World's 100 Most Influential People in Digital Government | 2019

Aaron Snow is chief executive officer of the Canadian Digital Service, a position he took up in 2018 after previously having enjoyed a top-flight career in US digital government. He co-founded 18F, an influential tech fixes team that sits within the American General Services Administration (GSA), in 2013. He later advised the GSA’s Technology Transformation Service. He has also worked as chief operating office at cBrain, a government digitsation and automation company based in Denmark.

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Ania Calderón is the Executive Director of the Open Data Charter, an organisation that unites governments and civil society around the shared goal of creating a culture of open and ethical data use. In her role she has urged governments to adopt an ‘open by default’ mindset and has been a driving force for expanding the number of signatories to the charter, which now counts more than 70 governments around the world. 2019 saw the Open Data Charter champion the data rights of citizens and bring the need for increased data transparency into public view.

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Audrey Tang is Taiwan’s digital minister, and is the first transgender official in the top executive cabinet. She is a software developer and former entrepreneur: she dropped out of school at age 12 to focus on coding, and founded a search engine company before she was 15. She is now helping Taiwan in its bid to become an Asian Silicon Valley by devising and implementing a strategy to create “digital Taiwan”.

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Barbara Ubaldi is digital government and open data lead at the OECD, leading the organisation’s work on Open Government Data (OGD), Social Media and Digital Government. The OGD project works to improve impact measurement of government open data projects. Ubaldi has championed a set of principles of digital innovators in national government including transparency, international co-operation, the development of solid frameworks and securing political commitment. She is also an associate professor of digital government at Sciences Po.

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Carrie Bishop has been the Chief Digital Services Officer at the City and County of San Francisco, US, since 2017. Prior to taking up this role in government, she acted as the Director of FutureGov, an organisation that has for over ten years been transforming public sector organisations through people-centred design and digital strategy. A champion of bold thinking and empathetic design, Carrie has helped develop projects such as Casserole Club, a community project in the UK and Australia that connects older citizens with home-cooked food in their neighbourhood, and Lantern, an online service for connecting people to social care.

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Daniel Abadie is the under secretary of digital government for Argentina, responsible for designing and implementing the government’s digital strategy. Formerly a tech entrepreneur, Abadie is passionate about delivering quality digital services that help restore public trust. He played a big role in scaling up Argentina’s digital strategy to a national level, focusing on leveraging new technologies to improve public services and engage citizens.

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Daniel Korksi is the co-founder and CEO of PUBLIC, an organisation devoted to helping startups transform the public sector by building better services for citizens and better tools for public servants. He’s also the chairman and co-founder of the annual GovTech Summit. Previously, Korski served as a special adviser to former UK prime minister David Cameron and a number of other high-ranking political figures. He also helped establish the European Council on Foreign Relations, a bipartisan thinktank.

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David Eaves is a lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School. Prior to joining the Harvard faculty, Eaves advised the Mayor of Vancouver in the late 2000s, proposing and drafting the Open Motion, one of the world's first open data portals. He was also the first director of education at Code for America, and has worked with 18F and the Presidential Innovation Fellows at the White House.

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Francesca Bria is the Chief Technology and Digital Innovation Officer for the City of Barcelona. Under her leadership the city has created Decidim, a digital participatory platform through which citizens can suggest, debate and vote on ideas through social media. Previously a senior project lead at the innovation lab Nesta, she has a background in social science and economics and has advised the City of Rome on technological innovation.

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Janil Puthucheary is senior minister of state, ministry of communications and information for the government of Singapore. He is leading attempts to increase inclusion for all citizens, regardless of their technical literacy or expertise, across government services in Singapore. Closely involved in Singapore’s Smart Nation drive, he is working to increase interoperability between different services to help increase access for citizens.

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Kok Ping Soon is the chief executive of the Government Technology Agency of Singapore (GovTech), the agency responsible for Singapore’s Smart Nation initiative and public sector-wide digital transformation. He has also held various positions in Singapore's Ministry of Manpower, National Security Co-ordination Secretariat, Ministry of Trade and Industry, Tourism Board, Contact Singapore and the Economic Development Board. He was previously district councillor in the North West Community Development Council and is currently a member of the World Economic Forum's Global Futures Council on behavioural sciences.

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Luis Alberto Moreno is the President of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) since being elected in 2005 and reelected in 2010 and 2015. As President of the IDB, he overhauled the bank’s organisational structure by introducing monitoring, making the bank more agile and customer-focused. He is passionate about innovation and champions digital tools as a way to fight corruption. Since he assumed office the IDB has made investments and created partnerships in areas such as digital connectivity, sustainable cities, and innovation.

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Mariéme Jamme is a British businesswoman who works extensively across civil society, government and the private sector to promote economic development, good governance and digital inclusion. She is the founder of iamtheCODE, which aims to give women equal opportunities in tech through hackathons, mentorship and community-building. Jamme, who had no formal education, taught herself to read and write — and, eventually, how to code. Her goal is to train one million women in programming by 2030. She also runs Spotone Global Solutions, which help tech companies gain a foothold in Africa, Europe, the Middle East and Asia. She is a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader and was named one of the 20 youngest powerful women in Africa by Forbes.

