Listen to podcasts from the Open Data Institute – discussing the impacts of data across areas including health, cities, the built environment, government and finance. Speakers also delve into issues around data ethics, trust, art, culture, corruption and accountability.
ODI Inside Business: How access to real time national data could help businesses recover from the pandemic In this special edition of the Inside Business podcast, Stuart Coleman, Director of Business Development at the Open Data Institute (ODI) speaks exclusively to Fiona James, the new Chief Data Officer and Director of Data Growth and Operations at the Office for National Statistics (ONS)
On 27 September 2021, the ODI in partnership with the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence (LCFI) at the University of Cambridge and the Center for Responsible AI at NYU (NYU R/AI) convened an online roundtable to explore experimentation in data policy and practice around how structurally under-represented communities in North America and the EU can be transnational emergent forces that renegotiate or reimagine the social contract under the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
On 27 September 2021, the ODI in partnership with the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence (LCFI) at the University of Cambridge and the Center for Responsible AI at NYU (NYU R/AI) convened an online roundtable to explore experimentation in data policy and practice around how structurally under-represented communities in North America and the EU can be transnational emergent forces that renegotiate or reimagine the social contract under the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
On 27 September 2021, the ODI in partnership with the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence (LCFI) at the University of Cambridge and the Center for Responsible AI at NYU (NYU R/AI) convened an online roundtable to explore experimentation in data policy and practice around how structurally under-represented communities in North America and the EU can be transnational emergent forces that renegotiate or reimagine the social contract under the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
On 27 September 2021, the ODI in partnership with the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence (LCFI) at the University of Cambridge and the Center for Responsible AI at NYU (NYU R/AI) convened an online roundtable to explore experimentation in data policy and practice around how structurally under-represented communities in North America and the EU can be transnational emergent forces that renegotiate or reimagine the social contract under the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
On 27 September 2021, the ODI in partnership with the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence (LCFI) at the University of Cambridge and the Center for Responsible AI at NYU (NYU R/AI) convened an online roundtable to explore experimentation in data policy and practice around how structurally under-represented communities in North America and the EU can be transnational emergent forces that renegotiate or reimagine the social contract under the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
On 27 September 2021, the ODI in partnership with the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence (LCFI) at the University of Cambridge and the Center for Responsible AI at NYU (NYU R/AI) convened an online roundtable to explore experimentation in data policy and practice around how structurally under-represented communities in North America and the EU can be transnational emergent forces that renegotiate or reimagine the social contract under the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
Introduction – Gavin Freeguard, Special Adviser, ODI by The Open Data Institute
Keynote – Dr Patrick Noack, World Economic Forum by The Open Data Institute
Provocation 1 – Juan Mateos-Garcia, Nesta by The Open Data Institute
Provocation 2 – Piret Tõnurist, OECD Observatory of Public Sector Innovation by The Open Data Institute
Provocation 3 – Professor Michael Sanders, the Policy Institute at King's College London by The Open Data Institute
Experimentalism/Ursula Le Guin roundtable: A Provocation On Evaluation From Davey Jose, Artist. June 2022
Experimentalism/Ursula Le Guin roundtable: The Keynote From Os Keyes, University Of Washington. June 2022
Experimentalism/Ursula Le Guin roundtable: A Provocation On Valuation From Professor S Craig Watkins, University Of Texas At Austin. June 2022
Experimentalism/Ursula Le Guin roundtable: A Provocation On Valuation From Professor S Craig Watkins, University Of Texas At Austin. June 2022.
