30 September 2022

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Warning: Graphic Content

7 min readSep 30, 2022

Mersey mission

I know this is what everyone returning from Liverpool is saying, but I’m not sure I’ve ever been to a Labour conference that was so positive, professional and quietly purposeful. (And I’ve been to every one since 2012, I think. Goodness knows what I did in a past life to deserve that.)

Labour force: chairing an event on better data for public services in the coveted Monday 8am slot, with (l-r) Nick Davies (IfG), Matt Davies (ODI, no relation), me, Helen Milner (Good Things), and Antonio Weiss (The PSC). Credit: IfG

There’s still a lot of work to do and a lot of policy to develop, but we’re starting to see the contours of the next manifesto — including around data, harnessing the power of which is one of the pillars of Labour’s new industrial strategy. Plenty of detail which civil society and other readers might find it useful to fill in, not least how a Labour government should earn the public trust it considers important. I hope we start to see some clear principles and positions emerge over the next few months that go beyond ‘government said it would do this and hasn’t’ opposition lines which betray the lack of alternative policy, especially with various bills coming back to parliament at some point (presumably).

I thoroughly enjoyed the two IfG events I chaired, on better data in public services and how to govern in the digital age — audio recordings to follow, but you can relive the live tweets in the meantime.

Birmingham next week for Conservative conference promises to be an experience. I’m there on the Tuesday, where I’ll be chairing an IfG/Bright Initiative event on the better use of data in public services. Drop me a DM if you’re around.

[UPDATE: Here are the digital/data events at Conservative Party Conference]

A few other tasty data-related morsels:

Yesterday, Connected by Data held our online workshop on the Data Protection and Digital Information Bill (thanks to all who came! Write-up to follow) and featured in Politico’s London Influence newsletter (which is an essential read for anyone in UK public policy).
A massive thank you to everyone who sponsored me for my pre-conference walking marathon. There’s still time if you’d like to support Cancer Research UK.
mySociety and the Centre for Public Data want to hear from you about unlocking the value of fragmented public data. Some relevant work has already been done, including this by Leigh (and this by me/IfG).
Doom-scrolling deciles or panicked percentiles? Choose your fighter.
There’s still lots happening at DataConnect22 today.
And I’m old enough to remember when government ministers (well, Matt Hancock) were talking about the importance of dog-fooding when it came to organisations using their own data. Everyone wondered whether the origins of the term had actually involved bosses eating their company’s dog food. Wonder no more.

There’ll be no newsletter for the next couple of weeks, so here’s a bumper advance listing of what I’m going to be up to:

We’ve got a brilliant line-up for Data Bites next Wednesday. (November’s event will be on *Tuesday* 1 November — details to follow.)
The UK is at risk of being declared ‘inactive’ by the Open Government Partnership — an organisation it helped establish — after fouling up three successive open government National Action Plans. Come and discuss what should happen next at a meeting convened by the Open Government Network, also next Wednesday.
Civic tech in hostile environments — how can we thrive in challenging contexts? Come to the latest mySociety TICTeC Labs civic tech surgery and discuss, Monday 17 October.
If it’s Thursday 20 October then it’s the Swirrl Power of Data conference, where I’ll be speaking.
I’ve got Summit going on with the ODI on Tuesday 8 November, including episode 3 of The Data Game.
And advance notice that I’ll be co-hosting and speaking at the rescheduled Think Data for Government conference on 29 November.