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Maya Wiley is a distinguished lawyer, academic and founder and co-director of the Digital Equity Lab, a project based in the New School which seeks to tackle the “structural inequities that persist and evolve as technology transforms our cultural, social and political systems”. Wiley served as a council to New York City mayor Bill de Blasio from 2014 to 2016 and advocated for millions of dollars worth of investment in bringing internet access to public housing projects and phone boxes in an effort to bridge the digital divide.

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Nana Akufo-Addo is the President of Ghana. During his presidency he has been a strong advocate for the digitisation of Ghana and has launched a number of initiatives including a new national digital ID scheme, an electronic payment platform and a digital property adressing system which are considered some of the most innovative in the region. Under his leadership Ghana has signficantly improved its digital services and gained a reputation as one of the most advanced digital societies in Africa.

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Park Won Soon, human rights lawyer and mayor of Seoul, is a pioneer in government data visualization and open data. He is currently spearheading a movement to establish Seoul’s own crypto-currency, dubbed “S-coin,” and leading an initiative to increase government transparency using blockchain technology. Won Soon likes to use data and technology to enact policy changes. For instance, after receiving a tweet from a constituent requesting night time bus services, Soon’s office used data from private phone companies on which areas had the most late-night phone calls to design Night Owl bus routes.

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Paula Ingabire has been the minister of ICT and innovation for Rwanda since 2018. She has worked with Transform Africa, an organisation that focuses on digital innovation, and is the former head of the Kigali Innovation City initiative, which pushed to make the city a hub of new tech opportunities. The World Economic Forum selected Rwanda as the host of the Africa Drone Forum 2020 because of its pioneering use of drone technology for the delivery of public services, including medical delivery drones and the use of Beyond Visual Line Of Sight (BVLOS) UAV operations.

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Pia Andrews is Executive Director of Digital Government at the New South Wales Department of Finance, Services and Innovation. She is responsible for policy and innovation in the NSW government including in the areas of ICT, digital, open, information, data and emerging tech and transformation. Previously she was service integration lead at New Zealand's Department of Internal Affairs, and is recognised internationally for driving the idea of government as an API. Beginning her career in IT, Andrews directed an open source consultancy in her native Australia before holding a number of roles in government, including director of data infrastructure and government engagement at Australia’s Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet.

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Siim Sikkut has been the Estonian government’s chief information officer since March 2017. He previously worked as a digital policy adviser to the government for five years, where he was one of the founders of the flagship e-Residency program and helped to author the Estonian Digital Agenda 2020. Sikkut has also been an adviser on e-Government for Jersey and a member of the digital government advisory group at the Inter-American Development Bank.

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Amanda Smith is the recently appointed Head of User-Centred Policy Design at the Ministry of Justice UK. Before taking this role up in May 2019, Amanda was the Head of Data Strategy and Culture for the Ministry, and acted as a Senior Consultant at the Open Data Institute. In 2011 she led the UK Prime Ministerial commitment to deliver the world's first open crime and justice website and data platform: police.uk and data.police.uk, and in 2015 won the first Bloomberg WISE Open Technology award from the HRH The Princess Royal for her contributions in data and technology across Europe. Amanda specialises in data strategy, leadership and innovation programmes, and organisational design with a focus on open culture and user-centred approaches.

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Charlotte Stix was the youngest member on the team that authored the EU-wide AI strategy published in late 2018. Formerly with the European Commission, she is now a research associate on AI Policy at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence. She publishes her own bi-monthly newsletter on AI policy and recently published a survey of the European Union’s artificial intelligence ecosystem, pointing to the need for greater EU leadership as the field matures.

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Eddie Copeland is director of the London Office of Technology and Innovation, a "public sector startup" in the British capital focusing on building digital capacity in the city's boroughs. Previously he was director of government innovation at Nesta, a global innovation foundation based in the UK. His remit includes digital democracy, city data analytics and behavioural insights. Prior to joining Nesta, he was head of technology at Policy Exchange, a think tank, and worked as a researcher in the UK parliament. He wrote a book on working for a think tank and currently advises the Mayor of London as a member of the Smart London Board.

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Hamzat Lawal is an open data activist and the founder and CEO of Connected Development (CODE), a non-government organization which uses digital technologies to increase government accountability. With mobile and web platforms CODE provides citizens in countries across Africa with information on government activity and economic development in their local area. He is also the founder of Follow the Money, which measures and tracks service delivery in rural communities in Nigeria.

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Honey is a founding member of the Ontario Digital Service, where she is the Executive Lead / Senior Manager, Digital Standards and Governance. Informally, the role is known as the “Chief Bureaucracy Hacker:” leading three teams to ensure that digital-era practices like lean, agile and service design gain critical mass in a 66,000-person strong public service. Honey’s expertise is in machinery of government reform and making public sector reform programs stick. Most recently, her team enshrined digital-era ways of working in Ontario’s Simpler, Faster, Better Services Act, the first legislation of its kind in Canada and 4th globally.

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Juan Pablo Escobar Luque is the co-founder of Cívica Digital, where he is currently the CEO. In 2013, Luque co-created Codeando México, a community which develops technology to solve public problems. Two years later, he co-founded Cívica Digital, which develops mobile and web applications to strengthen civic participation. Based in Mexico City, their products can be used around the world.

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Miguel Lago and Alessandra Orofino are the trailblazing co-founders of both Meu Rio and Nossas Cidades (Our Cities), two "laboratories of activism" aimed at improving civic engagement and encouraging people-centred political action in Brazil. They have driven pioneering initiatives to improve and streamline life in the city, to boost local participation, and to make local institutions more inclusive and accountable. Both Meu Rio and Nossas Cidades tap into online and offline community-management methodologies to mobilise citizens to engage more with their local governments.

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Nicolás Laguna is the executive director of Bolivia’s Agency of Electronic Government and ICT (AGETIC). A frank advocate for “debureaucratisation”, Laguna is passionate about adapting government to fit changes in Bolivian society, with two thirds of Bolivians now online. He has subsequently led the development of Bolivia’s online payment platform and a government-wide ID system. Laguna’s priority is the citizen; everything AGETIC creates is turned into free software for public use.

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Oluseun Onigbinde is CEO of the Nigerian civic organisation, BudgIT. He was inspired by his passion for open data to create the organisation in 2011. BudgIT is a data visualisation platform for Nigeria’s budget that aims to increase citizen engagement, raise accountability and increase the transparency of government spending. Onigbinde is also a Policy Advisor Board Member for One Africa, an organisation that campaigns to end poverty and preventable diseases by 2030.

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Pia Mancini is the co-founder and CEO of Open Collective, a collaborative and transparant fundraising platform. After serving as the chief advisor for political affairs for the City of Buenos Aires, Mancini co-founded Democracy OS, an open-sourced mobile app that breaks down complex policies for voters. She also co-founded a political party centred around the principles of digital governance, Partido de La Red (The Net Party), which received 1% of Buenos Aire's votes in the city's 2013 congressional elections.

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Tabitha Goldstaub is the co-founder of CognitionX, a network that connects organisations with a global network of AI experts. Alongside CognitionX, Goldstaub is the AI & data business champion and chair of the AI Council for the UK government. She also set up Why Women in AI, co-founded Future Girl Corp and advises Teens in AI to improve women’s representation in the industry. She is the director of CogX, a festival for "all things AI".

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Tiana Epps-Johnson is the founder and executive director of the Center for Technology and Civic Life (CTCL). In this capacity, she provides resources and training to support local election administrators, helping them to modernise the ways they communicate with voters. CTCL also publish free, open-source civic datasets, used over 200 million times, which are adapted into tools to drive civic participation.

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Angela Colter is the Executive Director of 18F, a USA federal government design consultancy serving other government organisations, helping them build products and improve their public service delivery. She has contributed in overseeing 18F’s shift towards building with their government agency clients rather than for them, educating and empowering them to do more of the actual development and maintenance of their products. Before 18F, Angela served as design researcher and usability consultant for a range of organisations, including Electronic Ink and UserWorks, where she helped to anchor technological product design around user perspectives.

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Anna-Maija Karjalainen is the director general of public sector ICT in Finland's Ministry of Finance. Karjalainen is responsible for creating guidelines for digital services and ensuring that all departments are digitalising services. She has helped boost Finland to the number six spot on the 2018 United Nation e-government survey. Karjalainen has also helped automate the Ministry of Finance, using robots and artificial intelligence to streamline government services.

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Ashok Kumar Seetharaman is the centre director of the Singapore e-Government Leadership Centre (eGL), responsible for leading, providing research, and training senior government officials and public servants in digital and e-government. He assists on the design, development and delivery of digital government programmes. Seetharaman currently serves as an expert in the Advisory Group of United Nation's eGovernment Ranking Committee.

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Debs Durojaiye describes herself as "a black face in a white tech space". In addition to being an interaction designer for GDS in the UK civil service, she is the founder of Afrotech Fest, a festival by and for Black people of African and Caribbean heritage focused on all things tech. In its first two years, the London-based festival has become a place for a diverse group of activists, artists, developers and entrepreneurs to share their ideas and innovations.

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A former Amazon Excutive, Diego Piancentini was headhunted by the Italian governent in 2016 to lead the country's efforts in digital transformation, a position he held for two years as a pro-bono civil servant. During this time he founded the Government Digital Transformation Team with the stated goal of developing an “operating system” for Italy and a road map for the future digital development of Italy's public administration, which was published at the end of his term in September 2018.

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Ger Baron is the chief technology officer of the City of Amsterdam, responsible for innovation, research and development, and innovation partnerships. He has played a key role in the development of several Amsterdam smart city initiatives, such as the City Protocol, which creates an innovative framework to connect cities around the globe to share experiences and learn new solutions. He is currently the president of the initiative.

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Henri Verdier is the French Ambassador for Digital Affairs, and until 2015 he was the Head of Etalab, the French Prime Minister’s task force for Open Government and Data. In this role he launched the government’s first open data portal. As a digital specialist, he is a member of the ARCEP Strategic Committee, the CNIL Strategic Committee, and was the Founding Director of Edition Odile Jacob Multimedia, a publishing house in the field of e-learning.

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Hillary Hartley is Chief Digital and Data Officer, and Deputy Minister for Digital Government in Ontario. She leads the Ontario Digital Service, which is redesigning provincial government services to focus on users’ needs. She previously co-founded 18F, a US government agency created in 2014 to support government bodies’ digital development, and was one of President Barack Obama’s Presidential Innovation Fellows in 2013. Outside government, Hartley worked for seven years at NIC Inc, a digital government consultancy based in San Francisco.

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Huda Al Hashimi is a senior public servant responsible for strategy and innovation at the Prime Minister's office in the United Arab Emirates. She oversees the implementation of the UAE’s National Innovation Strategy, which aims to drive tech innovation across government, and is leading the delivery of the UAE Vision 2021, a national strategy that aims to transform the country into an economy of knowledge. Huda is an outspoken gender equity activist, and sits on the UAE Gender Balance Council.

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Imraan Bashir is the Canadian Government’s executive director of cyber security and digital identity. Bashir is responsible for establishing the digital security standards for over 100 departments and agencies, to establish a consistent security position. Bashir also leads Canada’s digital identity program, working across provinces to allow access to online services. He is an advocate for pragmatic security and a balanced, risk-based, approach.

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As the chief digital officer at Moldova’s e-Government Centre, Iurie Turcanu has driven the implementation of an impressive national ICT strategy, including most notably an e-Transformation project which has steadily and successfully increased the impact of various public services. Iurie drove the Open Data Initiative, as well as schemes like M-Cloud, which was implemented in order to strengthen the quality of electronic service delivery in Moldova and which was recognised as the "Best Cloud Project in Central & Eastern Europe" in 2012. Iurie has also acted as an advisor to the Prime Minister on e-governance.

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Jaimie Boyd has held a number of positions in both the private sector and in the Government of Canada, most recently in support of open government. She is an alumnus of the Government of Canada’s Accelerated Economist Training Program, Action Canada, the Institute for Technology and Society’s Global Policy Fellowship and the Organization of American States’ Fellowship on Open Government in the Americas. Jaimie works to embrace digital change in the public sector and is focused on finding ways to help government better serve its citizens using technology.

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Janne Viskari is director at the Population Register Centre of Finland, where he plays a key role in the digitalisation of the Finnish public sector, and is in charge of the implementation of the government’s National Architecture for Digital Services. This program has created a digital infrastructure platform, the Suomi.fi services, for both public and private use, which includes an e-ID service and digital post for public organizations. The centre is now working on a pilot to incorporate the idea of consent into Finland’s public digital services.

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As the digital director for the UK National Archives, John Sheridan is responsible for overseeing the ongoing digitisation of the archives, which date back more than 1,000 years and span more than 32 million individual records, covering everything from Shakespeare's verse to modern day tweets. With a stated goal of being a "disruptive 21st century archive", Sheridan is leading the institution on a new 4-year strategy to become more open, more inclusive and more digital. These efforts are an extension of the archives' previous digital strategy, which saw the total number of downloadable, digital records expand to 9 million in total — a number that is constantly growing.

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José Clastornik is the Executive Director at AGESIC, Uruguay's e-government and information society agency. The body has made Uruguay a digital leader in the region, the only country in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) to break into the most advanced cohort of the UN's 2018 e-government survey. Clastornik was also the first president at Red GEALC, a digital innovation network spanning LAC region which promotes digital collaboration.

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Kimmo Rousku is the general secretary of VAHTI, the Finnish Government’s Public Administration Digital Security Steering Group. The group is the coordination body for the organisations responsible for the development and management of Finland’s public security. VAHTI plays a key part in the implementation of the country’s cyber security strategy. Rousku is also a part-time lecturer with a keen interest in data protection regulations.

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Leah Bannon is product manager at the US Digital Service, working on user-centred design in the Department of Veterans Affairs. Formerly the Product Lead at 18F, she helped redesign foia.gov, the Freedom of Information Act’s site, and fec.gov, the website for the Federal Election Commission. Leah founded the Tech Lady Hackathon (now Tech, Rebalanced), an annual civic hacking and training event for minorities, and works with Code for DC, a volunteer civic hacker group.

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Martha Lane Fox is founder of Doteveryone, a charity fighting for a fairer internet and building a movement for responsible technology. She previously co-founded Lastminute.com, Europe’s largest travel and leisure website. From 2009 to 2013, she was the UK’s Digital Champion and helped to create the Government Digital Service, the team that launched the Gov.uk website. She entered the House of Lords as a crossbench peer in 2013 — its youngest female member.

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Marushka Chocobar Reyes is secretary of digital government for Peru. Appointed to the position early in 2018, she heads efforts to drive digital transformation across the Peruvian government. She has supported digital teams within Peru’s public service, and work she has overseen includes building a single web domain for government in just a few months where all government information is now published, and creating an online provisional driving license service.

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Matt Cutts is administrator at the United States Digital Service, US, and is responsible for setting the overall direction and strategy for the USDS’s projects. Formerly a distinguished engineer and head of webspam at Google, Cutts has decades of experience working as an engineer in both private and government spaces. His primary focus now is on improving the government services that millions of people use by enhancing them with modern technology and digital innovations.

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Michelle Thong is digital services lead for the City of San Jose, US. She introduced user-centred design into My San Jose, an app and online platform that enables residents and businesses to easily request and track public services, and piloted the Digital Services Academy to train City staff in usability and design. Michelle also co-founded Code for San Jose, a local Code for America brigade, to foster alignment and connection in San Jose’s civic tech community.

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Randall Brugeaud took up a new role as head of Australia’s Digital Transformation Agency at the start of July, 2018, a promotion from his previous position as chief operating officer at the Australian Bureau of Statistics. He has also served as chief information officer of what was formerly called the Department of Immigration and Border Protection. He serves as a Senior Executive Fellow of the Harvard Kennedy School.

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Rikke Zeberg is Director-General at the Agency for Digitisation in Denmark’s Ministry of Finance. She has been closely involved in a government-wide project of setting new, ambitious goals for future digital transformations in public service delivery. Zeberg’s approach is shaped by a desire to produce cogency and optimum usability for Danish citizens, as well as a deep commitment to transparency around data. Rikke and her team are working hard on a governmental Coherency Reform, and she intends to help increase Denmarks’ use of technologies like AI and machine learning to advance service delivery in the future.

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Roberta Cocco is the councillor for digital transformation and citizen services for the Municipality of Milan, Italy. Cocco was the former national plans development director for Microsoft and used her expertise to support the Government’s Digital Agenda. In her work for the city of Milan, she has focused on digitising critical citizen services, experimenting with 5G, and keeping Milan in the top rankings as a “smart city” by undertaking innovative projects. She is also passionate about projects that help young women and girls get into STEM careers.

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Rudi Borrmann is a leading figure in South America's digital government movement. He is currently the Undersecretary for Public Innovation and Open Government in Argentina, a role in which he chaired the digital economy task force during Argentina's presidency of the G20 in 2018. Previously, Borrmann founded the Buenos Aires Innovation Lab and led the city's Open Government project, which was the first city-level open government initiative in Argentina.

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Under the leadership of Sak Segkhoonthod, Thailand’s Digital Government Development Agency has been revamped and given a new mandate to digitise government. The agency’s flagship project is an impressive two-year plan that aims to enhance and digitise the nation's services, most notably through the creation of a new government data centre that will help streamline government communication and place open data at the forefront of government. The goal is to create ‘Thailand 4.0’, an innovation-driven nation where government leads the way in data analytics and AI.

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Shai-lee Spigelman is CEO for Digital Israel. She leads the government’s national digital program and national strategy around digital education, digital health, economics in the digital age, smart cities and digital literacy. Prior to joining Digital Israel, Shai-lee held several roles at Microsoft Israel. In her last position, she served as VP of Marketing and Social Responsibility and a member of the board of directors of the Microsoft Research and Development Centre in Israel.

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Stefano Quintarelli is the chairman of the steering committee at the Italian Digital Agency and a member of the European Commission’s AI High Level Expert Group. He’s a serial entrepreneur who founded I.NET, the first Italian business internet service provider. He was also a founder and board member of Clusit, Italy’s computer security association and chairman of AIIP, Italy’s ISP association. He’s an angel investor, professor and former member of the Italian Parliament.

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Suhazimah Dzazali is the chief information officer at the Malaysian Administrative Modernisation and Management Planning Unit (MAMPU). MAMPU is Malaysia’s central agency for the modernisation and transformation of the public service. In her role, Dzazali acts as a change agent, strengthening tech policy, standards and practice and encouraging the uptake of digital within the public sector. She was responsible for the development of the government’s public service digitisation plan.

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Susan Crawford is the John A. Reilly Clinical Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, and has published a number of books and articles on the tech revolution and digital governance. With over a decade's worth of experience in digital government, Susan has been recognised as one of Fast Company’s Most Influential Women in Technology (2009), Prospect Magazine’s Top Ten Brains of the Digital Future (2011), and TIME Magazine’s Tech 40: The Most Influential Minds in Tech (2013) among other accolades. She is the founder of OneWebDay, served as Special Assistant to the President for Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy in 2009, co-led the FCC transition team between the Bush and Obama administrations, served as a member of Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Advisory Council on Technology and Innovation and also on Mayor Bill de Blasio’s Broadband Task Force.

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Ulrike Huemer is the chief information officer for the City of Vienna. She is currently responsible for running digital strategy for Vienna and working towards ensuring that the Austrian capital is a “smart city” by digitising citizen services. Huemer advocates for using technology not as a “means to an end” but as a way to create social change to provide quality services to citizens.

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Eric Garcetti is the Mayor of Los Angeles, California. Under his tenure, LA was named the US's #1 digital city by the Center for Digital Government for two consecutive years. The city received the award for projects including the LA CyberLab, a public-private partnership to combat cybercrime, and OurCycleLA, a project helping to bridge the digital divide for some of the city's most underprivileged residents. The city is also experimenting extensively with chatbots in an effort to better engage residents and improve services.

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Getahun Mekuria is Ethiopia's minister of innovation and technology, focusing on how to incorporate technological advancements into agriculture and health policy. He leads an initiative to track the planting of 350 million trees across Ethiopia, having developed new software to coordinate the record-breaking effort. Powered by digital, Mekuria is working to make Ethiopia a medium-income country within a ten year time span.

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Canada’s Minister of Digital Government, Joyce Murray, has since her election spearheaded an ‘open by default’ mindset with the stated goal of making the inner workings of government more accessible to ordinary citizens. Part of her mandate is to expand open data initiatives and to make data digitally available to all Canadians; most recently, she launched a new policy on Service and Digital, which plots the course for how the Canadian government will use new technologies like AI and blockchain to deliver 21st century services.

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Ko Wen-je is the Mayor of Taipei, Taiwan. Since his election in 2014, he has used principles associated with design and openness to drive digital transformations across Taipei to improve the city’s liveability. Taipei was ranked Top 5 in the world last year for improving its safety, greenery, education, and air quality, as well as public transportation. Innovations include the ‘Taipei Soundscape’ project which enhances public transit with music, while empowering local musicians. He launched the i-voting platform in 2016 for citizens to vote on municipal issues and propose new projects, and he is rolling out digital initiatives like epayments as well as fast wifi in schools.

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Paula Forteza is a French politician and advocate for civic technology initiatives across government in France. She works to make digital affairs and citizen participation a priority in French political debate, and has released her agenda and schedule as open data. She has a background in technology and innovation policy, having previously worked at Etalab, the French Prime Minister’s taskforce for Open Data, Open Government and Data Science and on public innovation for the City of Buenos Aires.

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Ravi Shankar Prasad is India’s minister for electronics and IT. His ministry is working on a new data protection framework for India, digital inclusion and cyber security. It has initiated several new e-governance initiatives, including a unified mobile app for services, an online procurement platform and an open government data platform. He was critical in bringing digital TV to India and also led the corporatisation of the Indian film industry. He is a designated senior advocate in India’s Supreme Court.

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Ro Khanna is a US Congressman, representing California’s 17th District. First elected to Congress in the 2016 general election, Khanna is the Congressman for Silicon Valley, who is now calling on tech companies to create jobs and diversify their recruiting efforts. Articulating a philosophy of progressive capitalism, Khanna fights for universal broadband coverage for all, and works to stop excessive surveillance.

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Sonia Jorge is the executive director at the Alliance for Affordable Internet, where she manages policy, membership and partner and country engagement. Her work, which often includes a gender lens, has spanned digital policy, regulatory advice, strategic planning, policy development and legal and regulatory frameworks. In addition to her work on gender equality, she aims to promote universal internet access and digital inclusion for development. She has over 25 years of international experience in both the private and non-profit sectors.

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Arvo Ott is the executive director of Estonia’s e-Governance Academy, a non-profit think tank and consultancy part-owned by the Estonian government. His focus is e-governance studies and consultations, training programs and general management. Prior to joining the academy, Ott served as head of the e-government office at Estonia’s Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications for more than 12 years. He was responsible for e-government strategy planning and implementation.

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Carlos Santiso is director of the Digital Innovation in Government Directorate of the Development Bank of Latin America (CAF), focusing on improving the lives of people in emerging economies. Santiso is passionate about the ability of data and technology to transform government, end corruption, and encourage innovation. Previously, he served at the Inter-American Development Bank as the division chief of innovation in citizen services, moving to the role in 2016 after joining in 2011 as division chief for the institutional capacity of the state.

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Dana Chisnell is co-director at the Center for Civic Design, US, whose goal is to make every interaction between government and citizens easy and effective. She was a special consultant with the United States Digital Service in the Obama White House, applying her expertise in civic design by training various departments in user research and usability testing. An expert in plain language and usability, Dana contributed significantly to the formulation of several requirements in AARP’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.

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Jacqueline de Rojas is the president of techUK and the chair of Digital Leaders' board. She serves on the UK government’s Digital Economy Council, and sits on the boards of Rightmove, Costain and AO World. She’s also the co-chair at the Institute of Coding, supports Newcastle University's Technical College and mentors the Girlguiding Association. De Rojas is passionate about diversity and inclusion in tech, and was named Computer Weekly’s Most Influential Woman in IT in 2015.

