Upcoming and previous events

Presentations, panels and conferences

Previous events

Artificial Intelligence: the Democratic Challenges

Jeni Tennison ▪

Jeni spoke on this panel, organised by the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust and chaired by Cllr Lisa Smart, at the Liberal Democrat Spring Party Conference 2023, alongside Silkie Carlo from Big Brother Watch and Martha Dark from Foxglove Legal.

I wasn’t sure where this panel on the “democratic challenges of AI” would end up focusing. Would we be narrowly exploring the role of AI – particularly generative AI and adtech – in generating and amplifying misinformation, for example? In the end, it was a wide-ranging discussion about the role of data, digital and technology in our society, particularly its deployment by the government, and the lack of transparency and scrutiny over it.

Silkie talked about the deployment of facial recognition; Martha about the lack of transparency and public consultation around the Palantir’s involvement in the NHS. I focused on the wider issues around gaining democratic control over data and AI, and of course the role of powerful public participation in asserting that control.

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Responsibly unlocking the value of data for all - Moving beyond the battle of narratives

Tim Davies ▪

Tim attended and participated on the panel for this full-day workshop at the Sciences Po Law School, co-organised by Datasphere Initiative, Aapti Institute and the Ostrom Workshop.

A partial write-up can be found in Tim’s weeknotes.

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Working Group Meeting on Data Communities

Tim Davies ▪

Tim attended a working group meeting on Data Communities organized by Sciences Po Law School’s Towards a Digital Rule of Law Initiative and the Datasphere Initiative, with the Aapti Institute and the Ostrom Workshop.

Reflections from the workshop can be found in Tim’s weeknotes here.

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Open Call on DPDIB Mk2

Jonathan Smith ▪

As the Data Protection and Digital Information Bill continues its erratic legislative journey, we convened an open call for interested parties to share, discuss and maybe act together. In this open Zoom meeting, Gavin Freeguard chaired an open discussion of first reactions and thoughts in a confidential and trusted space.

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A Progressive Vision for Data and Tech

Jonathan Smith ▪

On Thursday 9 March 2023, CONNECTED BY DATA, working with Labour Together, convened a workshop with experts from civil society (and Labour advisers) to consider:

  • what principles should underpin progressive data, digital and technology policy
  • what some specific policies could look like

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Justice Data Matters Next Steps Workshop

Jeni Tennison ▪

On 6th March 2023, CONNECTED BY DATA organised a workshop for Justice Lab (an initiative of the Legal Education Foundation), to explore the next steps they should take around their work to increase public participation in the governance of data within the justice system.

The workshop brought together researchers, civil society advocates and campaigners, journalists and practitioners to explore the questions:

  • What does it take to make work in this space influential?
  • What topics are most likely to generate buy-in?
  • What methodological approaches are most effective for influencing decision making?
  • Who needs to be engaged when developing public engagement research, and how?
  • Which decision makers/decision points should work in this space target? E.g. decisions about the way data is created, or how data is used?
  • What’s the communications strategy around the work needed to achieve impact?

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Infrastructure Ecosystem Workshop - Dream

Tim Davies ▪

On 6th March 2023, we hosted the second of our workshop sessions to explore the potential ecosystem around, and stakeholder engagement in, Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) plans to develop an Insight Infrastructure on poverty in the UK.

You can read a write-up of the workshop here.

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Infrastructure Ecosystem Workshop - Discovery

Tim Davies ▪

On 21st February, we hosted the first of our workshop sessions to explore the potential ecosystem around, and stakeholder engagement in, Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) plans to develop an Insight Infrastructure on poverty in the UK.

You can read a write-up of the workshop here.

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Ensuring People Have a Say in Future Data Governance

Gavin Freeguard ▪

On 5th December 2022, CONNECTED BY DATA organised an event in parliament, hosted and chaired by Lord Tim Clement-Jones, to explore three key areas around the future of data governance: automated decision-making, data at work and data in schools.

These are all areas that could be affected by the Data Protection and Digital Information Bill, expected to return to parliament for its second reading at some point in 2023. We think the Bill represents an opportunity to influence how data is governed in a more democratic and participatory way, but worry that – in its present form – it undermines existing safeguards and misses the chance to extend democratic data governance.

The three areas under discussion also represent domains where growing data collection and use could have both significant benefits and harms in the future, regardless of what happens to the Bill. The event invited opening contributions from civil society and academic experts on each topic before opening up to a wider discussion. The experts were on the record unless they requested otherwise, with everyone else being unattributed under the Chatham House Rule.

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IGF 2022 How can data justice be realised practically?

Jeni Tennison ▪

Jeni spoke at this roundtable at the 2022 Internet Governance Forum, convened by Research ICT Africa, alongside Abeba Birhane and Anita Gurumurthy, chaired by Alison Gilwald.

