Members Biographies
David Rhind
Professor David Rhind (Chairman) is a Non-Executive Director of the Bank of England and of the UK Statistical Authority; he is also Chairman of the Socio-Economic Committee of the Nuclear Decommissiong Authority and a Trustee of the Nuffield Foundation. He was Chairman of the Statistics Commission until March 2008. Until July 2007, he was Vice-Chancellor of the City University, London and before that he was Director General of Ordnance Survey Great Britain. Awarded the CBE in 2001 for services to social and geographical sciences, he is a Fellow of the Royal Society and an Honorary Fellow of the British Academy. He is the author of various books and numerous academic papers.
Neil Ackroyd
Neil Ackroyd is the Executive Director responsible for Data Collection and Management at the Ordnance Survey. He manages the production activities involved in the capture and maintenance of the data supporting the National Geospatial Database using ground, aircraft and space -based resources. He also has the responsibility for managing the content and quality of this extensive database.
Prior to joining the public sector Neil was employed in by the GPS & Location Based Services company Trimble as their European, Middle-East and African (EAME) Technical Manager and the responsible Business Manager for the construction market segment. From 1990 to 2001 he was heavily involved in the adoption of GPS across many varied downstream applications in navigation, location-based services, surveying and timing during a period of rapid growth for the company.
He started his career at Racal-Decca Survey Ltd as a Systems Data Analyst and was involved in operational surveying in many countries around the world.
Neil is the author of many papers and the book - Global Navigation - A GPS Users Guide and holds a number of GPS related patents.
Michael Allen
Michael Allen is Head of Knowledge Management at the Driver and Vehicle Operator Group at the Department of Transport, which includes the four main agencies of DVLA Swansea, Driving Standards Agency, Vehicle and Operator Services Agency, and the Vehicle Certification Agency. Knowledge Management is part of the Modernisation Programme for DVO Group.
Michael is also a lecturer with the Open University Business School MBA Programme, working with managers in South Wales and Russia in two courses, Strategy, and Knowledge Management. He was County Librarian with the City and County of Swansea from 1995 to 2002, working extensively on lifelong learning issues. He was a member of an EC Socrates team researching the impact of library services on community learning programmes, and is currently a member of the Library and Information Services Council (Wales)
Professor Mike Batty
Professor Michael Batty CBE FBA (m.batty@ucl.ac.uk) is Bartlett Professor of Planning and Director of the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA) at University College London (UCL). He is currently Chairman of the JISC-ESRC Census Advisory Committee and a member of the HEFCE Research Assessment Exercise Panel in Geography. His research is primarily on the development of computer models of cities and regions, with a recent focus on large data systems, and visualisation using virtual reality methods, GIS and Web 2.0 technologies. He has written many articles and books, the most recent of which is Complexity and Cities (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2005). He is editor of the journal Environment and Planning B, a Fellow of the British Academy and was awarded the CBE in 2004 for services to geography. In 2008, he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Humane Letters from the State University of New York for his work in computing and planning.
Stefan Carlyle
Stefan Carlyle is currently on secondment from the Environment Agency to DEFRA where he is Programme Director Designate for a programme aimed at implementing the INSPIRE (Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe) Directive and the proposed new UK Location Strategy. As such he is responsible for securing the implementation of services designed to provide unfettered access for users to geographic data and information in the UK and across the European Union. His previous roles included responsibility for Information Management in the Environment Agency, including Public Records, Re-Use of Public Sector Information, Database Copyrights, Data Protection, Environmental Information Regulations and Freedom of Information. It also included data management and information services. As well as being a member of APPSI, Stefan is a member of the EU INSPIRE Expert Group, the Executive Committee of the Intra-Governmental Group on Geographic Information (IGGI), the Knowledge Council and the OPSI Licensing Forum . Stefan has held senior posts in industry, local, central and international Government, where he has worked in environmental regulation and research, as well as data and information management
Christopher Corbin
Christopher Corbin retired in June 2006 after 47 years of working in the private, public and self employed sectors. He has an Information, Communication and Technology background. He is currently completing an assignment as an Analyst within the European Commission eContentplus programme funded ePSIplus Thematic Network (www.epsiplus.net) that supports the implementation of the European Directive on Public Sector Information Re-use, in the period leading up to its review in 2008. Over the past 10 years he has also been involved and contributed to a number of European projects and initiatives related to public sector information that included GINIE (Geographic Information Network in Europe), MEPSIR (Measuring European Public Sector Information Resources), ePSINet, ePSINet-CEE and SPREAD (Stimulate and promote good practices in the field of digital content in Eastern and Western Europe).
