2 December 2022

Published in

Warning: Graphic Content

11 min readDec 2, 2022

See you in 2023!

Yes, it’s the most wonderful time of the year — when your inbox stops creaking from data-based geeking and I give you a few weeks off the newsletter for good behaviour. (Or rather, realise how much work and singing I have to do over the next few weeks and, for once, decide to be sensible/try to actually watch some of the World Cup.)

Wales’ highlights from the men’s football World Cup [image of old BBC Test Card]

Thank you for sticking with the overload of links and surfeit of insufferable puns for another year. The newsletter will be back in January (with the long-promised analysis of the reader survey of a few months back, I’m sure you can barely contain your excitement — but thank you again to everyone who filled out the form or otherwise got in touch). I’m also on Twitter (if it’s still there) and Mastodon (hopefully finding some time at some point to give it a proper go).

Some things to look out for between now and next year:

It’s the first Wednesday of the month next week so it must be Data Bites. Join me for a local government/levelling up special supported by Palantir. We’ll then be back on Thursday(!) 2 February — although there’s a chance we could sneak in a first ever January Data Bites before that. Sign up to the IfG newsletter and events email for early notice of that.
You can also expect to see the fruits of another IfG project I’ve been working on blossom over the next month or two — on lessons we can learn from government data sharing during the pandemic. Our partners, Scott Logic, have already published a couple of blogposts — on getting the right people in the room and rules helping you go faster. Again, sign up to the IfG newsletter to get a first look.
I’m going to stewarding the policy team for the ODI while they appoint a new head of public policy. If you’d like to apply, you can!
At Connected by Data we’re waiting like kids for Christmas morning for more news about the Data Protection and Digital Information Bill. Do get in touch if you’d like to hear more about our plans.
The work we’ve commissioned as part of the TICTeC Labs project at mySociety is starting to come in — everything from a toolkit for ensuring websites are accessible to an open data course will appear here.
If you’re looking for a carol service in London, might I suggest the one happening at St Mary’s, Tottenham, at 6pm on Saturday 17 December? My choir will be performing — details of some further, smaller performances to follow.

And:

Thanks to Latinometrics for suggesting a few more additions to my spreadsheet of data newsletters.
A big thank you to Think Digital for inviting me to speak at and co-host their Think Data for Government conference this week — keep an eye out for future iterations.
And thanks to Jill for sending this in my direction (warning: spoilers), which decides some of my viewing this Christmas. Other content with people making fictional government relevant to real ones is available.

Have a wonderful Christmas, and an excellent start to 2023!
Gavin