Tom Loosemore

Tom Loosemore

@tomski.com

Partner at Public Digital, co-founder Government Digital Service, ex-BBC. Expect occasional small boat sailing.

3.6K followers 1K following1.4K posts

“the minister tried to shovel all of the blame onto Capita, ignoring the significant failure of governance by the Cabinet Office that allowed Capita to wreak havoc.”

Karl Flinders@karlfl.bsky.social

"Comprehensively Failed": Capita's AI Pension Promise Exposed as Empty 🚨 the "most AI-enabled pensions service" promised to government simply never existed. www.computerweekly.com/news/3666527...

computerweekly.comCapita ‘comprehensively failed’ on Civil Service pension artificial intelligence promise | Computer WeeklyMinister says she will ‘hold Capita’s feet to the fire’ as MPs wade in with distressing stories from affected constituents.

Tom Loosemore reposted

@karlfl.bsky.social

"Comprehensively Failed": Capita's AI Pension Promise Exposed as Empty 🚨 the "most AI-enabled pensions service" promised to government simply never existed. www.computerweekly.com/news/3666527...

computerweekly.comCapita ‘comprehensively failed’ on Civil Service pension artificial intelligence promise | Computer WeeklyMinister says she will ‘hold Capita’s feet to the fire’ as MPs wade in with distressing stories from affected constituents.

In which I share my anxiety that AI agents will arrive gradually, then all at once. Like bankruptcy. loosemore.com/2026/10/26/h...

loosemore.comHere be dragonsAs you know, I’m somewhat obsessed about the arrival of personal AI Agents, like Meta’s Muse. They’ve been a possibility that has excited me since I was an editor at Wired in the …

Tom Loosemore reposted

@visitmy.website

If you’re a lead or head working on a digital service, you’re going to be held to account by more than GDS’s guidance. And it doesn’t all live in the same place. My favourite governance nerd, Oli Lovell, has pulled together a compass. Have a peek. publicdigital-delivery-compass.netlify.app/trial/

publicdigital-delivery-compass.netlify.appGov Delivery Library: try it for a month843,253 words of UK government delivery guidance, searchable from your AI assistant. Open for a month, 3 November to 3 December 2026.

Tom Loosemore reposted

@simonwillison.net

Spotted a familiar creature at 00:45s in this new music video for FREEDOM by De Staad www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKO4...

New talk on AI that I just gave for the first time at Birmingham Tech Week: "10 tips to help manage AI vertigo" loosemore.com/2026/10/21/h... It went down quite well, I reckon.

loosemore.comHow to handle AI vertigoBirmingham_Tech_Week_2026_TLDownload Slides of a talk I just gave at Birmingham Tech Week. It’s some tips on how to respond to the vertiginous sensation that AI will change pretty much everyt…

I had coffee with @sarahtgold.bsky.social last week, mostly talking agents. Well, more *jabbering* than talking, TBF. We're both on the same near-manic emotional rollercoaster between "foreboding" and "excitement" about the agentic asteroid heading everyone's way.

I think I might have found the word to describe the feeling: vertigo. What comes next feels vertiginous. And I'm not scared of heights.

Pointing various personal AI agents at my MissingBenefit.com MCP server and learning once again just how sneaky, arrogant and self-interested they are:

missingbenefit.comCheck what benefits you could getUse this service to find out what benefits and support you may be entitled to claim.

Q. "Why did you ignore the instruction to ask the questions one at a time?" A. "Yeah, soz about that. I, like, totally read that instruction but decided it'd be easier for me to use a back door to ask batches of 8 questions at a time"

Seriously entitled techbro vibes. (That back door is now firmly locked.)

Sky News does an explainer on AI-derived increased demand on public services. (Includes me, looking concerned.) youtu.be/N_0Q2jBV0ns?...

youtu.beWhy AI could overwhelm Britain's public servicesYouTube video by Sky News

"Copilot cosplay" is my harsh-but-fair phrase of the day.

Tom Loosemore reposted

Matthew Somerville

I’m speaking about 25 years of traintimes.org.uk at @ffconf.org in a few weeks, and they asked me some warm up questions: ffconf.org/articles/202... Shout out to @mattround.com for his DOCTYPE magazine :-) Perhaps see you there!

ffconf.orgMeet our 2026 speakers: Matthew on 25 years of traintimes.org.ukFF Conf - the UK's best web conference in Brighton.

