BCS Agile Methods AGM and Talk from BCS colleague Giuseppe Sollazzo FBCS CITP.
Speaker
Giuseppe Sollazzo
Agenda
6:30pm - Welcome from SG Chair
6:35pm - AGM
- Chairs report
- Treasurer’s report
- Announcing committee for 26/27
- Close AGM
7:00pm - Talk: My journey towards data-as-a-product - Giuseppe Sollazzo
7:40pm - Reflections on the 25th anniversary of agile - Audience participation encouraged.
7:55pm - Close from SG Chair
Synopsis
A gallery of examples of recent public sector work, asking: how can we do AI and Data well and serve the public?
Taking on from data issues and misconceptions about its use, the talk will present a set of suggestions, based on agile methods and multidisciplinary approaches, to make the best out of data in the AI age.
About the speaker
Giuseppe Sollazzo FBCS CITP is a Senior Civil Servant, currently Deputy Director for (AI) Innovation Strategy at HMRC.
He moved there recently from DWP where, wince 2023, he was the Deputy Director for Data Enablement (previously Data Products and Services), leading a division of 150 people developing and operating data products powering dozens of national-scale services. These included the data pipelines behind the Warm Homes Discount Scheme, Winter Fuel Payments, the Individual Electoral Registration, and national statistics. He was also responsible for the transformation of data pipelines to the cloud and the launch of the DWP Data Catalogue, Reference Data, and Data Quality services.
In 2020-2023, Giuseppe was Deputy Director of the NHS AI Lab, where he launched and operated the AI Skunkworks & Deployment programme, the first AI R&D initiative within the UK public sector, creating a community of practitioners, engaging with the sector and the media, and sharing all the open source code and workflows, supporting the increased transparent scrutiny of AI.
Further back in time, from 2018-2020, he was the first ever Head of Data at the Department for Transport, where he set up the internal data capability, operated national data services, and led the development of the DfT's Transport Data Strategy.
Giuseppe's background is in IT. For a decade, he worked at St George's, University of London, where he ran research computing services alongside helping the IT Crowd become more agile.
He holds a range of advisory roles in the Data, Digital, and AI spaces, including as an External Advisor to the Department of Computing at Goldsmiths, University of London, and has published his own data newsletter ”Quantum of Sollazzo” since 2012.
He has been a community organiser in public sector data for over a decade, and has helped found and run Open Data Camp UK since 2014.
Our events are for adults aged 16 years and over.
This meeting is conducted in accordance with the BCS Code of Conduct for Meetings.
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This event is brought to you by: Agile Methods specialist group
