Speakers

Alan Banks, Managing Director The Software Institute
The Software Institute, a part of NETbuilder Group, is a software engineering firm that has developed cutting-edge solutions producing some of the industry's most skilled and productive engineers.​ They help bridge skills gaps with highly skilled consultants and newly trained engineers to build squads with the skills organisation's need, ensuring successful and cost-effective delivery every time. 

Ben Tongue, Greener Digital Lead, NHS England
Ben is leading the NHS England Transformation Directorate's digital sustainability, net zero and climate resilience agendas. Chartered environmentalist and MIEMA working across the NHS to drive sustainability and climate resilience through digital development. Broad experience across a wide range of award winning sustainability and environmental projects. PGCert in innovation, enterprise and circular economy.

David Knott, Chief Technology Officer for Government, Central Digital & Data Office, Cabinet Office
David is a technology leader, strategist and architect with over 30 years of experience across a range of industries. He has designed, constructed and led many large transformation initiatives throughout his career and passionately believes in the power of new technologies and using new ways of working to liberate organisations from the constraints of their legacy technologies.

Emma Presley Abbott, Deputy Director, Head of Enterprise Insight and Head of Digital Sustainability, DWP Digital
Emma sits on the senior leadership team of the Data & Analytics directorate within Digital Group at DWP. As Head of Enterprise Insight, she is responsible for DWP MI, the Department’s digital reporting capability in Power BI. DWP MI is leading the way in producing high-quality, accessible, catalogued & consistent MI data visualisations; to facilitate self-service and standardised MI reporting for a community of over 10,000 users and 1,000 developers across DWP. Emma is also Head of Digital Sustainability, aiming to reduce the environmental impact of the Department’s use of digital technologies; whilst this is her first sustainability role in the workplace, sustainability has long been a personal priority for Emma. She joined DWP six years ago, following six years as a consultant data scientist in the private sector. She has experience designing and delivering innovative data solutions across a range of sectors, including grocery and fashion retail, high street and investment banking, and social and TV media.
 

Georgina Maratheftis, Associate Director, Local Public Services, techUK 
Georgina works with suppliers that are active or looking to break into the market as well as with local public services to create the conditions for meaningful transformation. techUK regularly bring together local public services and supplier community to horizon scan and explore how the technologies of today and tomorrow can help solve some of the most pressing problems our communities face and improve outcomes for our people and places. Prior to techUK, Georgina worked for a public policy events company where she managed the policy briefing division and was responsible for generating new ideas for events that would add value to the public sector. She worked across a number of portfolios from education, criminal justice, and health but had a particular interest in public sector transformation and technology. Georgina also led on developing relationships across central and local government.

Jackie Wright, Chief Delivery Officer, Public Sector Partnership Services Ltd
Jackie is Chief Delivery Officer for Public Sector Partnership Services, a company wholly owned by Boston Borough Council, East Lindsey District Council and South Holland District Council. She draws on her 25+ years of experience of delivering ICT and digital across local government, finance and managed service provider sectors. She has been working in a senior management role for the past 15 years and is a member of the company’s senior leadership team responsible for the strategic delivery and operational oversight of ICT, customer contact and innovation & transformation.

Karl Hoods CBE, Group Chief Digital & Information Officer, Department for Energy Security & Net Zero and Department for Science, Innovation & Technology
Karl Hoods CBE is an experienced Chief Information Officer (CIO) and has worked in the private, public and third sectors. He is currently the Group Chief Digital and Information Officer at the Department for Energy Security & Net Zero and Department for Science, Innovation & Technology where he is responsible for the delivery of core services, digital transformation, innovation, knowledge management and shared services. Prior to joining the civil service, Karl was CIO for Save the Children where he was responsible for the delivery of technology and digital services to support humanitarian, policy, advocacy and fundraising activities. He has also held business technology leadership roles with web and sports media startups and led major change programmes for publishing leading publishers. His career in start ups fostered his interest in how emerging technology can be applied to business problems.

             

Katy Armstrong, Deputy Director for Digital Services, Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities
Katy leads the Local Digital team at Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. She’s led digital teams at the Home Office, the Valuation Office, and GDS.

Martin Ferguson, Policy and research director, Socitm
Martin leads Socitm Institute’s policy advocacy and research programme. His particular passion lies in addressing the public policy impasse that prevents many of the complex socio-economic and environmental problems being faced by people, communities and places being confronted. Throughout a career spanning local government, academic research and teaching in the UK and abroad, his focus has been on harnessing technologies and data for the benefit of people and the wellbeing of communities. This interest underpins Socitm’s current research, education and training in fields such as ethical, digital place-making and leadership, and his voluntary work as a trustee of Rennie Grove Peace Hospice Care.

Matt Lewis, Chief Operating Officer, Shared Resource Service and Vice President, Socitm
The Shared Resource Service (SRS) is a unique and successful public sector collaboration in South Wales delivering innovative technology services to multiple public sector partners across emergency and Local Government services. In his role as the Chief Operating Officer of the SRS Matt has provided leadership to and developed the vision and the strategic objectives for the collaboration whilst having to balance the political sensitivities of five separate public sector bodies.

Matt Wicks, Co-CEO, The Virtual Forge
The story of any product development is the story of data, of understanding what you want to achieve, and what you need to know to achieve it. Building those pipelines, grappling with that data and answering those questions is why Matt loves what he does, and has done for over 30 years. Matt has worked with companies as diverse as the BBC, NHS, Jaguar Land Rover and Adobe, as well as small product teams, and they all have two things in common - the need for insight from data, and the need to build, often faster and faster.

Natalie Jones OBE, Director of Digital Identity, Government Digital Service 
Natalie became Director of Digital Identity for the Government Digital Service in September 2021 and is the Senior Responsible Owner for the One Login for Government Programme. One Login will deliver a single consistent way for users to sign in and prove their identity to all government services. Natalie has been in the Civil Service for over 15 years, the majority of which was spent in the UK Home Office (2007-2021) where she worked across a range of technology enabled programmes within the immigration and Border Technology area including a number of Critical National Infrastructure systems.

Robert McCarthy, CEO and Founder, GOSS
Rob McCarthy is the CEO of GOSS Interactive, digital transformation specialist and supplier to over 70 UK public sector organisations. Rob has successfully managed the growth of GOSS over the past 20+ years and is responsible for the strategic direction, company profitability, and future growth of GOSS.

Stephen Koch, Executive Director of Platforms, NHS England
Stephen is an experienced technology manager practiced in running large software development organisations providing software development and application support.  He has domain experience in healthcare, retail and investment banking including two patents.  Strong management, architecture and delivery skills, extensive project management experience in delivering complex in-house shared software services in technologies including distributed grid computing, cloud, data warehouses and high performance and high availability services.

Steve Taylor, Head of Technology Products Strategy, Crown Commercial Service
Steve has worked in commercial and procurement roles for over 25 years for a variety of large private organisations such as DHL, Thales, DXC, Qinetiq, Capita and focused on technology for the last 20 years. He has managed the entire spectrum of technology spending ranging from cloud to software, services and networks . In 2021 he joined the Crown Commercial Service where he develops strategies and commercial frameworks for use in the public sector to maximise value, improve best practice and minimize risk.