Hackdays - Leveling the Playing Field

This short note was produced in response to a request from Liam Maxwell made at EHI Live 2012, to investigate how hackdays could help procurement. Reposting here as the PDF is locked behind a paywall. Contributors Malcolm Newbury, Guildfoss, Consultant Mahendra Mahey, University of Bath, Project Manager of the DevCSI Project John Pyle, Independent Procurement Consultant Ewan Davis, Woodcote Consulting, Consultant Rob Dyke, Technical Director, Tactix4 Scott Wilson, Service Manager, OSS Watch and Assistant Director, CETIS Eckhard Schwarzat, ValueDecision, Consultant A “hackday” or “modding” (modification) day is an event where a group of people extractedfrom their normal day to day jobs and are brought together typically to deliver solutions touser problems....

April 8, 2020 · 16 min · Rob Dyke

NHoS Closedown - the final straw

Sorry (and of course thanks) to anyone who’s helped out with the NHSbuntu Linux project and it’s revamped version NHoS but I think we’ve finally reached a point where we’ve had enough. The entire NHSbuntu/NHoS team (4 core members) have been working as volunteers, with a few small work packages and pieces of funding courtesy of the Apperta Foundation, but we have received absolutely zero backing from those higher up in NHS Digital and other NHS organisations....

January 17, 2018 · 3 min · Rob Dyke

NHSCIO Show and Tell

Here are the materials I shared with NHS CIO Will Smart and Alex Chaplin in October. NHoS were invited back by Will Smart to discuss the ‘What’s Next’ in more detail.1 with apologies for timewarping with this post. ↩︎

October 10, 2017 · 1 min · Rob Dyke

A long overdue summer summary

Marcus and I had a busy summer, what with holidays, hospitals, hacks (days/weeks/camps) and house moves. I’d like you to accept this post with our apologies for being relatively quiet recently. Now, without further ado, here’s an update on all things NHSbuntu.  A winning hack. In the news. A spot of bother. Working with us. What’s coming up. Thanks A winning hack. Back in June we were invited to join the NHS Digital Delivery Team for a Hack Week....

September 30, 2017 · 3 min · Rob Dyke

Making NHSbuntu

NHSbuntu is built for the NHS from the Ubuntu open source operating system. To create our distribution we use tools from the Ubuntu ecosystem to package our customisations and build the download images. In this post I’ll describe the techniques and tools we use for this. Customisations Our core customisations are handled using a template from the ubuntu-default-settings package. This template allows us to easily set defaults for the look and feel of the desktop as well as tailoring the packages included in the installation....

June 19, 2017 · 2 min · Rob Dyke