Experimentalism/Ursula Le Guin roundtable: Opening Remarks From Our Head Of Public Policy Dr Mahlet (“Milly”) Zimeta. June 2022
Provocation 3 – Jessica Kiessel, Senior Director, Learning & Impact, Omidyar Network by The Open Data Institute
Provocation 2 – Nai Lee Kalema, Member, Tierra Común; doctoral researcher, UCL by The Open Data Institute
Provocation 1 – Dr Angeline Wairegi, Co-Founder, CIPIT by The Open Data Institute
Keynote – Professor Chidi Oguamanam, Faculty of Law, University of Ottowa by The Open Data Institute
Introduction – Dr Mahlet ("Milly") Zimeta, Head of Public Policy, ODI by The Open Data Institute
In this podcast, we hear about the importance of community engagement from three participants of the second cohort of the ODI Microsoft peer learning network, an initiative which aims to give data collaborations working on significant societal challenges the opportunity to share and learn from each other. Host James Maddison, Senior Consultant at the ODI, leads the conversation with Laureen van Breen, Managing Director at WikiRate; Kisha Bwenge, Senior Community Building Manager at the Open Contracting Partnership; and Tim Robertson, Head of Informatics at GBIF.
CSVW is a standard for describing and clarifying the content of CSV tables. In this talk you'll learn how CSVW can make working with CSV easier and connect you to a web of linked-data. The humble CSV format is a popular way of publishing open data, and with good reason. It's easy to create and edit, non-proprietary and machine-readable. It isn't particularly standardised however and you'll usually need to do some work to interpret the contents correctly. The CSVW standard helps to solve these problems letting you focus on using the data. It also lets us interpret data in a global context by connecting tables together into a web of linked-data. About the speakers Robin Gower Robin dreams of a day when data scientists can focus on analysis instead of spending their time preparing data! To this end, he works as a Data Designer at Swirrl helping publishers to express their datasets with linked-data. He draws on 15 years experience consulting as an economist and statistician for the UK public and social sectors. Robin a founding member of Open Data Manchester and wrote and maintains several open source software libraries. He now lives with his family in Berlin, tinkering with electronics and brewing English ale. Ross Bowen Ross is all too familiar with wrangling data out of spreadsheets with his favourite programming language, R. As a statistician who's worked across several government departments, he is now revolutionising data publishing at the ONS as part of the Integrated Data Programme. When Ross discovered the world of linked-data, he was immediately excited for its potential in helping people better explore and understand statistics. At home in Bridgend you'll often find him practising the piano or pretending to be a superstar DJ.
In order to build and retain reputation, organisations today increasingly need to demonstrate that they can be trusted to use data ethically and responsibly. If an organisation is open about how it gathers, shares and uses data – particularly personal and sensitive data – it will have a positive impact on their brand. However, this also requires a high level of data literacy within the organisation, and an ability to think and work critically with data. In this latest episode of ODI's Inside Business podcast, Stuart Coleman, the ODI's Learning and Business Development Director, speaks to panellists Alessandro Piscopo, Principal Data Scientist at BBC Datalabs, Di Mayze, Global Head of AI and Data at WPP and Jen Rodvold, Head of Digital Ethics and Tech for Good at Sopra Steria. They explore how their organisations embed data literacy within their teams, how this positively impacts their brands, and what some of the challenges will be in the future. The podcast covers: - How data literacy is developed in their organisations - How they set up good practices, particularly in response to the loss of trust in data that was brought about by scandals such as Facebook/Cambridge Analytica - How data ethics are embedded into data use, including personalisation - The tensions between trust and innovation - Algorithms and transparency - Next steps in data literacy and predictions for the future USEFUL LINKS The ODI website: https://theodi.org/ Podcast webpage on the ODI website: https://theodi.org/article/podcast-the-role-of-data-literacy-in-building-a-trusted-brand/ The ODI's position on data literacy (blog): https://theodi.org/article/data-literacy-what-is-it-and-how-do-we-address-it-at-odi/ ODI's data literacy resources: https://theodi.org/article/introducing-the-data-literacy-programme/ ODI training courses: https://theodi.org/events/courses/ Become an ODI member: https://theodi.org/service/membership-networking/
Provocation 3 – Dr Divine Fuh, Director, Institute for Humanities in Africa (HUMA) by The Open Data Institute
Provocation 2 – Dr Urvashi Aneja, Co-Founder, Digital Futures Lab by The Open Data Institute
Provocation 1 – Lucy Harris, Co-Lead, Digital Public Goods Alliance (DPGA) by The Open Data Institute
Keynote – Dr Emiliano Treré, Reader, Cardiff University; Co-Director, Data Justice Lab by The Open Data Institute
