At Play In The Garden of Eden

By Joe Tibbetts

What's At Play In The Garden of Eden about?

Two men, one an American Ai engineer and game designer living in Seattle and an English documentary film maker living in Dover, England in conversation about AI, documentaries, chess, human stupidity and the future of the human race.

Download our free app to listen on your phone

At Play In The Garden of Eden episodes:

02.13.2022
Are human beings machines?
If, as Joe believes, human beings are machines, why are we bothering to build artificial intelligence. If we succeed all we will have done is create new humans. And there is a well know, tried and tested way of making...
01.30.2022
Ai plus human stupidity? Time to worry?
.… the machines are coming. I have seen the future and it does not look anything like the past or the present. We are as children now, innocents at play in the garden of Eden. Aurelia Pinchbeck - The Character...
01.25.2020
‘Really tangible benefits’ of digital support for unpaid care are here, now
Madeleine Starr, Director of Business and Innovation at Carers UK explains how digital can help the UK’s 8.8 million unpaid carers - including the 5 million who juggle care with work It is not even about developing anything new, she...
01.18.2020
MapLondon event December 19: speakers discuss data, digital mapping, planning, and citizen engagement
A wide range of professionals from the world of planning and development convened at December’s MapLondon event to explore how cities might be made better through more data sharing and wider use of digital maps. The podcast, captured against the...
01.14.2020
Recovery from election fraud: the Tower Hamlets story
Asmat Hussain, Corporate Director of Governance tells Rachael Tiffen of CIFAS what happened next after the High Court’s overturn of its 2014 mayoral election The former mayor was found guilty of corrupt and illegal practices, including vote-rigging, by an election...
11.20.2019
Could a digital approach solve care managers' and providers’ problems with medicines support?
Damian Nolan (Halton BC) and Jane Hancer (CC2i) explain the problems of administering meds and describe a new collaboration by councils to find a digital solution. Complicated relationships exist between patients, GPs, pharmacists, hospitals, carers and family members in terms...
11.20.2019
Councils collaborate to explore digital potential in administration of new Liberty Protection Safeguards
Jane Hancer (CC2i) and Damian Nolan (Halton BC) describe how a five-council collaboration supported by the LGA and match-funded NHS Digital will deliver via the Social Care Innovation Accelerator In this discussion recorded in July, Jane Hancer describes the process...
10.23.2019
WM ADASS: immersive data presentation will change health & care commissioning
The Bridge - Shropshire Council’s immersive approach to presenting local data - is set to transform council and NHS commissioning The Bridge (as in ‘the view from’) is an approach to the presentation of data developed in house at Shropshire...
10.21.2019
‘It's never gone this well!’ – council service teams on building their own IT
Kate Hurr, Digital Manager at Cumbria County Council, describes colleagues’ enthusiasm for creating digital services in-house. The discussion makes it clear that the Council’s ‘low-code’ approach to building new digital services is not about replacing the large council systems that...
10.15.2019
Transformation done right is ‘with’ and not ‘to’ says LB Havering team
London Borough of Havering’s Chief Operating Officer Jane West and transformation lead Susie Faulkner describe a process designed to bring staff and residents along with change. Havering embarked on its transformation journey soon after Jane West arrived in post in...
10.10.2019
Counter Measures No4 - how a trusted member of staff committed a £2.1m fraud and what LB Barnet did next
Clair Green, Director of Assurance at London Borough of Barnet tells Rachael Tiffen, Director Local Government at CIFAS, about an unprecedented fraud In December 2017, the council became aware of what turned out to be an unprecedented internal financial fraud,...
10.09.2019
Planning across place is key to tackling challenges of ageing populations
The proportion of over 65s and 85s in Shropshire is growing faster than in most parts of the UK and that concentrates the mind, says Andy Begley in this discussion recorded at the recent Tech 7 event in Shrewsbury. Provision...
10.09.2019
Doteveryone on regulating for responsible technology
Director of Policy Catherine Miller describes how the thinktank is working with regulators across all sectors on measures to counter harmful effects on society of recent and rapid digital change. The conversation draws on Doteveryone’s 2018 report on regulating technology,...
07.18.2019
Counter Measures No3 - Durham's anti fraud team recovers £4.5m since 2015
This conversation reveals how Durham County Council has developed its comprehensive counter fraud strategy from pretty much a standing start to a significant activity that to date has identified or intercepted £4.5m worth of fraudulent activity. The team has worked...
07.16.2019
West Midlands Workforce Alliance creates "safe space" for challenging health and social care discussions
After a decade of austerity, people working in social care have got used to hard decisions and making do. But the message emerging from the meeting of the West Midlands Workforce Alliance in early July was one of energy and...
06.28.2019
Leaders & Leadership 3 - leadership in a digital world
Heading up one of the country’s newest councils - one that only came into being on April 1 - Matt is also the policy spokesman on digital leadership for the council chiefs’ body Solace. In this digital age, he says,...
06.23.2019
