Week 887

Week beginning Monday, 12th January 2026.

I was off sick early in the week with an unpleasant bout of ‘flu, so I really appreciated Chris L and Chris R holding the fort.

Government Digital Service 🏷️

This week we’ve continued our work at GDS to dig into the tagging workflow used in GOV.UK Publishing. Becky & Adam have run a bunch of research sessions with users of the GOV.UK Publishing system. We’ve taken it in turns to sit in on these sessions and they’ve been very illuminating.

Jam 🍓

Last Friday Chris L & Chris R met up with Nicola in person near Old Street. It sounds like this was a really useful meeting - Nicola has a lot of experience in the music industry and shares our desire to make it more equitable for independent artists.

A while ago we found Sprint Law’s article about the Payment Services Directive v2 and Chris R has spoken to one of their lawyers about how we can make sure Jam is compliant. It turns out their expertise is more on the legal side of things than on the tax side, but it was a useful discussion nonetheless.

Earlier today we all had a video call with Lydia at pom pom publishing who sell digital books & magazines of knitting patterns. It was interesting to hear how they license these and distribute royalties to the authors. And we’ve just come off a follow-up workshop with Polly at Newable about how to move things forward with Jam - as always this was really helpful!

Miscellaneous 🧩

Chris L and I have both had building work going on this week which has been a bit disruptive and Chris L and Chris R have both had to contend with extra childcare duties.

Apparently it was GFR’s 17th birthday on Thursday which slightly blows my mind - I don’t know where all the time’s gone! We should try to mark the occasion somehow!

Until next time.

– James