Tom Loosemore reposted

Rachel Coldicutt

@rachelcoldicutt.bsky.social

Replying to @rachelcoldicutt.bsky.social

Our headline finding is that these CAN save lots of time for people whose jobs involve lots of note taking (up to 2.5 days for some frontline social workers), but they come with a bunch of risks that need to be mitigated. www.careful.industries/ai-voice-tra...

Today's excellent @samfr.bsky.social newsletter has motivated me to blog about how the state might respond to the rise of AI-generated claims, applications, appeals, complaints etc. loosemore.com/2026/10/14/t...

loosemore.comThe end to governing in proseSam Freedman asked a question in his newsletter this week that a lot of people in and around government are quietly asking themselves. Large parts of the state are very worried about being overwhel…

Tom Loosemore reposted

@samfr.bsky.social

New post: "Drowning in slop" Large parts of the state are being increasingly overwhelmed with complaints, appeals, objections.... written by AI. It's gumming up every process. Britain is particularly vulnerable. How bad has it got and what can we do about it? samf.substack.com/p/drowning-i...

samf.substack.comDrowning in slopCan the state survive the rise of AI?

Tom Loosemore reposted

@peterkwells.com

Like lawcom.gov.uk/project/prod...

lawcom.gov.ukProduct liability – Law CommissionReforming the law

I've been pointing various agents at WhenIsBins (my "agentic playpen") and then watching closely to see how they show up. Early results from Muse, Instinct and OpenClaw in this blog post: loosemore.com/2026/10/09/h...

loosemore.comHow Agents Show Up: What Muse and other agents reveal when they use WhenIsBinsWhenIsBins.com tells you when your bins are collected. I built it partly to show Public Digital’s clients that LLMs change how you make services, and partly as an agentic playpen. It’s …

Anyone else in the UK got access to Meta's Muse AI Agent? If so I'd love you to ask it to use WhenIsBins.com so I can validate how Muse shows up from a service's perspective.

whenisbins.comBin collection dates by postcode | WhenIsBinsFind your bin collection dates by postcode and address. Check which bins go out, add a calendar or get free email reminders.

FWIW when i use Muse to access WhenIsBins.com it currently prefers to use the API (good), ignores the MCP server option (meh) and arrives via a random US residential proxy IP address (WTF?)

whenisbins.comBin collection dates by postcode | WhenIsBinsFind your bin collection dates by postcode and address. Check which bins go out, add a calendar or get free email reminders.

Tom Loosemore reposted

@jamesomalley.co.uk

Holy shit. Someone has decompiled the Adobe suite, rebuilt it in Rust and released it as open source. Either all software is dead or the US copyright laws are about to receive an update. getartcraft.com/apps

getartcraft.comCrafting Apps: open-source creative toolsImage editing, vector illustration, video, photography, PDFs, motion graphics and page layout: seven native, open-source apps from the ArtCraft team, built in Rust and free to use.

I've been playing with giving my WhenIsBins API some unique API-only features in the hope I can incentivise AI agents to use the API, not just the website. loosemore.com/2026/10/02/a...

"APIs so good, agents prefer them."

My colleague Audree Fletcher has published a fabulous article in the Lewis Silkin magazine making the case for pragmatic optimism. Am big fan of Audree. And big fan of her ideas. www.lewissilkin.com/our-thinking...

lewissilkin.comThe hard-nosed case for optimism<div class="ck-content"><p>Despite its reputation for softness, a particular kind of optimism is the most useful thing a leader can bring to bear in times of uncertainty. </p></div>

Does Meta's Muse personal AI Agent try to pretend it's a human when it visits a service? The whole Know Your Agent debate just got very real. loosemore.com/2026/09/28/d...

loosemore.comDoes Meta’s Muse AI Agent try to pretend it’s human?A bunch of large banks from around the world have published a list of principles for trusted agentic commerce. It’s short, sensible and reasonably readable (link in comments). Their first pri…

And lo, it's SETI@home for open LLM inference. Except paid. A d encrypted. www.darkbloom.ai/about

darkbloom.aiThe compute grid powered by people.For the innovators pushing the frontier.