Free Thinking 1 - Innovation strategies in the public sector
iHub is 80% externally funded, from sources like InnovateUK, Horizon2020 and the European Investment Bank. Only four posts are currently funded by OCC to run council activities like transport modeling, research to support policies, and business case development. Other-funded work...
06.23.2019
Free Thinking 2 – people need training to be as ‘human’ as bots
Staff picking up enquiries handed off from Monty, the Monmouthshire Council website chatbot, have needed training to ensure they put aside council speak and adopt the simple, text-friendly language these machines have learned to use. This was one of many...
06.18.2019
Circular Economy Show 4 - Biomimicry, new questions for old answers
Dr David Greenfield asks materials designer Lucy Hughes and Richard MacCowan CEO Biomimicry UK all about design solutions that mimic the natural world. Nature's solutions often are more elegant and less wasteful of energy and resource than human solutions. ‘Biomimicry’...
06.16.2019
Future of Work 4
Leatham Green, Executive Director of the Public Services People Manager's Association (PPMA) in conversation with Fiona McAdoo Associate Director of Organisational Development at London Borough of Camden discussing how you find, nurture and keep "talent" in the public sector. Careers...
06.08.2019
The Circular Economy Show No3
Dr David Greenfield asks Adam Woodhall, spokesperson for Extinction Rebellion and Cat Fletcher, head of media at Freegle to explain how sharing will deliver a less resource-greedy world. Fresh from April’s Extinction Rebellion protests in London, and with plenty of...
06.08.2019
A safe place for whistleblowers
Joe Tibbetts talks to Richard Vize a journalist well known in the public sector/delivery of public services space, Kushi Gujral of Protect the whistleblowers charity and Georgina Charlton of Guys and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust. Whistleblowing has been around...
04.25.2019
Digital maps get more people more involved in the local community
Paul Clarke of Esri UK, Graeme McDonald of Solace and Stuart Cole of Oxfordshire County Council explain how crowd-sourced, interactive maps help create active citizens. Stuart Cole, who is part of the Innovation team at Oxfordshire County Council says that...
04.25.2019
Councils, households and businesses face major changes from Government Waste Strategy
Dr David Greenfield draws out key aspects of the current Strategy consultation with Robert Vaughan and Linda Crichton of Defra, and Stuart Hayward-Higham of SUEZ Recyling & Recovery. Our second edition of the New Circular Economy Show focused on the...
04.24.2019
Fraud may not feature as a council corporate risk – but should do
Rachael Tiffen, Local Government Director at Cifas, and Essex CC Head of Assurance Paula Clowes, discuss why fraud isn’t a higher priority for councils and why it should be In 2013, the National Fraud Authority estimated that local authority fraud...
04.17.2019
Innovation: every council should have a team like ours
Llewelyn Morgan of Oxfordshire County Council tells CLGdotTV’s Joe Tibbetts about iHub, the 24-strong innovation unit he leads that is 80% externally funded. Most of this funding comes from sources like InnovateUK, Horizon2020 and the European Investment Bank: only four...
04.14.2019
Using data to understand and change travel behaviours
Stuart Lester of Transport for the West Midlands and Toby Bennett, Local Government Lead at Commonplace discuss how data is being used to manage the travelling public. Transport for the West Midlands is part of the West Midlands Combined Authority...
04.13.2019
Apprentices urge councils to promote the opportunity more widely in local schools
Khadiza heard about apprenticeships at school and, unable to go to university for financial reasons, started at Camden aged 17. Two years later she has achieved level 4 in project management, working within the Economic Development Department. Tahir became an...
04.10.2019
AI could solve capacity problems faced by local planning authorities
Brett Leahy, chief planner at Redbridge and Richard Sankey of Arcus Global explain how smarter planning will deliver a better planning service as well as greater job satisfaction for planners. Planners don’t enter the profession to spend their life checking...
04.01.2019
Rough sleepers are just the tip of the homelessness iceberg
Andrew Walker, managing the LGiU’s Homelessness Commission, Cllr Stephanie Cryan of LB Southwark and Dawn Eckersley of the East London Housing Partnership explain the depth of the housing crisis and how councils are responding The Homelessness Reduction Act 2017 -...
03.20.2019
Better insight and information could help social care providers and consumers to a more positive future view
According to Andy Begley, who heads up adult social care, housing and public health at Shropshire Council, and is Co-Chair of West Midlands ADASS, better informed providers, consumers and commissioners should lead to a more positive view about the future...
02.24.2019
IoT device count in care predicted to rise to ‘billions’ in a few years
The use of sensors to monitor individuals’ wellbeing is set to take off agreed Roy Grant of York Council, Mark Low of Pinacl Solutions and Karantis 306’s Nick Hampson, in the recent CLGdotTV discussion on care in the home. Thanks...
02.15.2019
Public anxiety about drones could stymie real economic and social benefits
PwC UK drones lead Elaine Whyte, Dedrone’s Amit Samani and Tris Dyson of Nesta discuss the economic and social potential of drones and whether public anxieties might be allayed through regulation and control by public authorities. PwC has estimated that...
02.15.2019
Ask your taxi driver: ‘do you live in a smart city?’