Introduction – Dr Mahlet (“Milly”) Zimeta, Head of Public Policy, ODI by The Open Data Institute
How better data ecosystems can help the UK understand national wellbeing. As part of the ODI's Data Ecosystems & Innovation programme, we have been looking at data to measure the recovery in the UK. We often see headlines in the news about how GDP is down, or inflation is up, or CO2 emissions are rising. But how are these numbers created? Where does the data come from? What are the ecosystems, or the flows of data, that make these measurements possible? More importantly, how can we improve this data for better decision making? We first looked at the Office of National Statistics (ONS) and how it uses data from alternative sources to get a more real-time view of the economy. Next, we analysed some of the data to measure net zero. Particularly greenhouse gas emissions data from the ONS and the database on potential CO2 storage sites from the British Geological Survey. In our final part of this work, we look at data to measure wellbeing in the UK. Measuring wellbeing is a topic with a real breadth of research behind it and drives policymaking in a number of countries. There have been quite a number of indexes to measure wellbeing. These include the Human Development Index, the Genuine Progress Indicator, the Better Life Index, and the ONS's National Wellbeing Dashboard. To help us gain a better understanding of this topic, we spoke to two experts on wellbeing in the UK: Jennifer Wallace, Director at the Carnegie UK Trust, and Nancy Hey, Executive Director at the What Works Centre for Wellbeing. LINKS Jennifer Wallace, Director at Carnegie UK: - Carnegie UK: https://www.carnegieuktrust.org.uk/ - Carnegie's 'Gross Domestic Wellbeing' report: https://www.carnegieuktrust.org.uk/publications/gross-domestic-wellbeing-gdwe-an-alternative-measure-of-social-progress/ - Jennifer's book 'Wellbeing and Devolution': https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-02230-3 - Jennifer on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Jen_CarnegieUK Nancy Hey, Executive Director at What Works Centre for Wellbeing: - What Works Wellbeing: https://whatworkswellbeing.org/ - Nancy on Twitter: https://twitter.com/work_life_you Wellbeing reports – Office of National Statistics: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/wellbeing ODI's work on data to measure the economy and net zero: - Real-time data to measure the economy: insights from the ONS: https://theodi.org/article/real-time-data-to-measure-the-economy-insights-from-the-ons/ - Build Back Better: the data behind UK's net zero transition: https://theodi.org/article/build-back-better-the-data-behind-uks-net-zero-transition/ - Analysis on the data to measure the UK's net zero goals: https://github.com/theodi/data-ecosystems-net-zero/blob/main/UKNetZero.ipynb Some other indexes of social progress: - Human Development Index: https://hdr.undp.org/en/content/human-development-index-hdi - Better Life Index: https://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/ - Thriving Places Index: https://www.centreforthrivingplaces.org/ - Happy Planet Index: https://happyplanetindex.org/ - Community Needs Index: https://ocsi.uk/2019/10/21/community-needs-index-measuring-social-and-cultural-factors/ - Genuine Progress Indicator: https://sustainable-economy.org/genuine-progress/
Slides are viewable here https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1v-5z6HwGy8bq3j6EV4ZnsUt35HzEPAoZvGLOgWX3pfs/edit?usp=sharing In this talk, Claire Fram (Director and Product Manager, Diagonal) and Gala Camacho (Director and Data Scientist, Diagonal) discuss the challenges of making use of fragmented (open) data in the built environment. City planners, architects, developers and engineers are faced with a plethora of data that exist in orthogonal layers, limiting their ability to interrogate how city systems interact. The solution includes new technologies that can unlock greater value from myriad open data sources by stitching them together in a systematic, semantic model of the world. We can get more out of existing open data with the right tools. This lecture will introduce Diagonal's approach to building data models for data science in the built environment. About the speakers Claire Fram Claire specialises in delivering digital tools for city planning. She is a founding member and Product Manager at Diagonal, building tools and visualisations that unlock creativity, progress and better decisions in the built environment. She's currently on maternity leave from Arup, where she's been the product lead for their agent based modelling toolkit – building a suite of data processing tools to model transport networks, infrastructure, and simulate millions of individuals' unique days. Claire is interested in open data and inclusive technologies for urban design. Gala Camacho Gala is a mathematician and programmer, with a background in education, optimisation and all-things data. She has worked at big corporations and startups within the civil infrastructure and urban planning ecosystem, leading analytics projects strategically and technically. Gala is passionate about using analytics to explore and break down urban and social inequalities. She sits on the board of Women in STEMM Australia, and the steering committee of Women+ in Geospatial.
