@JeniT
@JeniT
@jenitennison.com
jenit
email
Jeni is an expert in all things data, from technology, to governance, strategy, and public policy.
She is the founder and Executive Director of Connected by Data. She undertakes this work as a Senior Fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation, Shuttleworth Foundation Fellow, and an Adjunct Professor at Southampton’s Web Science Institute.
Jeni was CEO at the Open Data Institute, where she held leadership roles for nine years and worked with companies and governments to build an open, trustworthy data ecosystem. There, she developed and directed the ODI’s approach to topics such as open data, data governance, data portability and data institutions, as well as leading research, development and advisory work in sectors ranging from health and climate to agriculture and engineering.
Before joining ODI, Jeni worked as an independent consultant, specialising in open data publishing and consumption. She was the technical architect and lead developer behind legislation.gov.uk and worked on the initial development of data.gov.uk. She has a long-standing interest in open and web standards and served on the W3C’s Technical Architecture Group.
Among other previous roles, Jeni was the co-chair of the Data Governance Working Group at the Global Partnership on AI; an Associated Researcher at the Bennett Institute for Public Policy; and a member of the Boards of the Open Contracting Partnership, Ada National College for Digital Skills, and the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data.
Jeni sits on the Boards of Creative Commons and the Information Law and Policy Centre. She has a PhD in AI and an OBE for services to technology and open data. She loves Lego and board games and is the proud co-creator of the open data board game, Datopolis.
Opinion
A strategic approach to the adoption of AI in the public sector should focus investments in places that will make a difference. Saving money is one of the big priorities for this government, so where should it target AI to realise those ambitions?
I’ve been appointed to an external advisory panel to support the design of the “digital centre” in DSIT (currently a smooched together combination of GDS, CDDO and i.AI). I put out a call on Bluesky for reckons and pointers that has had quite the response, summarised here by Tim Paul but you should go read all the responses. I want to try here to distil some of the topics, questions and opinions around the design of public services, technology support, and what DSIT needs to do as the “digital centre”.
The Department for Education has recently released public attitudes research on what parents and pupils think about AI in education, as part of its announcement of a £4m investment to create a dataset to support building AI tools. This is a bit of a hangover from the previous government (the work was carried out earlier in 2024), but reflective of the current government’s commitment to maximising adoption of AI across the public sector.
Before I dig into the details, I should first say that it’s fantastic to see public sector organisations carrying out public attitudes research to inform how they approach the adoption of AI. This kind of research can be used to prioritise investments, inform governance processes to address anticipated harms, and identify barriers and blockers to adoption, as well as working out how to communicate about governmental plans.
Here I want to pull out some specific insights from the research that highlight considerations for how technology is rolled out for public services, namely about profit sharing; schools as trusted decision makers; and points about equity and choice. Then I’m going to discuss some lessons that should be taken into future similar public engagement exercises, particularly about shifting understanding and acceptance of technology; consulting teachers and workers; and the overall approach we need of “you said, we listened”.
I posted recently about the challenge of adoption of AI by the public sector.
There are two sides to this: how the public sector adopts AI itself, and how the public adopts AI-driven public services.
I’ve posted recently about the challenge of purpose and priorities in the adoption of AI by the public sector. This blog post expands on this to look not at what I think the priorities should be, but about how they should be decided, and that prioritisation method institutionalised given it’s not a one off exercise.
The Post Office scandal has reached the mainstream, thanks to ITV’s dramatisation, Mr Bates vs The Post Office, broadcast earlier this month. The political response to the harms done to sub-postmasters due to problems with the Post Office’s Horizon system has rightly focused on correcting miscarriages of justice and providing compensation to the people affected. But there are other lessons to learn from this scandal: about how technology can go wrong and the implications for how it’s developed and embedded within wider processes; and about the rights we need to bring such errors to light, correct decisions made about us, and hold organisations accountable.
But even as the government congratulates itself on finally acting to compensate victims and quash convictions, its own Data Protection and Digital Information Bill is laying the groundwork for both making similar scandals more likely in the future, and making it even harder for campaigners to achieve justice.
Weeknotes
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