In typical ‘smart city’ discussions, agreed our panel, most of the people around the table are from organisations and represent sectors like education, energy, retail, and transport, and in these discussions, people are reduced to personas like ‘commuter’ or ‘consumer’....
02.13.2019
Public sector yet to get smart about workforce
Leatham Green of the PPMA and Jonathan Key of LabourXchange tell Jane Hancer of CC2i that public sector approaches to recruitment, retention and management are stuck in a pre-digital age It is well known that local authorities and other parts...
02.12.2019
Deprioritising tech may be the smart route to public service transformation
Jason Kitcat (Essex CC) Richard Farrell of Netcall and Sleuth Co-op’s Hilary Simpson discuss how local authorities might overcome challenges of legacy systems, digital skill shortages and the persistence of old-style procurement. As Director of Corporate Development, Jason is working...
01.31.2019
Will Defra’s new Resources and Waste Strategy deliver the ‘circular economy’?
As awareness grows of the environmental, even existential, consequences of our take/make/use/throw approach to resources, minds are focusing on the benefits of a ‘circular economy’ in which materials and manufactured goods are routinely recycled and re-used, and not just once....
01.31.2019
Cannabis: legal in the UK this year or any time soon?
This wide ranging discussion provides an excellent primer for those vaguely aware of, for example, legalization in Canada and some states in the US, the row about medical use of cannabis, and reports of police services these days ‘turning a...
01.21.2019
How can public sector take up of SME innovation be increased?
CLGdotTV will be talking with Beth regularly in 2019, and with some of the SMEs she mentors, to better understand the difficulties innovators face in getting their good ideas taken up by public sector organisations. In this introductory conversation, Beth...
01.21.2019
Sharing births, marriages & deaths data to improve services and reduce fraud
Project Manager Laura Folkers of the Worcestershire Office of Data Analytics, and Charlotte Shepard Information Officer for Redditch & Bromsgrove Councils, one of the partners, discuss the project approach and anticipated outcomes. WODA has been awarded £57,500 from the Local...
01.17.2019
Open Street Map: should the public sector be making more use of this asset?
OpenStreetMap is a global project whose aspirations to ‘map the planet’ – because maps & data created by government agencies are not always free to use - were dismissed as ‘impossible’ when OSM started just over a decade ago....
01.08.2019
Councils sought for Care xchange ‘discovery’ project set to disrupt agency model
Councils unhappy at paying agency rates, care workers who feel underpaid and undervalued, and care recipients suffering the consequences, could all benefit from a new co-design project currently being put together by the public sector crowdfunding platform CC2i. CC2i is...
12.21.2018
MHCLG says replicability is key benefit sought as first 16 Local Digital Fund projects announced
Observers surprised that some of the projects selected for funding under the programme – eg managing missed bins, providing taxi licensing services or dealing with FoI requests - are not at the forefront of innovation are missing a key point....
12.20.2018
DEFRA and COP24 (Katowice Climate Summit) unleash a perfect storm of environmental policy
Businesses and manufacturers will pay the full cost of recycling or disposing of their packaging waste, under a major new government strategy unveiled Tuesday 18 December 2018. The move will overhaul England’s waste system, putting a legal onus on those...
12.13.2018
UN secretary-general warns that failing to get to grips with climate change will be "not only immoral but suicidal".
Dr David Greenfield of SOENECS and Joe Tibbetts of CLGdotTV unpick the climate change threat and consider some possible solutions. All against the background of the 2018 Climate Change Summit in Katowice, Poland and Antonio Guterres the UN secretary-general in...
12.12.2018
Delivering This Smart Life and IoT to remote rural communities requires innovation and a can-do mind set
When we talk about Smart Places more often that not we mean cities or large towns. But remote communities cannot remain viable unless they can encourage people to stay and even, difficult to imagine, people to move there. Sustainable communities...
12.10.2018
Essex CC and FutureGov: improving outcomes around hospital discharge
As Head of Commissioning, Vulnerable Adults, for Essex County Council Rebecca Jarvis recognises that more needs to be done to prepare patients and their families for leaving hospital. Poor support can lead to deterioration in health and wellbeing and at...
12.09.2018
How York City’s smart transport programme is enabled by 2010 decision on fixed fibre investment
Putting in the infrastructure for connectivity is today’s equivalent of the Victorians putting in sewers – you have to make the infrastructure investment to reap the rewards - says Roy Grant, who is Head of Super Connected Cities & Digital...
12.04.2018
Neighbourhoods made accessible with crowd sourced data and map app that speaks
‘St Albans Unlocked’ is blazing a trail with huge potential benefits for the health and wellbeing of local communities. Linda Chandler and Amanda Derrick are working with an app called Soundscape, developed by Microsoft to help people with visual impairments...
12.04.2018
Dylan Roberts on building a smarter Leeds #2 connectivity
In our first podcast in this series, Dylan described the benefits of a city having an approach to ‘smart’ that is genuinely shared between the council and other public services, particularly health. In this and each of five following podcasts...

