I have over 15 years of policy, strategy, and digital delivery experience in city and central government, and latterly the NHS. I’m currently a Director at Public Digital, helping organisations to thrive in the internet era. I have a degree in Physics with French from the University of Nottingham.
Things I’ve worked on
Led the development of the UK’s first vaccine trial registry for the NHS to help sign up volunteers to find a vaccine for COVID-19. Standing start to live in 3 weeks.
Led the development of a new NHS service called Get an isolation note, to enable users to download evidence of their self isolation due to COVID-19.
Led a team of over 70 people on the development of the NHS App; a national platform enabling patients to interact with a range of key health services, leading it to 2 million downloads.
Helped develop a way for different clinical systems that support triage and decision-support talk to each other.
Leading a team of 20 in the development of 111 online, a digital service that assesses patients’ clinical needs and connects them to the most appropriate care. The service supported 30 million users over 6 months during the coronavirus pandemic.
Building a publishing tool to enable my department to publish engaging communications campaign microsites in a consistent and cost effective manner; the first of its kind.
Leading the Department of Health staff intranet through six months of continuous development; decreasing page load time; increasing traffic; redesigning the homepage and overall theme to better meet user needs.
Providing ad hoc digital expertise to teams across the Department of Health & Social Care and its ALBs, running workshops to help uncover user needs, or providing basic agile coaching.
Establishing and leading a data science programme for government; and running an associated government data science community of interest. I also contributed to the policy debate in this area for instance through Nesta’s machines that learn in the wild.
Designing and establishing a data science accelerator training programme. It was great to see the former Cabinet Secretary tweeting about this; and candidates getting value out of it long after my involvement ended.
Helping deliver Resilience Direct; a live data visualisation and situational awareness tool for use in planning and response to emergencies for deployment in COBR, the Prime Minister’s emergency management committee.
Speaking on a panel event on big data and governance organised by the Parliamentary Office of Science & Technology, alongside the Information Commissioner and other brilliant people.
Featuring in the IT trade press talking about data science skills in government. Although this was somewhat unintentional.
Delivering the first G8 science summit for a decade and leading the multinational agreement of G8 science funders to require publicly funded scientific publications and associated data to be made openly available.
Arguing for and establishing the government chief scientist’s @uksciencechief Twitter account, the first of its kind at the top levels of the civil service and the most followed of any permanent secretary.
Building a 3000-member government science and engineering community; and working with the academic community to help them contribute to policy.
Working for the Mayor of London on sustainable transport and cycling policy; including helping establishing Ride London; the London Skills and Employment Board; and helping unveil a statue of Nelson Mandela in Parliament Square.