J Eric Davies MA PhD FCILIP MCMI FRSA
Eric Davies is currently Consulting Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Information Science at Loughborough University. From 1999 to 2007 he was Director of LISU, a national research and information centre concentrating on performance assessment of libraries and related cultural services, which is based in the Research School of Informatics and the Department of Information Science at Loughborough University. Prior to that he was a Lecturer in the Department and acted as the University's Copyright Officer. His experience of professional library practice includes over 25 years in academic library management. He also has experience of public libraries and special libraries. His main interests lie in statistics and performance assessment in information management, strategic management of libraries, the impact of ethical and legal issues on information management, and the dissemination of scientific and technical information. He has been active in professional association affairs for many years and has served on the governing council of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP) and chaired its Policy Development Committee. He is currently Vice-Chair of the Library and Information Research Group of CILIP. He is a Member of the Standing Committee of the Statistics and Evaluation Section of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA), and a member of the Editorial Board of Library Management. He has published widely and delivered numerous conference papers and workshop presentations. He received his Doctorate based on his research into data protection from Loughborough University in 1997.
Keith Dugmore
Keith Dugmore is Director of Demographic Decisions, a consultancy advising on the use of demographic data, and also founded the Demographics User Group (which represents large commercial users of public data to Government). He previously held a number of directorships and managerial posts in the private and public sectors. He is a Fellow and Council Member of the Royal Statistical Society, chairs its Statistics User Forum, and an invited member of various Economic and Social Research Council advisory committees. His appointment is as an expert member in statistics.
Christine Gifford
Christine Gifford is a founding Director of both Public Partners and Gifford Owen, where she has been involved in supporting the public sector as it implements the FOIA. She is particularly interested in the essential link between good records and information management practice and access to information. She has had a wide-ranging career in the public sector, at various times working in the Department of Health and Social Security, the Civil Service Commission, and the Metropolitan Police on issues of change management and issue resolution in several sensitive areas. As an expert member of the Home Secretary's Advisory Group on Openness in Government she was heavily involved in establishing the framework of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) and subsequently, as a member of the Lord Chancellor's Advisory Group on the Implementation of the FOIA, she advised on the way in which this challenging new legislation was being dealt with across the Public Sector. She is appointed to represent the information management community.
John Gray
John Gray, a Fellow of both the Institute of Chartered Secretaries and Administrators and the Royal Society for the Arts, having enjoyed a long lengthy periods of employment in both the Public and Private sectors of the UK economy. He currently divides his interests between a mix of executive and non-executive Board appointments with business concerns and trade associations that enjoy an active interface in the re-use of public sector information - namely DCF (the Digital Content Forum), Psiphon Ltd, PSI Consulting (UK) Ltd and CoPSO (The Council of Property Search Organisations). He also continues to provide specific advisory services to the property information industry through a consultancy vehicle and in the recent past, has also contributed heavily to a number of Department for Communities and Local Government Working Groups with particular reference to the Government's HIP (Home Information Pack) legislative programme and the 2005 Office of Fair Trading Property Information Study.
