Digital Ape

Sir Nigel Shadbolt is one of the UK’s foremost computer scientists. He is a leading researcher in artificial intelligence and was one of the originators of the interdisciplinary field of web science. He is Principal of Jesus College Oxford and a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Oxford. He is chairman of the Open Data Institute which he co-founded with Sir Tim Berners-Lee. Both of them lead the development of the highly acclaimed data.gov.uk website. In 2010, he joined the UK government’s Public Sector Transparency Board — overseeing Open Data releases across the public sector. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society and the Royal Academy of Engineering, and a Fellow and former President of the British Computer Society. He was knighted in 2013 for ‘services to science and engineering’. Roger Hampson is an academic and public servant. He was chief executive of the London Borough of Redbridge for 16 years until early 2016. Redbridge has a strong reputation for web-based innovation in service delivery, engagement of citizens, and the publication of data. He was a director of social services for many years, and also ran other council departments in parallel. He pioneered innovations in the mixed economy of social care. Until 1986, he was an academic economist of social policy, latterly research fellow at the Personal Social Services Research Unit at the University of Kent. PSSRU was and remains the world leader in the promotion of efficiency in social and health care by the rigorous analysis of data. A member of the Local Public Data Panel, he is also a non-executive director of the Open Data Institute. He has published on plain language; the economics of political advertising; community care; social services; and reasoning in public life.

‘[W]e should be grateful to Sir Nigel Shadbolt and Roger Hampson for pausing for breath and helping us to think through the true significance of our latest technological developments.’