How can open research help overcome the issues currently affecting the research community? In this talk, Ashley Farley (Program Officer of Knowledge and Research Services and the lead of the Open Access team at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation) discusses the issues currently plaguing the research community – such as perverse incentives, publish or perish perceptions, and information overload – and how open research practices can provide a salve. The solution focuses on building from community-led initiatives and imbuing the ecosystem with transparency, ending with a call-to-action to make history by changing the status quo. The time for open access is now and this presentation will explain why. This lecture will be pre-recorded. Submit questions for Ashley Farley to answer during the Q&A section here by Monday 24 January: https://forms.gle/xZMrpJYsgi34KDxe8 About the speaker Ashley Farley is the Program Officer of Knowledge and Research Services and the lead of the Open Access team at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. She has spent more than 10 years in both academic and public libraries, focusing on digital inclusion and providing access to scholarly content. She is a passionate advocate for Open Access and believes that free and accessible research increases and expedites innovation, helps solve problems faster, and ultimately saves more lives sooner.
In this talk, Adam Mew (Developer Marketing Lead, Ordnance Survey) and Carly Morris (Head of Geovation, Ordnance Survey) share how the OS Map & Hack enabled geospatial data to be used to drive sustainable innovation across multiple industries and disciplines. OS Map & Hack was a virtual hackathon dedicated to transportation and sustainability, bringing together teams across government, private enterprise, start-up, and academia communities. The outputs included new and enhanced solutions for Electric Vehicle (EV) infrastructure planning as well as routing and navigation apps, which enhance the consumer experience and the behaviours of owning and adopting EVs. About the speakers Carly Morris is the Head of Geovation at Ordnance Survey – a community of over 1800 start-ups, investors, corporate innovators and developers who all understand the power of location data. Her role is to lead the Geovation team and strategic direction of the business, offering accelerator programmes, innovation challenges and events in the UK and internationally. Prior to joining Geovation, Carly was the Head of Innovation at International Airlines Group Cargo, where she led the global innovation strategy and worked with start-ups to test everything from drones to VR in the airline. She has received industry-wide recognition for her work, being featured in outlets such as CNBC and Women in Technology, and was a Tech Women 100 winner in 2020. Carly speaks 5 languages and in her spare time enjoys practicing them by travelling as much as possible! A keen interest in future trends and innovation, Adam Mew is the developer marketing lead at Ordnance Survey, Great Britain's national mapping agency. His role brings OS data and APIs into new and emerging markets, bringing its data platform closer to a growing audience of developers and data scientists. Before OS, Adam spent time within the defence and national security sector at UK innovator Roke and Chemring, where he led focussed, strategic marketing initiatives and product launches for sensors, AI and data science solution designed for international military and law enforcement agencies. More notably, in the product development and go-to-market of Information and Electronic Warfare solutions.