Hector MacQueen
Hector MacQueen is Professor of Private Law and Co-Director of the AHRC Research Centre for Studies in Intellectual Property and Technology Law at Edinburgh University (where he has taught since 1979). He was Dean of the Edinburgh Law School 1999-2003 and has also held visiting appointments at the Universities of Cornell (USA) and Utrecht (Netherlands). He currently holds the position of Distinguished International Professor at Stetson University College of Law, Florida. He became Dean of Research in the College of Humanities and Social Science in Edinburgh University in 2004 and Deputy Head of College in 2006. He is a member of the Advisory Council of the Intellectual Property Institute and the Law Society of Scotland Working Party on Intellectual Property. He is also Chair of the Scottish Records Advisory Council, and a member of the Legal Advisory Board of Creative Commons UK. He has published extensively in the field of intellectual property, notably (with Waelde and Laurie) Contemporary Intellectual Property: Law and Policy (2007), Copyright, Competition and Industrial Design (2nd edn, 1995, 3rd edn forthcoming) and the Intellectual Property chapter of The Laws of Scotland: Stair Memorial Encyclopaedia. Professor MacQueen's other main research interests are in the history of law (he is Literary Director of the Stair Society), and in various areas of private law, including contract, delict and unjustified enrichment. He has published a wide range of books and articles in these areas. He also has an active interest in legal education, and has published an introductory guide to the study of Scots law. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
Hilary Newiss
Hilary Newiss was a partner and Head of Intellectual Property at a city firm of solicitors. Since leaving the city she has concentrated on public service and policy in the Intellectual Property, health/science and technology fields. She has served on the Human Genetics Commissions for 6 years and the Intellectual Property Advisory Committee. Currently she is a trustee of the Roslin Institute and a member of the National Information Governance Board.
Michael Nicholson
Michael Nicholson BSc(Hons) FRICS, left the partnership of Knight Frank & Rutley (Chartered Surveyors) in 1984 and set up Property Intelligence plc, the provider of FOCUS, the first online information source for the commercial property industry. Consequently he gained considerable practical experience of the re-use of PSI and the commercial potential of Web technology.
In 2003, the FOCUS business was sold to the CoStar Corporation of the USA. Michael became Managing Director of a former subsidiary and now independent company, Intelligent Addressing Ltd, which initially helped develop a local authority-led dataset called the National Land & Property Gazetteer or NLPG and now continues to manage its updating and that of the National Street Gazetteer (NSG). Together they are considered to be amongst the most successful of the public sector's e-Government initiatives.
Chair of the first Information Management Committee of the RICS, Michael is currently Chair of the Locus Association, a body of private sector companies concerned by the re-use of PSI.
Shane O'’Neill
Shane O’Neill is founder of a leading Public Sector Information strategic consultancy business (Shane O'Neill Associates).
Shane'’s career has focussed on information publishing but in many different vertical markets. He has held Board appointments in the UK, USA, Germany and Australia. Thus he brings a wide and varied perspective to PSI related matters.
His private sector publishing career has interfaced with the public sector at several points: as publisher on behalf of the British Library's Catalogues, Managing Director of the former Library Association Publishing and Managing Director at the privatised TSO (The Stationery Office).
Shane has also been consulted by and worked on behalf of several Government organisations to help them implement their PSI policies and procedures. These have recently included The Environment Agency, the Ministry of Justice and the Department of Health.
He holds degrees from the universities of Sussex, Sheffield and Oxford where he obtained his D.Phil in Modern History.
Avinash D. Persaud
Avinash D. Persaud is Chairman, Intelligence Capital Limited, a financial advisory boutique for institutions and governments. He is also Co-Chair, OECD Emerging Markets Network; Deputy Chair, Overseas Development Institute; Member of Council of the London School of Economics; Member of Council of the Royal Economics Society; Director, Global Association of Risk Professionals; Member of the Finance Committee, Coram Family; Trustee, Errol and Nita Barrow Educational Trust; Emeritus Professor of Gresham College; and Visiting Fellow, CFAP, University of Cambridge. Persaud was formerly Investment Director, GAM London Ltd, managing director State Street, global head of currency and commodity research at J. P. Morgan and director, fixed-income research, UBS. He has been a Visiting Scholar at the IMF and ECB and a Distinguished Visitor to the Republic of Singapore.
