Tag Archives: Alan Mather

The Cars That Ate Paris promo photo

The Cars That Ate Paris: The Census Website that Swore at Grannies

The 1901 Census website was meant to showcase British digitisation, but instead it became a punchline: servers that buckled on launch, mismatched kit lashed together, prisoner-typed data laced with obscenities, and retired “10 till 3 grannies” and neurodiverse consultants cleaning up the mess. I was called in to write the report that unravelled the fiasco, a job that took me from QinetiQ’s “Santa in tweed” CTO to the Cabinet Office, where I first crossed paths with Alan Mather, and learned hard lessons about hubris, engineering, and failure, along the way.

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A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum: Ian Dunmore’s Punk Ethos in Government IT

A personal reflection on my friendship with Ian Dunmore and the rise and fall of Public Sector Forums, exploring how his punk, do-it-yourself ethos created a space for civil servants to speak truth to power, and why those edges still matter today. Follow-up articles will touch on some of the hijinks he got me into (I got myself into), like being sacked and reinstated from my dream job, all within one day.

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