s rigorous, risk-based framework to China’s highly targeted regulatory controls and the UK’s flexible, pro-innovation approach, the rules shaping AI are evolving rapidly, and not always in alignment. This blog unpacks the key differences between these approaches and what they mean for businesses striving to remain compliant, competitive, and forward-thinking in a shifting regulatory world.

In Part One of this series, we explored how DevOps emerged as a response to the challenges of modern software delivery and why many organisations have struggled to realise its full value. In this second article, Opencast Practice Lead Scott McCarthy examines how DevOps has matured beyond its original foundations and become a set of complementary practices focused on delivering reliable, sustainable outcomes at scale. This article explores how DevOps continues to evolve and what organisations need to do to remain effective in an age of Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems.