Lessons from Cambridge Analytica – Using Digital Data to Drive Decision Making
In a world being digitally transformed, the fear for many is that the digitally-empowered will increasingly exploit technology for their own personal gains, manipulate laws in their favour, and influence politics and society through data-driven targeting of individuals and groups. The poster child for many of these fears is the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Much has been […]
Two challenges for councils
On 2 July, housing secretary Robert Jenrick announced that a recovery and devolution White Paper will be published later this year. The paper and its outcomes will be ‘jointly commissioned between central government and local government’, and local authorities ‘[will] be at the heart of our ideas’. The White Paper thus presents one of those […]
Combatting the Male Mental Health Crisis in Corporate Culture
With World Mental Health Day coming up on Saturday 10 October, we revisit David Plans’ insights into male mental health in corporate culture. Corporate culture and practice have gone through significant change over the years. From the deeply sexist and toxic Mad Men-esque environments of the ’60s and ’70s, to the mind-numbing and isolating cubicle-based […]
Challenges and Opportunities in Manufacturing Today
Recently, I ran an online workshop for organisations to gain a clearer understanding of the challenges and opportunities facing supply chain design, integration and optimisation within manufacturing today. These are some of the issues we considered: Your customer is always connected In today’s business world, there are massive transformations happening across supply chains as a result of […]
The Future of Data in Healthcare
The Coronavirus pandemic has shown data science in healthcare in good and bad lights depending on your viewpoint and beliefs. This is a short high-level view (written before March!) which looked at things that need to change. Looking back at how technology and data have changed the landscape of our lives over the past two […]
How unprocessed trauma is stored in the body
The truth is that trauma is not just “in your head” The impact of trauma on mental health can be devastating. When all is well, our brain is the greatest supercomputer on earth. A complex network of about 100 billion neurons, it’s not only great at processing and organising information — it’s really, really fast. […]
How Not To Be Agile
Agile approaches are now widely used not just in mainstream software development but also in many other sectors. However, experiences working with large established organizations trying to use agile approaches highlights that their application in mature organizations remains fraught with difficulties. What are do their failings tell us about how to succeed in agile delivery? […]
Your Algorithm Doesn’t Know me!
In the UK to deal with lack of exams during the Covid lockdown, they turned to automated decision making via algorithms. How did that work out for you then? Deciding important matters using algorithms has been part of life for a long time. Yet the current A-level results fiasco reminds us that data science and […]
IT Heroics Kept Us Working Through the Last 6 Months. Now We Must Deal with the Technical Debt.
Whenever you move quickly to solve problems and deliver changes you risk the chance that you will introduce errors due to omission, ineffective testing, and lack of time to deepen your understanding of the real needs. This challenge is well known in software development and is usually known as “technical debt“. Designing and building complex […]
Using and Abusing Data in Times of Crisis
Data, data everywhere…but what does it all mean? As digital technologies drive new ways to generate, manage, and share data, the search is on for innovative approaches to use it to improve decision making. This has never been more true than in the midst of the volatility and uncertainty we face today as the world […]