What's At Play In The Garden of Eden about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

At Play In The Garden of Eden episodes:

Are human beings machines?

Ai plus human stupidity? Time to worry?

‘Really tangible benefits’ of digital support for unpaid care are here, now

MapLondon event December 19: speakers discuss data, digital mapping, planning, and citizen engagement

Recovery from election fraud: the Tower Hamlets story

Could a digital approach solve care managers' and providers’ problems with medicines support?

Councils collaborate to explore digital potential in administration of new Liberty Protection Safeguards

WM ADASS: immersive data presentation will change health & care commissioning

‘It's never gone this well!’ – council service teams on building their own IT

Transformation done right is ‘with’ and not ‘to’ says LB Havering team

Counter Measures No4 - how a trusted member of staff committed a £2.1m fraud and what LB Barnet did next

Planning across place is key to tackling challenges of ageing populations

Doteveryone on regulating for responsible technology

Counter Measures No3 - Durham's anti fraud team recovers £4.5m since 2015

West Midlands Workforce Alliance creates "safe space" for challenging health and social care discussions

Leaders & Leadership 3 - leadership in a digital world

Free Thinking 1 - Innovation strategies in the public sector

Free Thinking 2 – people need training to be as ‘human’ as bots

Circular Economy Show 4 - Biomimicry, new questions for old answers

Future of Work 4

The Circular Economy Show No3

A safe place for whistleblowers

Digital maps get more people more involved in the local community

Councils, households and businesses face major changes from Government Waste Strategy

Fraud may not feature as a council corporate risk – but should do

Innovation: every council should have a team like ours

Using data to understand and change travel behaviours

Apprentices urge councils to promote the opportunity more widely in local schools

AI could solve capacity problems faced by local planning authorities

Rough sleepers are just the tip of the homelessness iceberg

Better insight and information could help social care providers and consumers to a more positive future view

IoT device count in care predicted to rise to ‘billions’ in a few years

Public anxiety about drones could stymie real economic and social benefits

Ask your taxi driver: ‘do you live in a smart city?’

Public sector yet to get smart about workforce

Deprioritising tech may be the smart route to public service transformation

Will Defra’s new Resources and Waste Strategy deliver the ‘circular economy’?

Cannabis: legal in the UK this year or any time soon?

How can public sector take up of SME innovation be increased?

Sharing births, marriages & deaths data to improve services and reduce fraud

Open Street Map: should the public sector be making more use of this asset?

Councils sought for Care xchange ‘discovery’ project set to disrupt agency model

MHCLG says replicability is key benefit sought as first 16 Local Digital Fund projects announced

DEFRA and COP24 (Katowice Climate Summit) unleash a perfect storm of environmental policy

UN secretary-general warns that failing to get to grips with climate change will be "not only immoral but suicidal".

Delivering This Smart Life and IoT to remote rural communities requires innovation and a can-do mind set

Essex CC and FutureGov: improving outcomes around hospital discharge

How York City’s smart transport programme is enabled by 2010 decision on fixed fibre investment

Neighbourhoods made accessible with crowd sourced data and map app that speaks

Dylan Roberts on building a smarter Leeds #2 connectivity