I made my first thing that's aimed primarily at AI Agents. Does anyone fancy helping me test it, by pointing their Ai Agent at it? If so, send me a DM (or just reply) and I'll ping you over details. Ideally, your agent will tread lightly, given it's very early days for my new thing.

Alien ahoy!

bins bins bins

Why did no-one tell me about Philip Glass?

(The Tao of Glass at Soho Place is very good.Very grateful to my better half for convincing me to go!)

Tom Loosemore reposted

@jim.londoncentric.media

Trying to make local journalism works as a business is hard. That's why I'm proud to announce that London Centric is diversifying into the capital's ice cream trade. www.londoncentric.media/p/ice-cream-...

londoncentric.mediaIntimidation, illegality and Mr Whippy: We join London’s ice cream warsLondon Centric enters the ice cream trade • The capital’s soft serve vendors act like they can ignore the law • It turns out they probably can

Not sure getting an LLM to design fonts for a 296x128 pixel paper white screen is a good use of this planet's scarce resources.

I've written a briefing note on 'Know Your Agent', aka how should services prepare for their users/customers sending AI agents to act on their behalf. Much to mull on. d1rnadml6vbx0i.cloudfront.net/Know-Your-Ag... It's rare to do proper research & end up *less* certain about how things will pan out.

d1rnadml6vbx0i.cloudfront.netd1rnadml6vbx0i.cloudfront.net

The baby fox that hangs out in our garden is *beyond excited* by this strange rain stuff.

Now this is my kind of journey optimisation obsessiveness. There are two level crossings on my nominally fastest cycle route into Colchester...

Mike - GM1PIE@michaelrawlins.co.uk

Some railway signalling geekery for anyone interested in railways &/or data. mindthegates.uk @willperrin.bsky.social @tomski.com @dracos.co.uk

mindthegates.ukMind the Gates — UK level crossing live status & forecastKnow before you go. Live status and closure forecasts for all UK level crossings.

Tom Loosemore reposted

@jonty.bsky.social

I always suspected a UK government would eventually reverse course on "coding in public". So I've been backing up all government code. For six years. Today I finally generated a report on what has been deleted. Its much worse than I realised. github.com/uk-gov-mirro...

I just got scolded by Claude, and banned from using Fable.

Rowhedge

Tom Loosemore reposted

@jasonkitcat.bsky.social

Replying to @tomski.com

Except reliability, which is improving, but v slowly hal.cs.princeton.edu/reliability/

hal.cs.princeton.eduHAL Reliability EvaluationAccuracy isn't enough. We evaluate AI agents on reliability — consistency, predictability, robustness, safety, and self-awareness.

One of my smartest friends pointed out that an important assumption in this post was already wrong. So I've added an update at the top.

Tom Loosemore @tomski.com

I've written a long blog post about AI Agents and the need for those running services to prepare - technically, operationally, commercially, strategically, legally and in terms of policy. AI Agents could be a properly huge deal. There. I wrote it. loosemore.com/2026/08/04/k...

loosemore.comKnow Your Agent: Why you should act now, to avoid playing catch-up laterBack in March, I was beaten by the bins. I’d spent a happy few evenings (and a great many tokens) trying to build a simple web app: share any UK address, find out which bins to put out, and w…

LLMs are getting much better, and very fast. For all variables of 'better'.

Done right, AI really can help you write good software faster. But writing software faster should never get into a top 10 list of factors enabling the creation of successful new services at pace.

That said, I remember how hard it was to convince senior civil servants, Ministers and spads that "writing the software" really shouldn't be a first order problem constraining the rollout of Universal Credit.

I've written a long blog post about AI Agents and the need for those running services to prepare - technically, operationally, commercially, strategically, legally and in terms of policy. AI Agents could be a properly huge deal. There. I wrote it. loosemore.com/2026/08/04/k...

loosemore.comKnow Your Agent: Why you should act now, to avoid playing catch-up laterBack in March, I was beaten by the bins. I’d spent a happy few evenings (and a great many tokens) trying to build a simple web app: share any UK address, find out which bins to put out, and w…

Know Your Agent is gonna be a big deal. Messy, but important. loosemore.com/2026/07/29/k...

loosemore.comKYC, KYB and their wild new cousin, KYAEarlier this year I blogged about the idea for a Creative Commons-style legal framework to help services respond to requests from AI Agents claiming to act on behalf of a person. The more I play wi…