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Jennifer Pahlka is the founder and executive director of Code for America, a nationwide program to make government smarter, more creative and more effective for its citizens. Founded in 2009, Code for America has brought thousands of tech and design professionals into dialogue with city, state and federal government to apply design thinking and innovative practices to governance. In 2013, Pahlka served as deputy chief technology officer at the White House.

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Joy Buolamwini is founder of the Algorithmic Justice League, an organisation which aims to highlight the hidden algorithmic bias in the technology we are all surrounded by, and showcase the impact on vulnerable and disadvantaged groups. One challenge is that, while machine learning algorithms can recognise human features, the technology is better at identifying white faces than people of colour, limiting the use of this technology for ethnic minorities. Joy has been a leading advocate for the safe space pledge, which aims to mitigate the adverse effects from the rapid spread of facial recognition software in public spaces.

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Kathryn Peters co-founded Democracy Works, a non-partisan non-profit, which standardises election data in the US to turbocharge voter registration. She leads on managing election data standardisation for Google's Civic API, which is used by almost all civic tech apps in the US. She has previously worked in information management at the United Nations and in political rights monitoring in Afghanistan.

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Miguel Porrúa is an e-Government specialist in the Data and Digital Government Cluster at the Inter-American Development Bank. Previously, Porrúa spent 11 years as senior e-Government specialist in the Organisation of American States (OAS) Secretariat for Political Affairs and director of government relations for Latin America. He has written several articles and documents on e-government and global information technology, in addition to co-editing a book about e-government titled América Latina Puntogob.

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Sir Nigel Shadbolt is chairman and co-founder of the Open Data Institute, one of the foremost institutions for advocating a global open data ecosystem. Nigel is a notable scholar of computer and web science and holds various fellowships and professorships. He was information advisor to the UK Prime Minister, which led to the creation of the data.gov.uk dataset portal. Nigel is the President of the British Computer Society, and was knighted in recognition of his services to science and engineering.

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Nnenna Nwakanma is the chief web advocate for the World Wide Web Foundation (WWW) where she advocates for open data, open government and the open web across Africa. She works to drive forward the Africa Data Consensus, the Africa Open Data Network, the Africa Open Data Conference and the African Declaration on Internet Rights and Freedoms. She represents the Web Foundation at a number of international fora, including the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data. She has over 15 years of experience working with the United Nations Systems on subjects such as the information society, gender and digital equality.

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Robin Christopherson is head of digital inclusion and part of the acclaimed accessibility and tech team at AbilityNet. As a speaker, Christophersen, who is blind, is known for captivating audiences with examples of good and bad accessibility practice. He advises companies on their obligations under the Equality Act and the Disability Equality Duty. He also has courtroom experience as an expert technical witness in assistive technology and software, systems and website accessibility.

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Shirin Hamid is the Principal Director and CIO of the Asian Development Bank (ADB), working closely with both government and the private sector in Asia-Pacific to boost development schemes, build and enhance digital economies, and support sustainable growth in the long-term. Shirin has led IT and data governance reforms within the ADB, with a view to modernise how the organisation operates. She was recognised as a leader in the 2019 CIO100 awards, and spoke at the ConnectGov Leaders Summit in Edinburgh this year.

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Tariq Malik is chief technical advisor at the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), and a core member of the World Bank’s Technical Experts Group. He has led multiple biometrics identity-programs and Information Technology projects, including most recently a National Registration and Identification System in Malawi, Africa. The innovational digital ecosystem created by this project has helped to significantly reform governance in Malawi, in turn strengthening democracy, financial inclusion, sustainable development, and overall service delivery. Tariq is one of the brains behind the global ‘ID for Development’ (#ID4D) program, and authored the framework of international standards for digital identity.

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Tiago C. Peixoto is senior public sector specialist at the World Bank Group, where he leads the Bank’s Digital Engagement Evaluation Team. He’s published several papers on the intersection of technology and government, including a much-cited meta-analysis of various governments’ usage of information and communication technologies platforms to project citizen voices and improve public service deliveries. Before joining the World Bank, Piexoto was an advisor for the OECD and the UN, and research director of the Electronic Democracy Centre at the University of Zurich.

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Vincenzo Aquaro is the chief of digital government at the United Nations. He has more than 25 years of experience in technology, having worked both for international organisations and in the private sector. Since 2010, he has led the UN’s annual e-Government Survey and the flagship e-Government program, which helps government advance public sector reform. He has also served as chief of the e-government branch at Division for Public Administration and Development Management at the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs. Prior to joining the UN, he was CEO of Formit Servizi, an IT consultancy.

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Beth Simone Noveck directs The Governance Lab (The GovLab) and also serves as chief innovation officer for the state of New Jersey. She is a Professor in Technology, Culture, and Society at New York University’s Tandon School of Engineering. The author of numerous books and articles on governance innovation, she works with governments around the world to implement innovative and responsible approaches for using technology to solve public problems. Previously, she was the first United States Deputy Chief Technology Officer and director of the White House Open Government Initiative.

