Current projects

 

Redecentralize.org

I am the co-founder and Director of a global non-profit with a mission to democratize the internet. It does this by bringing together people from technology, media and politics, to grow the decentralisation movement and promote decentralising technologies and initiatives. We have hosted two sold-out conferences in London; in 2015 and 2019. As Director I have been interviewed by the BBC World Service, BBC Inside Science, Tech News Daily, The New Yorker, TechCityInsider and appeared on HackerNews and the New Socialist.

Digital / Data / Strategy consultancy

I provide expert advice to private, public and civic organisations on data standards, open data, privacy, identity, digital transformation and GDPR. My recent clients include the Dubai Data Establishment, where I led the development and documentation of ‘Common Standards’ to underpin the decentralised public-private data exchange framework for Dubai organisations; and the Open Data Institute, where I led one of the very first UK data trust pilots commissioned by the Office of AI.

Open Knowledge Foundation

As a Trustee, I provide strategic advice and governance support to this international non-profit. The Foundation’s mission is to ensure open knowledge can empower everyone, enabling people to work together to tackle local and global challenges, understand our world, expose inefficiency, challenge inequality and hold governments and companies to account.

Previous projects

Data consultancy (2018-2019)

  • Led one of the first UK data trust pilots for the Open Data Insitute and Office of AI. Explored legal and governance structures to facilitate greater data access and sharing while retaining trust. Focused on reducing food waste in the UK food supply chain sector and coordinated a team of technical experts, user research, lawyers, decision making specialists and an economist.

  • Investigated and wrote a report on the trends, challenges and recommendations for adopting and investing in digital identity systems for the Open Data Insitute. Included running a workshop with government representatives, businesses and identity providers, potential users and experts.

  • Advised Refinitiv as technical architect on semantics and strategy for proving GDPR compliance.

Standards (2015-2019)

  • Worked on a number of different standards projects including for Dubai Government, UAE Federal Government and the World Wide Web Consortium.

  • Advised on policy and created a standards architecture, roadmap and maturity framework for Smart Dubai and UAE - covering data standards, governance, policy, processes and gap analysis for an ambitious vision.

  • At W3C, I was involved in the Social Web Working Group which has now published recommendations for Activity Pub (used by Mastodon and other decentralised platforms) as well as numerous others. I also worked on two projects: D-CENT (decentralised citizen engagement and democracy tools) - leading the technical standardisation work and developing new web standards; and Big Data Europe, an EU Horizon2020 project where I led the dissemination and standards work package.

Personal Data Exchange - data infrastructure for the Government Digital Service, UK (2016-2017)

  • Led and established the personal data infrastructure program for UK government: products, services and agreements to securely and simply access personal data across departments for streamlined service delivery. Involved presenting and coordinating with senior stakeholders, hiring up team, defining strategy, direction and objectives.

CKAN, world’s leading open source data platform (2011 - 2015)

  • Oversaw and transformed CKAN into a professional world class standard for open data publishing and discovery. As the first non-developer hire, I led on product management, business development, branding and communication, including talks and evangelism.

  • Initiated and led transition to CKAN 2.0 - a more streamlined, user friendly product with brand new front end which was the adopted by national governments and communities worldwide.

  • Negotiated, won and closed most contracts including relaunching the UK’s data.gov.uk site, an ambitious project to consolidate the US’s data.gov and move it to CKAN, and data projects with the UK and Swedish government innovation agencies.

  • Initiated the formation of an independent, sustainable and self-governed CKAN association - planning and implementing the mechanisms for its steering group, technical development, content and outreach groups.

  • Due to my success in leading CKAN and my team’s financial and impact success, I was promoted to Commerical Director of Open Knowledge, leading all technical and commercial work including Open Spending, School of Data, CKAN and other projects. As part of this served on Open Knowledge's senior management team - forming and implementing the organisation-wide strategy, representing leadership to wider organisation and community, researching and proposing new initiatives, managing risk and representing commercial and product interests.

Philosophy Consultant

  • Advised on the structure and content of the philosophy debate programme for a leading music & philosophy festival (How the Light Gets In Festival).

  • Wrote and edited debate briefs for speakers.