In this talk, Mateus Domingos will be discussing the Careful Networks project with three of the participating artists: Larisa Blazic, Ailie Rutherford and Shinji Toya. Careful Networks is a project initiated by Phoenix in partnership with BOM, Furtherfield, The Photographers' Gallery, QUAD and Vivid Projects. The temporary P2P network is home to a series of newly commissioned artworks. Each work was initially hosted by another artist. The network exists through a collaborative act of care and stewardship. Visitors are also invited to participate in this. Each of the works has been created within the constraints of a 2mb file size and without external dependencies. About the speakers Mateus Domingos is an artist/writer based in Leicester, UK. In parallel with his artistic practice, he is a producer for the digital arts programme at Phoenix, Leicester. Alongside the exhibition programme he works on artist development opportunities and hosts a series of meet-ups exploring digital arts practices. He regularly publishes and facilitates workshops that explore creative coding and various digital technologies. He is interested in text, narrative and the use of new digital spaces. His work has included games, 3d printing, fictional alphabets, maps and filmmaking. He runs a publishing project called Bruise. Larisa Blazic is a London-based digital artisan, educator and feminist hacker with practice ranging from net.art to Free/Libre/Open Source Software (FLOSS) art and design. She explores a range of emerging technologies and their impact on online publishing, moving image in public space, collective creativity and participation through work exhibited nationally, internationally and online. The philosophy driving her art practice is founded on FLOSS philosophy and culture aiming to enable a deep, systematic and critical understanding of the technical, social and cultural contexts where creative practice and technology intersect in order to apply these in contemporary art and design. Ailie Rutherford is a visual artist working at the intersection of community activism and creative practice. Her collaborative artworks bring people together in conversations about our social and economic landscape using print, performance, sci-fi visioning, games and technology as playful means to work through difficult questions and radically re-think our shared futures. Resulting works range from proposed new models for living and working together to the building of new infrastructure. Shinji Toya is a digital artist from Japan, based in London in the UK for more than a decade. His practice uses creative programming, artificial intelligence, the Internet, participation, video, image manipulation and painting. It deals with the poetic aspects emerging in the tension between what the systems of knowledge and computation aim to capture and what they fail to capture. The recent practice of Toya critically explores the relationship between image, data, and generative processes emerging through networked participation and digital culture(s). This practice often deals with the post-digital data economy and data erasure.
Hosted by Gavin Freeguard (ODI Special Adviser and data singer-songwriter), special guests from across the ODI discuss some contested data terms – all set to a festive ditty
The BBC is one of the world's leading broadcasters, producing a large amount of content including video, audio and text, spanning topics such as news, sport, education, and entertainment. In order to fulfil its public service remit, the BBC must serve all its audiences, providing each audience member with the most relevant and engaging content for them. Up to now, manual curation has been the main approach used by the organisation to achieve that. However, that comes with some challenges: it is unable to scale and to be tailored to each user. Datalab has followed an approach based on cross-team collaboration and on the concept of public service AI to address these challenges. In his talk, Alessandro reflects upon this approach and the lessons learnt in the years since the creation of Datalab. About the speaker Alessandro Piscopo is a principal data scientist at the BBC, in a team called Datalab. He works on the development and deployment of public service recommendations algorithms across the organisation, to help BBC audiences find the most relevant and engaging content. During his PhD, obtained in 2019 at the University of Southampton, Alessandro studied the effects of socio-technical dynamics on data quality in collaborative knowledge engineering projects. His current interests include online collaboration, knowledge graphs, and fairness and ethics in AI.