Persaud has published widely in the fields of risk, liquidity, international capital flows, regulation and ethics. He developed the EMU Calculator, Risk Appetite Index and Liquidity Black Holes theory. In 2000, he won the Jacques de Larosiere Award in Global Finance from the Institute of International Finance in Washington.
John Ponting
John Ponting retired from the Met Office at the start of 2007. In his last job, he was the Head of Legal and Procurement for the Met Office which included overall responsibility for Intellectual Property, and reuse of information, as well as legal issues such as competition law and Freedom of Information. He had several different jobs in the Met Office mostly in IT and information management. He joined the Met Office in 1973 after getting MA and MSc degrees from Oxford University in mathematics.
Christopher Roper
Christopher Roper has spent most of his working life as a specialised publisher of newsletters, computer software and, most recently, map-based information services to a wide range of professional groups. He currently divides his time between writing and consulting. He is a non-executive director of a number of information service companies. He is a graduate of Cambridge University with an MSc from Columbia University. In 1995, he founded Landmark Information Group, which is a major value added reseller of Public Sector Information, specialising in environmental information services. He has served on the Board of the National Geospatial Data Framework and the Council of the Association for Geographical Information. He has written widely on technical and policy issues associated with the re-use of Public Sector Information.
John Thornton
John Thornton has extensive experience in both the public and private sectors as a customer, developer, user and maintainer of public sector information He is an independent adviser on e-government, innovation and business transformation. He is a Director of e-ssential Resources Limited, which provides advice, consultancy and support to public sector bodies, and is a Director of the SMART Governance Network, a primarily local government based network for stimulating and sharing ideas on new ways of working through the improved use of technology
Between 2001 and 2005, John was the Director of e-Government for the Improvement and Development Agency (IDeA). His role within the IDeA was to provide leadership and assistance to local authorities with implementing e-government and delivering services on-line. This role covered all English local authorities. It also included taking forward projects of national importance and sharing of information on a national basis. He was the lead official and spokesperson for the Local Government Association (LGA) on e-Government matters and was a member of the LGA's e-Government Task Group.
Between 1992 and 2001, John was the Managing Director of the Institute of Public Finance (IPF).
Phillip Webb
Phillip Webb was Chief Executive of the Police Information Technology Organisation (PITO) from 2001 until his retirement in March 2007. During a life long career in ICT he has acquired a wealth of high-level experience in information management within academia and government research organisations, including the Admiralty Research Establishment (ARE), the Defence Research Agency (DRA) where he was CIO and even a spell with MoD'’s Applied Psychology Unit. Focusing increasingly on the introduction of technology enabled change necessary to consolidate and exploit organisational knowledge assets. He acted as a technical advisor in the drafting of the DTI'’s Knowledge Economy White Paper, MoD'’s Information Management Strategy, the European Commissions Joint Research Council'’s Knowledge Management Strategy and the Home Office Identity Management Strategy.
Phillip is a Fellow of the British Computer Society (BCS), Chartered IT Professional, Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a Freeman of the Worshipful Company of Information Technologists. He continues to enjoy regular lecturing engagements and has published and spoken extensively on ICT, Knowledge Exploitation and Risk Management. A former Chairman of the Board of Governors of Portsmouth University and a member of the Council of University Chairman (CUC) he remains active on numerous national and international committees and maintains a keen interest in education and scientific research. He is married with one daughter and lives in Hampshire. His leisure interests include travel, reading, history and collecting antiques.
Peter Wienand
Peter Wienand is a partner at Farrer & Co specialising in intellectual property law. He is a member of the British Computer Society and Intellectual Property Institute. He advises clients in the media, cultural, technology and academic sectors. Among his particular interests are rights management, IPR policies and copyright in the visual arts. He chairs the Museums Copyright Group and sits on the Board of MDA (which advises museums, galleries and archives on collections management). He lectures regularly (recent audiences having been the New Ventures class at INSEAD, the New Technology Ventures class at London Business School and at Museums Association seminars) and has contributed to such publications as Art Antiquity and Law, The Art Newspaper and Museums Journal. He edited and co-authored ’A Guide to Copyright for Museums and Galleries’ (Routledge 2000).