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IGF 2022 Town Hall of the Internet & Jurisdiction Policy Network

Tim Davies ▪

During a session of the 2022 Internet Governance Forum, Tim spoke to the launch of a new paper on ‘Data Governance and the Datasphere’, providing a bibliometric-driven literature review of academic and policy work on data governance.

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Examining Cooperative Governance of Data & Technology - from Principles to Action.

Tim Davies ▪

Tim participated in the the London workshop organised by CIFAR on Examining Cooperative Governance of Data & Technology.

The workshop, linked to the Data Communities for Inclusion three year programme of work exploring the creation and governance of an ”open-access data infrastructure platform” intended to “help women agricultural workers in India gain fair access to a competitive marketplace”.

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MyData Online 2022

Jeni Tennison ▪

Jeni spoke in a closing dialogue with Martin Tisné, Vice President at Luminate Strategic Initiatives, about The data delusion: protecting individual data isn’t enough when the harm is collective.

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Civic Participation in the Datafied Society - Towards Democratic Auditing?

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Tim and Jonathan attended a launch event for the Data Justice Lab report, “Civic Participation in the Datafied Society - Towards Democratic Auditing?” and the associated website Datafied Society

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The state of automation in the UK public sector

Jeni Tennison ▪

Jeni spoke on this panel alongside Laura Gilbert, Director of Data Science at No.10 Downing Street; Dr. Hatim Abdulhussein from Health Education England; and Lisa Allen from the Open Data Institute.

In the wake of the pandemic, the government aims to make significant cost savings by reducing the civil service headcount. Technology, it says, can help shoulder the burden of this reduced workforce.

This has put automation in the spotlight. RPA was touted as a way to cut through the admin backlog that piled up during lockdowns, and many public sector bodies put it to good use. But can it really replace a significant proportion of the civil service’s workforce?

This panel will assess the state of play for automation, including RPA and its combination with AI and other process technologies, in the UK public sector, and ask how the public sector can get the most out of the technology.

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What Should Change in the Data Protection and Digital Information Bill?

Jonathan Smith ▪

On 30th September 2022, CONNECTED BY DATA organised a civil society workshop to explore the Data Protection and Digital Information Bill.

As we wait for the date for the second reading of the Data Protection and Digital Information Bill, many civil society organisations have different concerns and interests, and can see different opportunities and risks.

Here at CONNECTED BY DATA, for example, we think the Bill presents a real opportunity to influence how data is democratically and participatively governed, to ensure it works for us all, as part of the UK’s post-GDPR future. However, we also fear that, in its present form, the Bill reduces individual citizens’ control and influence, removes transparency and key safeguards, limits opportunities for engagement and ignores evidence about the collective and equality impacts of data processing and AI.

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How should we govern in the digital age?

Jeni Tennison ▪

Jeni spoke on this panel, organised by the Institute for Government with support from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, at the Labour Party Conference 2022.

Technology is profoundly reconfiguring our society, creating new opportunities but also new risks and inequalities. Many politicians and policymakers have a limited understanding of technology and its effects, yet government has no choice but to grapple with these issues. How do we take technology out of the box labelled ‘digital policy’ and give it the attention it needs at the heart of policy and public life? How should we reform government to take advantage of technology? What kind of state do we need in a digital age?

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RSS International Conference 2022

Jeni Tennison ▪ -

Jeni gave the Significance Lecture during the Royal Statistical Society 2022 Conference that took place in Aberdeen in September.

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Roundtable - Data sharing during the pandemic – GPDPR

Tim Davies ▪ -

Tim participated in a roundtable discussion exploring learning from public participation around the ‘General Practice Data for Planning and Research (GPDPR)’ programme.

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Data Trusts Initiative - Governance and engagement workshop

Tim Davies ▪ -

Tim participated in a workshop organised by the Data Trusts Initiative, and led by Simon Burral of Involve, exploring approaches to embed participatory governance into the pilot data trusts supported by DTI.

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American Society of International Law: An Exchange on International Law and the Datasphere

Tim Davies ▪

Tim participated on the panel for a webinar titled “Data, Human Groups, and Norms: An Exchange on International Law and the Datasphere” for the International Law & Technology interest group of the American Society of International Law.

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Digital Futures Commission: Education Data Reality

Jonathan Smith ▪

Jonathan attended the online launch of the Digital Futures Commission report on the reality of education data.

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Open Future Salon #1: Introducing the Public Data Commons. B2G Data Sharing in the Public Interest

Tim Davies ▪

Tim was one of the respondent panelists for the first Open Future salon on ‘Introducing the Public Data Commons: Business-to-Government data sharing in the public interest’.