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Debra Lam is the managing director of smart cities and inclusive innovation for Georgia Institute of Technology. She received national attention for her role as chief of innovation and performance at the City of Pittsburgh, where she sponsored research in urban development and fast-tracking innovations to city operations via innovative partnerships with Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh. This collaboration became MetroLab network, a group of more than 30 city-university partnerships that bring data, analytics, and innovation to city government.

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Fadi Salem is director of policy research and advisory at the Mohammed bin Rashid School of Government. He has led regional policy research on digital governance, the intersection of public policy and innovation, and the internet for the Middle East and North Africa. Salem has also advised senior government officials on technology policy and digital economy in his previous role in The Executive Office in Dubai. He currently serves on the Artificial Intelligence Ethics Advisory Board for Smart Dubai.

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Helen Margetts is Professor of Society and the Internet at the University of Oxford, where she was Director of the Oxford Internet Institute from 2011-18. She is a Turing Fellow and Director of the Public Policy Programme at the Alan Turing Institute for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence. She has published over 100 books, articles and policy reports on digital government and politics, including Political Turbulence (2015), which won the W.J.Mackenzie best politics book prize in 2017. She sits on the government’s Digital Economy Council and the Home Office Scientific Advisory Council and is founding editor of the journal Policy and Internet.

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Idoia Ortiz de Artiñano Goñi is the managing director of PublicTech Lab, based out of IE University, Madrid. The Lab is a place for collaboration and experimentation, a hotbed for new solutions to public sector problems. Goñi is leading a new culture of service design, focused on delivery and the needs of citizens. She works to foster the GovTech ecosystem, supporting startups, corporations and universities to co-create with government to boost innovation.

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J. Ramon Gil-Garcia is an expert in government IT, and directs research at the Center for Technology in Government at the University at Albany. A prolific author in digital government research, he has also taught in Mexico City, and is a member of the Mexican Academy of Sciences. Gil-Garcia's work covers issues from collaborative electronic government to the adoption of emergent technologies and digital divide policies.

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Jane E. Fountain is director of the National Center for Digital Government at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her book, Building the Virtual State: Information Technology and Institutional Change, was awarded an Outstanding Academic Title by Choice and has been translated into 3 languages. Fountain serves on the Massachusetts Governor’s Council on Innovation. She previously served as Chair of the World Economic Forum Global Advisory Council on the Future of Government.

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Joanna Bryson is a reader/associate professor in the department of computer science at the University of Bath. She teaches and works on artificial intelligence, ethics and collaborative cognition. She helped the UK’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council to define principles around robotics. She has also consulted The Red Cross on autonomous weapons and contributed to an all party group in the UK parliament on AI. In 2017, she won an Outstanding Achievement Award from Cognition X.

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Karen Mossberger is a professor in the School of Public Affairs at Arizona State University. Her research interests encompass local governance, urban policy, digital government, and digital inequality. Karen researched and evaluated the Smart Communities Program, a digital inclusion initiative in nine Chicago neighbourhoods, among other digital government projects, and co-authored ‘Digital Cities: The Internet and the Geography of Opportunity’ in 2012. She served as president of the APSA’s Urban Politics and Information Technology and Politics sections, and was elected a fellow in the National Academy of Public Administration.

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M Jae Moon is the Underwood Distinguished Professor of public administration at Yonsei University and director of the university's institute for future government. He has published extensive research on public service reform, including the adoption of e-governance across different branches of the public service. In addition to his academic work he has worked on various training and projects for international organisations such as the Asian Development Bank.

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A professor of ICT and governance, Marijn Janssen is head of ICT in TU Delft's Technology, Policy and Management faculty. With a focus on public-private service networks, Janssen also edits a number of academic journals including Government Information Quarterly. Having published over 320 refereed publications, Janssen has been recognised as one of the leading e-government researchers in the world.

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In his role as Human Rights Lead at the NY-based research institute Data & Society, Mark Latonero investigates the benefits, risks, and harms of digital technologies. He has published a number of reports on topics such as the use of technology by refugees, the role of social platforms in human online trafficking and his most recent paper, Governing Artificial Intelligence, where he proposes a human rights framework to govern AI. He is a Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School's Carr Center and he has served in several advisory roles, including as the Innovation Consultant for the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.

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Robert Krimmer is a professor of e-Governance within Estonia’s Tallinn University of Technology. His research is focused on electronic participation and democracy, as well as e-voting, the transformation of the public sector and developing digital societies. He leads a large-scale pilot focused on exploring and demonstrating the feasibility of the once-only principle, which involves partners from other 21 countries inside and outside the European Union. Krimmer is also an associate editor of the international scientific journal Government Information Quarterly.

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Theresa Pardo is the director of the Rockefeller College of Public Affairs & Policy at the University of Albany and one of the most cited scholars in the world in her field. Her team conducts applied research and problem-solving projects on issues relating to policy, management, and technology in the governments worldwide. Pardo also advises New York State Governor Andrew M. Cuomo as part of Open New York.

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