People
Chairs
Jos Creese
CEO, CCL and Past President of SOCITM and BCS
With over 30 years IT leadership experience, Jos has held a variety of CIO roles and non-executive director positions. He is a recognised independent analyst and researcher, strategic advisor for multiple IT businesses, past President of Socitm, and also of the BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT. He chairs the Open University ‘School of Computing’ Industrial Advisory Board and is a non-exec on the Risk and Audit Committee for the Department of International Trade, covering cyber and digital risk.
For over a decade Jos was CIO and latterly CDO for Hampshire County Council, leading a range of ground-breaking shared services and achieving national recognition with a range of awards for IT innovation. He has worked with national and international governments on IT programmes and has led large-scale mergers, and the start-up and subsequent sale of a tech business. Previously listed as the ‘most influential and innovative CIO’ in the UK, he now operates as an independent consultant, advising public and private sectors on digital and IT strategy.
Speakers
Morag Campsie
Audit Manager, Audit Scotland
Morag has worked for Audit Scotland for nearly 13 years covering both financial and performance audit. Most recently, Morag has led on a number of national performance audits looking at digital and ICT projects and programmes across government. She also leads Audit Scotland’s data analytics group.
Ruchir Shah
Director of External Affairs, Scottish Wildlife Trust
Director of External Affairs for the Scottish Wildlife Trust, and formerly head of policy and campaigns for the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations, Ruchir has been a leading light in mobilising civil society around the Open Government and Sustainable Development Goals. He was, for a number of years, a member of the grants panel for the Scottish Government's Climate Challenge Fund, is a member of the Government's Data Delivery Group, and an elected member of the UK Open Government Steering Group. In his current role, Ruchir is also supporting sector-wide development around Conservation Finance and Digital Transformation within the environment sector.
Peter Tolland
Head of Digital Directorate Programmes, Scottish Government
Peter leads the teams at the Scottish Government implementing the digital ecosystem including the delivery of corporate digital services, platforms and products. He is chair of the ‘Once for Scotland’ Public Sector Collaboration Forum, and the Scottish Government Platform Design Authority. He is also a member of the national Data Delivery Group, a committee member with Socitm. and is a lead assessor for the Digital Scotland Service Standard.
Peter has extensive experience across the public, private, educational and voluntary sectors previously holding positions at North Lanarkshire Council, Stirling Council, Polaroid, Littlewoods and Pilkington.
Benjamin Welby
Policy Analyst, OECD
Benjamin Welby’s work on digital government and data for the OECD has included country reviews of Panama, Slovenia and Chile and thematic work on data in the public sector, digital identity, service design and delivery, digital skills and the impact of digital government on citizen well-being. He's also contributed to the development of the conceptual framework underpinning the OECD's Digital Government Index, the first pilot results of which will launch in late 2020.
Benjamin started his career in UK local government before moving to central government and spending 6 years with the Government Digital Service. During his time at GDS he was part of the team that launched GOV.UK and went on to have product management responsibility for GOV.UK’s first general election, the Performance Platform, Government as a Platform and the Digital Marketplace. He also sat on the Spend Controls Approval Board and acted as a Lead Assessor for Service Standard Assessments.