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State of Open Data Roundtable: Open Data & AI

Tim Davies ▪

Tim chaired a discussion on Open Data and AI as part of a series of roundtables organised to update the State of Open Data book, with Jeni appearing as one of the three panelists.

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Data Power Conference 2022: Dialogues in Data Power

Tim Davies ▪

Tim was an online participant in the hybrid Data Power 2022 Conference.

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SciDataCon: A data-driven systems approach to the net zero transition: A control loop for the protection of the planet

Jeni Tennison ▪

Jeni spoke on the panel, discussing GPAI’s work on data stewardship to address the climate crisis and making the case for more community-level involvement.

Digital technology is increasingly recognised for its potential to bolster international efforts to address climate change: a complex global challenge that calls for a data-driven systems approach. To this end, climate models, using earth observation data and running on supercomputers, have been central to understanding and finding solutions climate change.

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Workshop on Practical GeoAI Ethics

Jeni Tennison ▪

Jeni spoke at the workshop, describing some of the ways in which organisations are bringing the public into the processes of data governance.

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Putting the "good" in health data as a public good?

Jeni Tennison ▪

Jeni spoke on the RightsCon panel “Putting the ‘good’ in health data as a public good?”.

The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the collection of health data – underscoring the importance of good governance to uphold the highest standards of data protection and respect human rights. In June 2021, the World Health Organization called for a new global consensus on “health data as a global public good,” with a focus on data sharing for improved health outcomes. But what does health data as a public good mean in real-world contexts?

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RightsCon 2022

Jeni Tennison ▪ -

Both Jeni and Tim attended RightsCon, which is the world’s leading summit on human rights in the digital age.

It was a full-on event, with a week’s worth of panels and discussions and often four or five sessions to choose from at any one time. We barely scratched the surface, but here are our reflections from the sessions we did manage to attend, in particular focusing on how they relate to our work at CONNECTED BY DATA.

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OECD Webinar: From Data Stewardship, Access, Sharing and Control to National Data Strategies

Jeni Tennison ▪

Jeni spoke on the panel: Measures for fostering trust and addressing unjustified barriers to data openness.

Given the benefits of digitalisation and data openness and the legitimate concerns and risks, it is fundamental to build effective and trustworthy data governance arrangements (e.g. regulations, policies and practices). Without effective approaches, stakeholders can face significant barriers when trying to access, share and re-use data within and across organisations, sectors and jurisdictions.

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Digital Responsibility Symposium 2022

Jeni Tennison ▪

I spoke on the panel: The future of the UK’s digital economy, alongside Bojana Bellamy, John Whittingdale MP, Mahlet Zimata and Cyrus Mewawalla, at the New Statesman and Tech Monitor’s Digital Responsibility Symposium 2022.

The government’s ambition to make post-Brexit Britain a global tech hub could result in the rollback of data protection laws, with the focus turning towards encouraging and enabling technological innovation. What impact will this have on business technology, and those who lead it? Are short-term returns for investors being prioritised over long-term trust in technology? Is GDPR legislation likely to be an early casualty of the government’s strategy – and if so, what can businesses expect in its place?

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CDEI Teach-in

Jeni Tennison ▪

I was invited to present to the Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation team about the work we’re doing at CONNECTED BY DATA.

CDEI work on the governance of data-driven technology, including an ongoing strand on public attitudes to data and AI.

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Bennett Institute for Public Policy Annual Conference 2022

Jeni Tennison ▪

Jeni attended the Bennett Institute for Public Policy Annual Conference 2022, which will explore the most pressing public policy issues facing governments and populations amidst plans for economic recovery, resilience, and prosperity.

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Lessons from history for governing the digital future

Jeni Tennison ▪

Jeni spoke on this panel with leading experts on learning from history to manage technological change as part of the Cambridge Festival 2022.

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Ada Lovelace Institute Public Attitudes to Data Roundtable

Jeni Tennison ▪

On 31st March 2022, the Ada Lovelace Institute held an invite-only roundtable about public attitudes to data, focused on three questions:

  1. What do we currently know about UK public attitudes towards the regulation of data?
  2. What are the gaps in our understanding of those attitudes?
  3. How can we work together to address those gaps?

The event will be written up properly by the Ada Lovelace Institute. I was only in one of the breakout rooms so didn’t hear everything that was said, but do want to reflect on the conversation from a Connected by data perspective. It was held under Chatham House rules, so I won’t be able to attribute the points made in the conversation.

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Bennett Institute Brown Bag Lunch

Jeni Tennison ▪

As one of their affiliated researchers, I was asked by the Bennett Institute for Public Policy to give a brown bag lunch to discuss my thoughts on collective data governance.

After the presentation, the discussion focused on three areas:

  • How to make participatory approaches effective
  • How to get to the future we want to see from where we are now
  • What other sectors or historical shifts to learn from

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