Provocation 3 – Becky Wright, Executive Director, Unions 21 by The Open Data Institute
Provocation 2 – Prof Maria Savona, Professor of Economics of Innovation, SPRU University of Sussex by The Open Data Institute
Provocation 1 – Dr Kate Devlin, Senior Lecturer in Social and Cultural AI, King's College London by The Open Data Institute
Keynote – Prof Jenna Burrell, Director of Research, Data & Society by The Open Data Institute
Introduction – Dr Mahlet (“Milly”) Zimeta, Head of Public Policy, ODI by The Open Data Institute
Provocation 3 – Prof Stefaan Verhulst, Co-Founder/Chief Research and Development Officer, The GovLab by The Open Data Institute
Provocation 2 – Jarmo Suomisto, Project Manager, Helsinki 3D+ by The Open Data Institute
Provocation 1 – Rudi Borrmann, Lead, Open Government Partnership Local by The Open Data Institute
Keynote – Aaron Maniam, Ministry of Communications & Information, Singapore by The Open Data Institute
Introduction – Dr Mahlet (“Milly”) Zimeta, Head of Public Policy, ODI by The Open Data Institute
This is a recording of the ODI Fridays event on Zoom In this talk, ODI Artist in Residence Rohini Devasher and artist/ODI Art Associate Julie Freeman discuss using technology and data to strengthen our connection to the natural world and our understanding of climate change challenges. (This talk was originally presented at the V&A Digital Design Weekend) About the speakers Rohini Devasher's current research brings together her interest in early scientific observational instruments and contemporary observational sciences, specifically astronomy and atmospheric sciences, to study the twin aspects of the Earth's skies: its celestial constants on one hand and the mutable objects of the atmosphere on the other. Through her practice, Julie Freeman translates complex processes and data from natural sources into kinetic sculptures, physical objects, images, sound compositions, animations, VR & AR, questioning the use of data and digital technology in how we translate nature.
After the Grenfell tragedy the government hoped it would be able to address safety issues in other buildings within a year. Now more than four and a half years on, the cladding crisis has turned into a building safety crisis which now impacts hundreds of thousands of homes across the country. Martin Boyd and Sebastian O'Kelly from the charity Leasehold Knowledge Partnership will discuss: ‘Years of systemic failings in building standards are now exposed. People are unable to afford to remediate the homes they thought were safe, People are unable to move homes. People are unable to sell their homes and people are trapped in buildings they are told are potentially unsafe.' The talk looks at the role that use of data may have played in the buildup to this crisis and how the continuing lack of data limited the solutions the government is able to consider. It also asks if some decisions are being made without any supporting data. About the speakers A talk by Martin Boyd and Sebastian O'Kelly of the charity the Leasehold Knowledge Partnership.
In this talk, Dr John Burton – Data Consultant at the Open Data Institute (ODI) – will discuss some of the background of the data ethics work at the ODI and describe what organisations are considering to make their data ethics practices more mature. He will show the work of the ODI on the data maturity model, and share some of the early feedback from our user research in this space. Finally, he will discuss where the organisation is going in the short term and how that may develop the ODI's offering in this space in the coming months. About the speaker Dr John Burton has had a varied career, but the main theme has always been investigating complex data sets to find real value for people. He started off with a PhD in Astronomy, and have worked at Queen's University Belfast, the Universities of Toronto, Leicester and Cambridge as a postdoctoral researcher and data scientist. He has been spending his recent career in the public and charity sectors at HMRC and AQA, with the latter being spent as the Head of Analytics and Data Science. In short, he loves data!
Increasingly, the better able you are to tell your performance story the better able you are to get the resources you need for your project. Francis Loughheed, Senior Policy Advisor at Canadian Forest Service, will present a methodology that brings data to results-based management to tell compelling performance stories. Based on 15 years experience working in performance measurement across the Government of Canada, this presentation will be of special interest for government and public sector agencies, with applicable lessons for the private sector. About the speaker Mr. Loughheed works with the seven programs of the CFS to support sector performance measurement reporting and the CFS Data Strategy. His work in data analytics includes: conception and development of an Executive Portfolio Dashboard, promoting the use of data visualization to inform policy and science decision-making and corporate reporting and, developing a methodology to estimate the economic value of data in the public sector. He is currently working on data pilots in the areas of cloud-based data lake systems, machine learning and augmented intelligence systems to contribute to data-driven impact and is leading a Departmental project on promoting data culture utilising the ODI data skills framework.