About me

I'm Ian Vaughan, and I've spent almost thirty years working in IT. I started in international banking, then spent years at the Environment Agency and Defra, and later at the Department for Education.

Most of that time was spent building and running systems that a lot of people depend on. The fishing licence service I helped build handles a million licence sales a year. After the widespread flooding in 2014, I worked alongside the Army to design, build and deliver a national inspection of flood defence assets in five weeks, which went on to win a national IT award. So did a web-based map-editing tool for flood data, where I wrote the browser code. It was built internally, much cheaper than the quote we'd had from an external supplier. I've also spent years working with large customer record systems and using modern cloud hosting.

What I learnt in those roles is what it really takes to keep something running long after launch: backups you've actually tested by restoring them, updates applied before they become urgent, and knowing exactly what to do at eight am on a Saturday when something is broken and there are real orders coming in.

After years of working for large organisations and government departments, I decided to spend my time on work I care about: helping the small businesses and charities in my own community. Many of them are very good at what they do and know exactly what they want to achieve. I want to put everything I've learnt to work for them. I also want to give something back, which is why I offer my services at a reduced rate to local charities.

Rocking Horse Digital has been my company since 2018, and it's small on purpose. The work is priced so that a local business or charity can afford the kind of care that larger organisations pay a great deal for. That's possible because of efficient design: every client shares one well-tested, secure platform, rather than each getting a one-off build that nobody maintains afterwards.

I'm based in Liverpool and work with businesses across Merseyside and beyond. I'd much rather have a smaller number of clients whose names I know and whose businesses I understand than a long list of people I've never spoken to.