On Wednesday 11 February 2026 we held the sixteenth meeting of a community of practice as part of our project on Giving communities a powerful say in public sector data and AI projects.
Our speakers were:
- Louis Horsley, Research and Insight Manager at National Voices on ‘Underrepresentation of ethnic minority data in genomic medicine’
- Rachel Astall, Chief Commercial Officer at Beam, on the AI Social Readiness Advisory Label, a first-of-its-kind public deliberation process led by Nesta to evaluate the risks and benefits of AI tools in public services’
The write up of this session is now available to community of practice members only.
📹 Presentation by Rachel Astall (on YouTube, 20 mins)
The future of the Community of Practice Connected by Data has been running the Data and AI Public Engagement Community of Practice since July 2024, to allow people to share their work and learn from others on engaging the public around data and AI, work through common challenges, and bring together practitioners from different sectors.
The 15 events to date – monthly online meetings for around one hour, 2pm on a Wednesday – have largely consisted of two presentations, but we have also run an online workshop and a panel discussion.
The Community of Practice is part of a wider project and funding for that project ends in March 2026, while Connected by Data – always intended to be a five-year campaign – is due to come to an end in March 2027.
That means we are considering what happens next to the community of practice – in terms of maintaining the archive of presentations to date, and how and where (and whether) to continue it. We ask you to take a little time to complete a survey on your thoughts. The survey is available in Google Forms or MS Forms format. Your answers to this survey will help inform the next steps.